TASK COMPLEXITY,ORGANIZATION SIZE,AND ADMINISTRATIVE INTENSITY: THE CASE OF UK UNIVERSITIES

The task complexity and size of public service organizations are arguably key determinants of the proportion of resources devoted to administration. Moreover, the combined effect of these two variables is also likely to have important implications for the scale of the administrative function. To explore the separate and combined effects of task complexity and size on administrative intensity in public service organizations, we examine the determinants of the relative proportion of resources allocated to central administration rather than academic departments in UK universities between 2003 and 2008. The results suggest that there is a non‐linear U‐shaped impact of both task complexity and size on administrative intensity, and that in combination these characteristics lead to a bigger central administrative component in universities. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Tipping the scales: The causes and consequences of administrative spending

The public administration literature once devoted great effort to identify the determinants of administrative intensity in organizations. While this literature has received some renewed attention, there remain questions about what aspects of organizational environments generate growth in administrative intensity, particularly as related to political oversight and external accountability mechanisms. This article aims to expand current theory on the determinants of administrative personnel and costs using data on four‐year public universities in the United States from 1998 to 2011, as this setting has received considerable criticism for perceived administrative bloat. Findings suggest that which political party is in control substantially influences both administrative costs and total personnel. These administrative levels, in turn, have a curvilinear relationship with student outcomes.     

LEARNING FROM PERFORMANCE FEEDBACK: PERFORMANCE INFORMATION,ASPIRATION LEVELS,AND MANAGERIAL PRIORITIES

While performance management is increasingly widespread, we still know little about how performance information generates learning and affects organizational responses. Recent work on performance information and learning in private business organizations, however, suggests that perceived negative performance triggers important strategic responses related to problem identification, search, and change. In turn, how performance is perceived depends on whether performance falls short of aspiration levels that are based on an organization's historical performance and the performance of peer organizations. This article adapts this model to a public sector context and tests one implication of the model, namely that public managers will increase their prioritization of goals that are currently performing below aspirations. This question is central to the study of public organizations pursuing multiple and democratically contested goals. Empirical findings based on administrative performance data and a survey of Danish school principals support this prediction.     

Administrative reform and role responses in thailand

This article examines the effects of administrative reforms on the attitudes and behavior of key municipal government officials in Thailand. Central Thai officials frequently have attempted to reform municipal government in the image of American council-manager government. However, the repeated failure of such legislative reform proposals has led to alternative strategies for improving the overall performance of municipal government. Changes in recruitment, training, and promotion practices have aimed at improving the quality of administrative personnel. The article analyses the problem of municipal reform and finds that the administrative changes have not resulted in expected changes in individual behavior and municipal performance. Although the reform strategies have produced major changes in the characteristics of key municipal personnel, the attitudes and behavior of these officials appear to be consistent with those of other officials in similar role environments.     

Transforming Administrative Policy

Administrative policies and practices may evolve and change slowly and incrementally or they may be transformed intentionally. Intentional efforts to change administrative policy by transforming the structure, processes, or personnel of public sector organizations define an active administrative policy. Ideally, an active administrative policy takes as given that the organizational form to be used is open to choice, that administrative goals are clear, that a tight coupling exists between ends and means, that different organizational forms have different effects, and that there are criteria that may be used to assess those effects. This article focuses on the fulfilment of these preconditions in the three national contexts – Norway, Sweden and the United States of America – in order to determine the relevance of a transformative perspective for understanding the process of administrative change. We examine what impact constraints like polity features, historical-institutional traditions and external pressure, particularly through popular international administrative doctrines like New Public Management ideas and financial crises, have on the possibilities to enhance an active national administrative policy.     

MANAGING SOCIAL CAPITAL AND DIVERSITY FOR PERFORMANCE IN PUBLIC ORGANIZATIONS

Managers concerned with the performance of their organizations will exploit available social, administrative, and human capital resources. However, extant theory and mixed empirical evidence leave the effect of social capital on performance unclear. The gains from these norms of reciprocity, participation, networking, and trust may disproportionately benefit only some of their clients, leading to disparities in outcomes among diverse clienteles. We argue that in such contexts, management will put in place policies to counter these disparities. Indeed, our empirical evidence from the management of public education supports the expectation that an institutional commitment to diversity successfully mitigates the uneven effects of social capital on organizational performance. This finding carries important implications for public management and equity in public policy outcomes and may be of particular relevance to management of outcomes relying on co‐production.     

Participative management in global transformational change

This article examines the empirical research on participative management approach both in public and private sectors. With the current trend toward globalization, the author highlights the concepts of interrelationships and complexity as key impediments that management scholars must struggle with in their search for a management approach suitable to global organizations.     

Does Power Corrupt? An Empirical Study of Power,Accountability, and Performance Triangle in Public Administration

Foundational work in public administration has considered the relationship between administrative power, accountability, and performance in public organizations. Even with the vast literature addressing power, accountability, and performance, scholars are still theorizing on how they influence one another. This study proposes and empirically tests a theoretical model of the relationships between each of these three constructs. Data are analyzed from an original survey of a national sample of US local government public administrators—city managers. Using structural equation modeling, results show that there are positive relationships between power and accountability, power and performance, and accountability and performance. The article discusses theoretical and practical implications of these findings.     

A Serious Game: Performance Management in Italian Ministries

In 2009, extensive performance management measures were introduced in Italian ministries, following a significant legislative initiative. The objectives that were initially set, however, have not yet been reached. In the paper, the authors discuss this issue, starting with the consideration of the main limits on the introduction of performance measurement systems in public organizations. The discussion leads to the conclusion that the shortcomings of performance management depend not only on the persistence of an administrative paradigm, but also on the underestimated impact of control over organizational behavior; where the latter is linked not to mechanical logic processes, but to more sophisticated forms of reactivity or even counter-intuitive sense-making processes.     

LIMITS ON INNOVATIVENESS IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT: EXAMINING CAPACITY,COMPLEXITY, AND DYNAMISM IN ORGANIZATIONAL TASK ENVIRONMENTS

Theory and evidence on the diffusion and antecedents of innovation in public organizations demonstrate that organizations respond to their environment and react by being more or less innovative. However, questions about the limits of responses to organizational task environments remain unexplored: in short, what is the appropriate level of environmental capacity and when does the environment become too complex or dynamic for innovation to occur? This study examines non‐linear capacity, complexity, and dynamic environments in an archival panel of 405 English local governments using primary and secondary data from a number of sources. Findings indicate that non‐linearities effect perceived innovativeness in relation to political and social capacity, and political dynamism in an inverted U shape, and in a U shape for community capacity. The implications of these findings for the study of public service innovation are considered.     

MANAGING NETWORKS IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR: A THEORETICAL STUDY OF MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES IN POLICY NETWORKS

Public policy usually develops in complex networks of public, quasi-public and private organizations. It is now generally accepted that these networks set limits to the governance capability of the administration. A good deal less is known about the opportunities which policy networks offer for tackling social and administrative problems. This article deals with the way network management enables government organizations to benefit from networks. Building on the theoretical concepts of‘networks’and‘games’, two forms of network management are identified: game management and network structuring. Four key aspects can be identified for both of these management forms: actors and their relations, resources, rules and perceptions. At the same time, criteria for the assessment and improvement of network management are examined. The article concludes with a consideration of the limits of network management.     

Modernism,administration, and the post-progressive era

Beginning in the 1920s a group of theorists made a significant departure from Progressive administrative theory. These Post-Progressives argued that organizations must be more than efficient producers; they must be institutions within which individuals can develop their creative potential. Toward this end, they emphasized a unified science of organizations and leadership. In so doing, the Post-Progressives believed that they were extending the course of modernity itself. The abandonment of the Post-Progressive synthesis between efficiency and human oriented organizations risks not only the viability of modern organizations but the course of modernity as well.     

ON THE BUREAUCRACY OF BUREAUCRACIES: ANALYSING THE SIZE AND ORGANIZATION OF OVERHEAD IN PUBLIC ORGANIZATIONS

Governments across the globe try to rebalance their budgets by rationalizing overhead operations. When overhead‐reducing policies are adopted, it is important to understand why some central government organizations have a higher overhead than others, and why organizational models to produce overhead efficiencies are used to different degrees. This study focuses on the Flemish context to analyse differences between central government organizations in the size and organization of two overhead processes: human resources management (HRM) and finance and control (FIN). Significant effects are found for autonomy, organizational size, spatial dispersion and budgetary stress, yet effects vary according to whether HRM or FIN is considered and whether the focus is on the size or the organization of HRM or FIN. Our findings have practical implications to get a process‐sensitive understanding of the size and organization of overhead, and theoretical implications as they cast light on factors that shape decision‐making in public organizations.     

TRANSACTIONS COSTS IN RURAL DECISION‐MAKING: THE CASES OF FUNDING AND MONITORING IN RURAL DEVELOPMENT IN ENGLAND

Public domain decisions in rural England have become more complex as the number of stakeholders having a say in them has increased. Transactions costs can be used to explore this increasing complexity. The size and distribution of these costs are higher in rural areas. Grouping transactions costs into four – organizations, belief systems, knowledge and information, and institutions – two of the latter are evaluated empirically: growth in the bid culture, and monitoring and evaluation. Amongst 65 Agents of Rural Governance (ARGs) in Gloucestershire, both were found to be increasing over time, but those relating to finance were a greater burden than those of monitoring: the latter can improve ARG performance. Increasing transactions costs in rural decision‐making appears to be at variance with ambitions of achieving ‘smaller government' through, for example, the Big Society. Smaller government is likely to be shifting the incidence of these costs, rather than reducing them.     

Recent Administrative and Managerial Practices and Public Service Motivation: Evidence from Seoul City Government,South Korea

This study aims to investigate the impact of recent administrative and managerial practices of public organizations on public service motivation. Using data from a survey of 1840 civil servants in Seoul City Government, this research uses hierarchical linear modeling to empirically assess the aforementioned associations. The results show that recent administrative and managerial practices have both positive and negatives on public service motivation. At the end of the study, the administrative and managerial implications of the study are also discussed in light of these results.     

VERTICAL STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT AND PUBLIC SERVICE PERFORMANCE

We report the results of a study examining the effects of vertical strategic alignment (that is, the degree to which strategic stances are consistent across different organizational levels) on public service performance. Longitudinal multivariate analysis is undertaken on a panel of public organizations over four years. We find that alignment on a prospecting strategy leads to better performance, but that no such effect is observed for a defending strategy. We also find that high levels of prospecting alignment produce stronger positive performance effects in centralized organizations and when environmental uncertainty is high. The implications of these findings for research and practice are considered in the conclusion.     

E-Government for Lowering Administrative Burden: An Empirical Research on European Rural Businesses

Administrative burden reduction is in the policy agenda in European countries and international organizations. The objectives of this article are to measure administrative burden of rural businesses in three European case studies and to assess the use of semantic electronic government services for its reduction. The main findings are that rural businesses do not perceive the administrative burden significance for entrepreneurship; public administration could implement semantic electronic government services to reduce rural businesses’ administrative burden; and future administrative burden reduction policies should take into account the type and location of businesses to achieve an efficient business environment.     

PERFORMANCE IN THE THIRD SECTOR: A MICRO-LEVEL FRAMEWORK AND SOME LESSONS FROM ISRAEL

Organizational performance is perhaps the most studied topic in management literature. For many years much attention has been given to understanding performance of the first (private/business) and second (public/administrative) sectors. Only recently have studies shown interest in the performance of the rapidly evolving third sector. However, most studies on the performance of Voluntary and Non-Profit Organizations (VNPOs) have so far adopted a distinctly macro-oriented perspective, overlooking micro-level viewpoints which may have special merit for a broader understanding of effectiveness and efficiency in these bodies. This paper provides an insight into this less studied dimension of performance analysis and tries to illuminate its advantages for VNPOs. The model applies existing knowledge from other fields such as organizational behavior and labor studies, and puts forward a theory that may prove useful for third-sector organizations struggling to improve results in a turbulent public arena. Furthermore, we provide some preliminary findings as collected in Na'amat (an Israeli VNPO of working women) that support the usefulness of this model.     

The Adoption of Outcome-Related Performance Indicators in External Reporting: An Empirical Study

ABSTRACT

Contemporary government reforms are changing how performance is measured and evaluated, by shifting the focus from inputs and processes to outputs and outcomes. This study uses agency theory, institutional theory, and organizational information processing theory to hypothesize and assess how particular organizational and institutional factors affect the disclosure of outcome information by public organizations, drawing on an empirical analysis of 214 Italian public organizations. Organizational size, mode of service delivery, and the degree of regulation are all strongly associated with the disclosure of outcome indicators in external performance reports.