The Factory： Organizational Culture,Organizational Structure,in the Small to Medium Size 21st Century Chinese Factory

China is the ＂factory to the world＂, but little is known outside of China about the small to medium size （SMS） Chinese factory. This ignorance can cause considerable misunderstanding, particularly among Western buyers of goods made in China. The Chinese factory originated in the 18th century and changed as China itself has changed. Still, the Chinese factory is different from factories that emerged in the 18th century Europe and the 19th century America, during their respective ＂industrial revolution＂ periods. This paper is a qualitative analysis of the SMS Chinese factory more than a decade into the 21st century, across industries, across regions, based on the author＇s participant observation in the course of 14 research trips to China lasting a total of two years across a 10-year time period. China has the most efficient SMS factories in the world, although many are working significantly below capacity. New Chinese factories are state-of-the-art, clean, healthful, safe, and able to deliver orders substantially on targeted schedule. Quality Control （QC） can be erratic and passed on to the buyer. On balance, strengths far exceed weaknesses, and opportunities outweigh threats, even as Taiwanese investments begin to be withdrawn from mainland China.     

Do Rules Breed Rules? Vertical Rule-Making Cascades at the Supranational,National, and Organizational Level

Understanding where (ineffective) organizational rules come from is of vital importance for both public administration scholars and practitioners. Yet little is known about the underlying mechanisms that explain why external rules may cause organizational rule breeding and, as a by-product, red tape. Using a combination of archival and interview data, the authors empirically study rule-breeding processes in the case of Gasunie, which is a heavily regulated Dutch gas transport organization. The archival findings indicate that rule stocks have increased substantially over time at every policy level. Furthermore, the interview data support the notion that policymakers at different levels are jointly responsible for excessive rule breeding and, ultimately, organizational red tape.     

Does Organizational Image Matter? Image,Identification, and Employee Behaviors in Public and Nonprofit Organizations

Organizational image, identity, and identification are powerful concepts in terms of understanding members’ behaviors and beliefs. In particular, the term “image” has frequently been used to describe the overall impression of the organization, but most scholars have only focused on organizational image as it is perceived by external audiences. However, organizational image as perceived by members within an organization is critical for determining its impact on individual employees’ motivation, work behaviors, and further performance at work. This article explores the roles of organizational image and identification in explaining organizational behaviors—extra‐role behavior and absenteeism—in public and nonprofit organizations. A series of seemingly unrelated regressions were used to analyze survey data from 1,220 respondents. Results show that organizational image is positively related to employee identification, and identification has a significant influence on promoting extra‐role behavior and lowering employee absenteeism.

Practitioner Points

• Organizational image as perceived by members of an organization is an aggregate of individual employees’ perceptions of the organization based on their own experiences and judgments (perceived organizational identity) and outsiders’ judgments about the organization (construed external image).
• Both perceived organizational identity and construed external image influence the extent to which employees are likely to identify themselves as part of their organization.
• The higher an employee's level of identification, the more he or she is likely to engage in extra‐role behavior.
• Managing organizational image and identification in a positive way can significantly reduce costly voluntary employee absences, which are reasonably avoidable absences.

     

Organizational Pathology Compared to What? Impacts of Job Characteristics and Career Trajectory on Perceptions of Organizational Red Tape

Early studies of organizational red tape emphasized that worker perceptions of organizational rules and procedures are dependent on workers’ frames of reference. However, most prior studies do not account sufficiently for how and why these reference points vary across employees, even if they work within the same or similar organizational contexts. While the effects of contemporaneous employee attitudes on perceptions of red tape have been considered in prior analyses, how do perceptions of organizational rules and procedures as red tape relate to workers’ prior career trajectories and occupational contexts? Variable norms and expectations across organizations as well as across the public and private sectors may produce different attitudes toward rules and procedures. Of equal import, current occupational characteristics are relatively unexamined in studies of worker perceptions of red tape. Using a survey of state level public managers, this paper examines how employees’ perceptions of red tape are mediated by their prior career trajectories and experiences, as well as by their occupational context. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

Organizational morality： The ecosystem of public utilities

The tensions which underlie the decision-making process in public organizations are not a new phenomenon. The strategic area of public decisions is characterized by the following concepts of performance, results and profits, and even competencies of managers. The evolution of public management research leads us to present a new approach of this context. We argue in this paper that the systems and institutions that promote good governance and organizational integrity are directly linked with the competencies of managers and the morality and fairness of the organization. In this context, the question is the following： How can this complexity and integrity be managed in public organizations？     

Does Ethical Leadership Matter in Government? Effects on Organizational Commitment,Absenteeism, and Willingness to Report Ethical Problems

Recent ethical scandals involving managers in government organizations have highlighted the need for more research on ethical leadership in public sector organizations. To assess the consequences of ethical leadership, 161 managers in a large state government agency and 415 of their direct reports were surveyed, and personnel records were obtained to measure absenteeism. Results indicate that after controlling for the effects of employee characteristics, perceptions of procedural fairness, and supportive leader behavior, ethical leadership reduced absenteeism and had a positive influence on organizational commitment and willingness to report ethical problems. Implications of the findings and suggestions for future research are presented.     

Representative Bureaucracy,Organizational Integrity,and Citizen Coproduction: Does an Increase in Police Ethnic Representativeness Reduce Crime?

In 1999, the U.K. government set force‐specific 10‐year targets for recruiting new police officers from ethnic minorities. Using these targets as instrumental variables, this study finds that this policy mandating an increase in the share of ethnic minority officers in a given force is associated with a decrease in the number of crimes in the area under the force's jurisdiction during the 10‐year period. It is argued that greater representativeness and diversity within a public organization improves organizational integrity, which influences bureaucrats’ attitudes and behaviors toward minority citizens. In the context of policing, diversity can mitigate the institutionalized practice of officers acting on implicit assumptions about minorities being inherently more unlawful than whites: Police representativeness is associated with a decrease in the overrepresentation of black individuals among those subject to “stop and search.” Such a change may make minority citizens more willing to cooperate in the coproduction of public values, facilitating the attainment of organizational goals.     

Socializer or Signal?, How Agency Accreditation Affects Organizational Culture

Agency accreditation has grown steadily as a management strategy in recent decades. Accreditation is meant to help professionalize public administration work by requiring an agency to adopt policies and practices that are sanctioned by an external organization. Advocates claim that accreditation facilitates the diffusion of best practices and builds a culture of professionalism in an agency. Accreditation clearly leads agencies to adopt formal policies. This article identifies two ways in which accreditation might affect organizational culture: (1) by socializing employees, and (2) by signaling the agency’s priorities to employees. Analyzing attitudinal data from officers in six American police departments, this study finds no association between accreditation and officers’ own values, but finds that accreditation is strongly correlated with officers’ perceptions of their agencies’ priorities.     

Organizational learning in non-governmental organizations: What have we learned?

Learning is considered to be an essential component of organizational effectiveness in all sectors—private, public and non-governmental. All NGOs aspire to be ‘learning organizations’, yet few have reflected systematically on the success in this regard. This article summarizes the experience to date of international NGOs that have prioritized learning as an objective, drawing out areas of both success and failure, and reflecting on whether there are any features that distinguish learning in NGOs from learning in other types of organization. A simple typology and set of tests of NGO-learning are presented, along with a series of challenges for the future. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Public Admin. Dev. Vol. 17 : 235–250 (1997). No. of Figures: 0. No. of Tables: 0. No. of Refs: 48     

Does Strategic Planning Improve Organizational Performance? A Meta‐Analysis

Strategic planning is a widely adopted management approach in contemporary organizations. Underlying its popularity is the assumption that it is a successful practice in public and private organizations that has positive consequences for organizational performance. Nonetheless, strategic planning has been criticized for being overly rational and for inhibiting strategic thinking. This article undertakes a meta‐analysis of 87 correlations from 31 empirical studies and asks, Does strategic planning improve organizational performance? A random‐effects meta‐analysis reveals that strategic planning has a positive, moderate, and significant impact on organizational performance. Meta‐regression analysis suggests that the positive impact of strategic planning on organizational performance is strongest when performance is measured as effectiveness and when strategic planning is measured as formal strategic planning. This impact holds across sectors (private and public) and countries (U.S. and non‐U.S. contexts). Implications for public administration theory, research, and practice are discussed in the conclusion.     

Reexamining Causes and Consequences: Does Administrative Intensity Matter for Organizational Performance?

ABSTRACT

This study examines the relationship between organizational structure (size and complexity) and administrative intensity and, subsequently, the effect of administrative intensity on organizational performance in the context of four-year institutions of higher education in the United States between 2003 and 2009. Organizational size has a negative effect on administrative intensity and supports the notion of economies of scale. Size and complexity also interact such that complexity has a greater effect on total administrative intensity in larger organizations. While administrative intensity has a nonlinear relationship with degree productivity, suggesting a tipping point of 30% total administration, it has little direct effect on graduation rates.     

Do Networks Really Work? A Framework for Evaluating Public‐Sector Organizational Networks

Although cooperative, interorganizational networks have become a common mechanism for delivery of public services, evaluating their effectiveness is extremely complex and has generally been neglected. To help resolve this problem, we discuss the evaluation of networks of community-based, mostly publicly funded health, human service, and public welfare organizations. Consistent with pressures to perform effectively from a broad range of key stakeholders, we argue that networks must be evaluated at three levels of analysis: community, network, and organization/participant levels. While the three levels are related, each has its own set of effectiveness criteria that must be considered. The article offers a general discussion of network effectiveness, followed by arguments explaining effectiveness criteria and stakeholders at each level of analysis. Finally, the article examines how effectiveness at one level of network analysis may or may not match effectiveness criteria at another level and the extent to which integration across levels may be possible.     

New Executives from Inside or Outside? The Effect of Executive Replacement on Organizational Change

This article investigates how executive succession influences the comprehensiveness of structural changes pursued by public organizations. Executive successions are important events for organizations that provide salient opportunities for introducing organizational change, yet little research has analyzed this relationship. The author argues that the less familiarity a new executive has with the organization and the field in which it works, the more likely it is that comprehensive organizational change will take place. Empirical results from quantitative analyses of executive succession events in Danish municipalities from 1984 to 2000 confirm this. Interestingly, the degree to which new practices are legitimized moderates the findings. Inside successors are more likely to conduct comprehensive structural changes after new practices receive normative and regulatory legitimacy. The article contributes to the literature on executive succession by highlighting how it is an antecedent to different types of organizational change. Contributions to practitioner and public management research are discussed.     

Motivated to Adapt? The Role of Public Service Motivation as Employees Face Organizational Change

Researchers concerned with organizational change have consistently emphasized the role that the work environment plays in employee acceptance of change. Underexamined in the public management literature, however, is the role that employee values, particularly public service motivation (PSM), may play in employee acceptance of change. Some scholars have noted a positive correlation between employee PSM and organizational change efforts; this article extends this work by attempting to isolate the mechanisms that explain this relationship. Using data from a survey of employees in a city undergoing a reorganization and reduction in workforce, the authors find that only employees who scored high on a single dimension of PSM—self‐sacrifice—were more likely than others to support organizational change. Rather than support changes for their potential to improve public service, this finding suggests that employees with higher PSM may simply be less likely to resist changes that might disadvantage them personally.     

Public–Private Partnerships in Urban Regeneration Projects: Organizational Form or Managerial Capacity?

Urban regeneration companies (URCs) are public‐private entities appearing across Europe. They are created specifically to manage and implement more effectively urban regeneration projects. Core ideas behind the establishment of these newly emerging partnerships aim to tackle the challenging process of restructuring these organizations so as to function at arm’s length from political oversight. However, contemporary literature on governance suggests that organizational form may be less a factor than managerial capability. Using survey data obtained from individuals who are heavily involved in Dutch urban regeneration partnerships, this article points out why twin URC organizational characteristics, i.e., functioning at arm’s length from politics plus its tight organizational format, are not significant to their effective performance. Instead, use of multiple management strategies is ultimately more relevant to their effective performance.     

Why Do Autonomous Public Agencies Use Performance Management Techniques? Revisiting the Role of Basic Organizational Characteristics

This study investigates to what extent the use of different performance management techniques within (semi-) autonomous public sector organizations, also called public agencies, can be explained by the defining organizational features of such organizations. Using multi-country survey data of over 400 public agencies, the effect of these features—internal performance target setting and monitoring, multi-year planning, as well as the internal performance-based allocation of resources—upon three performance management techniques has been studied. This set-up recognizes differences among management techniques, as well as recurring factors, allowing us to make more general statements. Analyses illustrate that external result control by the minister and parent ministry positively affects the use of all performance management techniques examined in public agencies. However, each performance management technique is affected differently by specific organizational variables.     

How Do Performance Gaps Affect Improvement in Organizational Performance? Exploring the Mediating Roles of Proactive Activities

Abstract

According to the extensive literature on performance gaps, the various reference points of the problem identification process affect the managerial decisions of public managers. In this article, we propose a theory about the public management decision-making processes based on the roles of proactive behaviors, specifically regarding how identifying such problems (performance gaps) leads to performance improvement. Using panel data from Korea covering 2005–2014, this analysis provides support for our assertion that not all reference points are equally important to public managers’ proactive responses; however, we find evidence supporting the importance of perceiving the external reference point of problem identification as a significant precedent for successful organizational performance. Our results also indicate that practitioners need to become involved in greater feedback processes when searching for proactive solutions that remedy poor organizational performance. This suggests that the creation of diverse and sophisticated performance feedback systems can strengthen public managers’ abilities to find solutions for organizations. Ultimately, the findings enhance our understanding of the relationship between performance gaps and performance improvement by examining the role of public managers’ proactive behaviors.     

Beyond Civil Society: An Organizational Perspective on State–NGO Relations in the People's Republic of China

Abstract

This article discusses the transformations in terms of participation brought about by the change of tides in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador. The key focus will be an analysis of the interaction between states undergoing reformulation and the social movements in these countries. To this end, the article first presents some theoretical and analytical frameworks. In what follows, it refers to the experiments of participative and direct democracy in these societies carried out amidst the above-mentioned process of refoundation, with a particular emphasis on state–society relations.