The Impact of Customer Orientation on Government Employee Performance

ABSTRACT

This article explores the impact of “customer service” orientation on government employee performance. Although public organizations have been encouraged to become customer-centered organizations, concerns exist about the application of such market orientations to the management of government organizations. This article joins in the customer orientation debate by exploring the impact of customer orientation on employee motivation and performance. Using quantitative and qualitative analysis of data from civilian employees at a Department of Defense installation, this study explores the impact of customer orientation on employee performance and motivation, across time and work roles.

Consistent with previous research that suggests that customer orientation is positively associated with public and private employee performance and work attitudes, the results of this study suggest that customer service orientation has a strong positive impact on employee performance and motivation. Employee customer orientation provides a connection to the organization's goals consistent with employees' affective and normative values of public service, and feedback necessarily to improve service delivery. The impact of formal management systems may be enhanced by their ability to strengthen an employee's customer orientation. Ultimately, however, efforts to create a more “market”-based orientation focused on institutional customers who purchase services may have limited impact, or even a deleterious effect on, employee performance and motivation, unless also accompanied by formal linkages to service beneficiaries.     

Information Technology and Organizational Morphology: The Case of the Korean Central Government

This study explores the effects of information technology (IT) in terms of longitudinal changes in organizational structures at the central government level. Interestingly, although IT has increased the ratio of middle managers to subordinates, the number of middle managers has not changed radically and, in some cases, has steadily increased, while the proportion of lower‐level employees has decreased. Contrary to the belief in a pyramid structure, the actual form of an agency looks like a rocket. The analysis shows that IT effects on the agency’s morphology differ according to the core technology of the agency. However, these effects seem to be constrained by the rigidity of the Korean government in terms of organizational management. This article proposes that agency autonomy in fitting the organizational structure to the real work situation is a necessary condition for seeing the full effects of e‐government.     

Green Tape and Public Employee Rule Abidance: Why Organizational Rule Attributes Matter

Ever since Max Weber identified formal rules as one attribute of bureaucratic organizations, scholars have uncovered a range of cooperative and uncooperative behavioral responses to organizational rules. The question for public management theory and practice is how to design and execute organizational rules in ways that elicit cooperation rather than resistance. Green tape, a theory of effective rules, provides one answer to this question. Green tape theory argues that the cooperation of stakeholders—individuals who comply with, explain, or enforce rules—depends on the presence of five rule attributes. This article tests the relationship between these attributes and stakeholder rule abidance using mail survey data obtained from the employees of four cities in a Midwestern state. The results indicate that employee perceptions of four of the five theoretical green tape attributes are correlated with higher rule abidance. Thus, stakeholder perceptions of organizational rules appear to matter because they alter the extent of cooperation in rule implementation.     

Managerial Networking in Nonprofit Organizations: The Impact of Networking on Organizational and Advocacy Effectiveness

Public management scholars are interested in the ways that public managers can improve the performance of their organizations and, by extension, public service outcomes. However, public sector outcomes are increasingly being produced by nonprofit organizations. Nonprofits have encountered increased pressures to improve effectiveness in recent years, both from their funding entities and from the public. A growing body of public management research has shown that managerial networking can pay dividends for organizational effectiveness, yet no studies to date have considered the effects of managerial networking on nonprofit effectiveness. This is the first study to apply the basic elements of Meier and O'Toole's model to the nonprofit sector. Using survey data from a random sample of 314 nonprofit human service organizations in 16 U.S. states, the authors explore the frequency of various networking relationships on organizational and advocacy effectiveness. The findings reveal that political networking increases advocacy effectiveness and community networking increases organizational effectiveness.     

Personnel Constraints in Public Organizations: The Impact of Reward and Punishment on Organizational Performance

In recent years, many public sector reforms have attempted to loosen personnel constraints on the assumption that more managerial flexibility will increase organizational performance. The authors mount an empirical study to test this assumption using data taken from English local government authorities. Personnel constraints are operationalized using Rainey's long‐standing measures of the concept. Statistical results from multiple regression analyses indicate that “difficulty in removing poor managers” is harmful to organizational performance, but “difficulty in rewarding good managers” has no effect. The authors delve inside the organizational hierarchy and find that attitudes toward personnel constraints vary by organizational level and managerial rank: for example, frontline managers feel more constrained overall, while senior managers’ perceptions of constraints are more closely linked to organizational performance but in some unexpected ways. The implications of these findings, including the fact that personnel constraints have varying impacts on organizational performance, are considered.     

Employee Voluntary and Involuntary Turnover and Organizational Performance: Revisiting the Hypothesis from Classical Public Administration

ABSTRACT:

This article examines the effects of voluntary, involuntary, and absolute turnover rates on organizational performance. Adopting human capital and cost-benefit theories, this article posits that voluntary and involuntary turnover would have a linear negative and an inverted U-shaped relationship with organizational performance, respectively, and that an absolute turnover measure can prevent us from revealing the distinct effects of different types of turnover. Using four years of data from Florida school districts, primary findings suggest that involuntary turnover has an inverted U-shaped relationship with organizational performance, first positive and then negative, while the relationship between voluntary turnover and organizational performance remains inconclusive. The findings also suggest that absolute turnover rates can mask the complex and dissimilar impact that various types of turnover have on organizational performance.     

论文化语境对英汉文学翻译的影响

随着中西方交流的不断深入,英汉文学翻译作为双方文化交流的一个重要部分,也越来越为人们所关注。但文学翻译与语境,尤其是与文化语境有着千丝万缕的联系。本文将从英语文化语境、原作者及译者的文化语境和目标读者群的文化语境三方面探讨文化语境对英汉文学翻译的影响与制约。     

中国职工代表大会制与职工参与模式的政治学分析

本从历史考察的角度探讨了中国职工代表大会制的背景、特点和类型。然后通过对职工代表大会制的政策变迁和实际，来分析职工政治参与的性质和界限。     

Penetrating the Performance Predicament: Communication as a Mediator or Moderator of Organizational Culture's Impact on Public Organizational Performance

The role of communication in public administration has been emphasized over time in public administration theory. Nonetheless, communication—with the exception of political communication—has been neglected in scholarship. Garnett's performance predicament posits the difficulty of showing linkages between communication and performance. This paper explores the role that communication plays in achieving organizational performance through a review of research that bears on communication's direct and indirect influences on performance. The primary thrust is communication's indirect role in achieving performance by mediating or moderating the effects of organizational culture on performance, thereby adding another perspective on the culture–performance relationship. Adapting the typology of Zammuto and Krakower, two types of organizational culture—rule-oriented culture and mission-oriented culture—are examined to explore how the relationship between organizational culture and organizational performance is influenced by communication. The analysis supports the claim that communication acts as a meta-mechanism for shaping and imparting culture in mission-oriented organizational cultures, thereby influencing performance. In particular, task orientation, feedback, and upward communication have positive effects on perceived organizational performance in mission-oriented organizations but potentially negative effects on performance in rule-oriented cultures.     

Emotions in Management and the Management of Emotions: The Impact of Emotional Intelligence and Organizational Politics on Public Sector Employees

Readers are invited to a rendezvous with the meaning of the heart and emotions in public administration. Despite the growing interest in recent years in emotional intelligence within the managerial literature, too little has been written about emotional intelligence within the public sector. This is surprising in light of New Public Management voices that stress flexibility, responsiveness, and a focus on the needs and demands of citizens. The functionality of the heart in a mind‐oriented bureaucracy is analyzed, and a model is suggested for exploring the relationship between emotional intelligence, organizational politics, and employees' performance in public agencies. This model is empirically tested in two Israeli municipalities. The results support a moderating role of emotional intelligence in the relationship between organizational politics and emotional commitment, as well as between organizational politics and employees' absenteeism. Other direct mediating effects of political perceptions and skills are noted. Implications for theory development, future empirical studies, as well as practical recommendations are suggested.     

Managing Diversity in U.S. Federal Agencies: Effects of Diversity and Diversity Management on Employee Perceptions of Organizational Performance

Diversity in the workplace is a central issue for contemporary organizational management. Concomitantly, managing increased diversity deserves greater concern in public, private, and nonprofit organizations. The authors address the effects of diversity and diversity management on employee perceptions of organizational performance in U.S. federal agencies by developing measures of three variables: diversity, diversity management, and perceived organizational performance. Drawing from the Central Personnel Data File and the 2004 Federal Human Capital Survey, their findings suggest that racial diversity relates negatively to organizational performance. When moderated by diversity management policies and practices and team processes, however, racial diversity correlates positively with organizational performance. Gender and age diversity and their interactions with contextual variables produce mixed results, suggesting that gender and age diversity reflect more complicated relationships. This article provides evidence for several benefits derived from effectively managing diversity.     

关于领导干部应急管理能力的哲学思考

随着近年来我国公共突发事件的频繁发生,领导干部的应急管理能力日显重要,已成为新时期评价领导干部能力的重要维度.目前影响领导干部应急管理能力的发挥主要有认知、体制和经验三大因素.要有效应对突发事件,提高各级领导干部的应急管理能力就,必须在实践中不断提高他们的思维能力、应变能力和创新能力.     

Social Context and Information Seeking: Examining the Effects of Network Attitudinal Composition on Engagement with Political Information

The people we associate with everyday have an important influence on our exposure and reactions to political stimuli. Social network members in particular can have a dramatic impact on our political views and behavior. Prior research suggests that these attitudinal differences may reflect the information available in a social network: attitudinally congruent networks expose individuals to supporting positions, bolstering their views, while heterogeneous networks provide information on both sides of an issue, generating doubt and ambivalence. In contrast, the current studies examine the effects of individuals’ networks in motivating them to find and engage with new political information on their own. Using ANES panel data, a laboratory-based information board session that examines behavior in detail, and an experimental design that manipulates network composition, we find that individuals in attitudinally heterogeneous social networks are more likely to seek out and attend to political information. They spend more time looking for political information, and then (having found it) spend more time reviewing that new information compared to those whose network members are more like-minded. An experimental study further demonstrates that network composition causally determines these information-seeking preferences. Implications for democratic citizenship in light of these findings are discussed.     

Organizational Learning Capacity and Its Impact on the Results in a Government Agency in Chile

ABSTRACT

Rising demand for quality, efficiency, and openness in the management of collective problems and their solutions has prompted successful government agencies to consider knowledge as a key resource. Government agencies make intensive use of human capital and knowledge in the performance of their duties. Knowledge represents the most important strategic resource, and its skillful management is a key capability in institutional performance. Using structural equation modeling, we analyze the relationship between the learning capability of an organizational system, characterized by the dynamic interaction of stocks and flows of knowledge, and its impact on performance. Our results support the view that learning capability, especially knowledge flows and stocks, has a positive impact on the performance of public institutions.     

长荣汽贸人力资源管理实践对组织绩效影响研究

面对激烈的外部竞争环境,人才的管理逐渐引起了企业的广泛关注。利用长荣汽贸公司2008—2013年的数据,实证检验了人力资源管理实践对企业绩效的影响。研究结果表明,人力资源管理中只有部分实践对绩效有显著影响,并且不同的实践对财务绩效和非财务绩效的影响程度不同,其中员工培训对组织绩效的影响最大。此外,人力资源管理实践系统对财务绩效的影响程度大于其对非财务绩效的影响程度。     

Does Familiarity Breed Contempt? The Impact of Information on Mass Attitudes toward Congress

Two features of citizen response to Congress can be taken as grounds for concern. First, Americans know relatively little about Congress, and especially about congressional procedures and policy output. Second, Congress typically emerges as the least respected political institution. Although these matters are troubling when viewed individually, more disturbing is the dilemma posed when knowledge and attitudes toward Congress are viewed in tandem. It appears that citizens who know Congress the best like Congress the least. Consequently, a sophisticated polity and a well-respected legislature seem fundamentally incompatible. This article seeks to resolve this dilemma, contending that there is nothing about knowledge per se that leads citizens to view Congress unfavorably. Rather, differences in knowledge levels alter the considerations citizens bring to bear when evaluating Congress, with the best-informed individuals constructing judgments on the basis of the most relevant Congress-specific criteria while less knowledgeable citizens employ readily available but more peripheral criteria.     

Integration of Integrity Information into Performance Evaluation: The Impact on Korean Public Enterprises

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes Korean public enterprises that have integrated integrity information within their performance evaluations. Performance and integrity often tend to be separately managed because they are regarded as mutually exclusive. In the Korean case, some public enterprises had expected that the integration of performance and integrity management would not produce significant changes, mainly because of the lack of direct incentives and the light weight (3%) given to integrity in performance evaluation. However, this article shows a positive correlation between performance and integrity. Moreover, we can observe an improvement in integrity following the integration of integrity information into performance evaluation. Such a change was possible not only because of financial incentives, but also because of the increasing attention CEOs placed on integrity management, which made it easier for public enterprises to institutionalize their own ethical management policies. At the same time, competition amongst public enterprises over performance scores expedited the diffusion of innovative integrity policies.     

The National Governance and Policy Context of Social Impact Bond Emergence: A Comparative Analysis of Leaders and Skeptics

Abstract

Proponents of the Social Impact Bond (SIB) model put forward a value-for-money case for SIBs based on new resources, efficiency enhancements and innovation for social service delivery, suggesting broad potential for SIB uptake in varying national contexts. SIB use has however been concentrated in Anglo-Saxon liberal market economies. This paper analyses the possibility that SIBs are proceeding given their alignment with particular governance and policy regimes, as opposed to any universal superiority from a cost-effectiveness or efficiency perspective. A comparative analysis is undertaken of the United Kingdom and the United States, leaders in SIB implementation, with France and Germany. A range of indicators representing the adoption of neoliberal governance approaches are reviewed and linked to their complementarity with the SIB model. Policy implications for SIB governance are then explored.     

The Context of Priming

The existence of priming (i.e. the fact that the standards people use to make political evaluations shift in response to changes in media coverage of political issues) has become generally accepted. However, most of the evidence for the priming mechanism comes from experiments or analyses of certain specific events. This article presents evidence of priming from a longitudinal study of the Danish population's evaluation of the Danish government. The study consists of 12 measurements over four years from 1999 to 2003. The analysis indicates that priming effects are often moderated by political knowledge, but that the effect changes from case to case. The article shows that both the overall priming effects and the effect of the moderator are contingent on the political context of the priming situation. Important aspects of the moderating context are message intensity, the easiness of the issue, the politicisation of the issue, the assessment of the government's issue responsibility and the timing of the evaluation.