The environmental determinants of diversity management: Competition,collaboration and clients

Diversity management has received considerable attention in public management research. Most existing research, however, analyses the effects rather than the determinants of diversity management. Using panel data on American hospitals from 2008 to 2011, we probe how market competition, inter‐organizational collaboration and clientele diversity affect diversity management adoption. We find that all three environmental factors increase diversity management adoption. Hospitals in competitive markets are more likely to adopt diversity management strategies when they engage in extensive service collaboration and serve a diverse population. Monopolies in less collaborative environments lag behind in adopting diversity management, especially when they serve ethnically homogenous populations. Our findings broaden understandings about what drives diversity management practices and add to the literature on the external contingency of managerial practice.     

CAN PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT FOSTER SOCIAL EQUITY? STAKEHOLDER POWER,PROTECTIVE INSTITUTIONS,AND MINORITY REPRESENTATION

Performance management has been criticized for harming or, at best, ignoring social equity outcomes. While there is evidence suggesting that performance management fosters an emphasis on efficiency and effectiveness at the expense of other public values, we are still in search of a theory linking performance management to social equity. The article takes a first step towards the development of such a theory and proposes the importance of contingency factors. It argues that managerial performance information use will benefit disadvantaged groups in the presence of powerful stakeholders, protective institutions, and minority representation in government. Using data on school districts in Texas, the article finds support for the first two contingency factors but not the third one. Performance information use by superintendents increases test scores of disadvantaged students if these students make up a sizeable, powerful group, and if superintendents put emphasis on complying with the No Child Left Behind Act.     

ADMINISTRATIVE THEORY IN THE 1980s: A VIEWPOINT

The last fifteen years or so saw a flourish and then the surprising collapse of implementation process theory and contingency theory. Despite the enormous popular (and international) impact of privatization in these years, there was oddly little British administrative research in that area, although other aspects of‘the Thatcherite Revolution’, especially‘the new public management’, cultural change, and the divestment of executive work by Whitehall departments, were well covered. Growth points were informational logic theory and institutional analysis, though British development of cultural theory was somewhat lacking. Emphasis which shifted from‘public administration’to‘public management’may shift again in the coming decade, to‘governance’.     

Making good on donors’ desire to Do Development Differently

Foreign aid donors are increasingly focused on changing the way their development agencies function. This discourse has focused on desired qualities, including greater knowledge of local contextual realities, appropriate adaptation to context and greater flexibility to respond to changing circumstances. We argue that more attention needs to be devoted to the achievement of these qualities and turn to contingency theory to identify some under-exploited ways to ‘do development differently’. The qualities sought by donors are emergent properties of complex organisational systems and will only be achieved through a micro-level and interlinked focus on the fundamentals of organisation.     

Organisational culture and strategic change in Australian local governments

This study examines the impact of organisational culture on strategic change in local governments in Australia. The findings indicate that strategic change is affected by two organisational culture factors, innovation and attention to detail. This study contributes to the management accounting contingency literature and the public management literature by providing an insight into the role of organisational culture as a contingency factor influencing strategic change. Such findings may be used by local government managers to enact change effectively.     

DESIGNING CONTRACTS FOR COMPLEX SERVICES

In this article, we employ transaction cost economics and the contingency stream of organization theory to answer two related questions. First, when contracting for complex services, do governments design contracts for flexibility? Second, is the contingency perspective relevant to understanding contract design? Examining 130 professional service contracts awarded by state government agencies in the USA, we find that task complexity and task unpredictability, two dimensions of task uncertainty, increase the probability of flexible governance. This research highlights for managers the important fact that the potential for opportunism and task complexity are different sources of uncertainty that pose different challenges and call for different governance solutions. The study enriches our understanding of transaction costs by probing the conditions under which task uncertainty matters most (and least), and further shows the utility of integrating transaction cost economics with contingency theory to better understand contract governance.     

Parliaments in Disguise? How German Councillors perceive Local Councils

Dominant narratives of neighbourhood working in the United Kingdom accentuate the diversity and ‘messiness’ of practices across local authorities. This paper questions such narratives. Drawing upon a study of 15 local authorities, we first argue that neighbourhood working is increasingly oriented towards neighbourhood management, privileging the ‘joining up’ of mainstream service delivery over the enhanced community engagement and political accountability more associated with the practices of neighbourhood governance. Deploying Lowndes and Sullivan's four rationales of neighbourhood working (2008), in combination with Mintzberg's metaphor of organisation as ‘structure in fives’ (1983), we suggest that the practices of neighbourhood working are currently best understood in terms of Mintzberg's decentralised divisional authority as a form of constrained decentralisation in which semi-autonomous divisions are brought together under a central administration and given limited control over service delivery in order to address the social and economic rationales for neighbourhood working. We then draw upon recent neo-liberal critiques of local governance to offer a critical evaluation of both the appeal for local officers and politicians of neighbourhood management and the potential tensions and contradictions of such a move for future policy and practice. We conclude that neighbourhood management as a neo-liberal ‘roll-out’ strategy may be self-defeating, surfacing the incapacity of local authorities to respond to local community expectations and grievances, whilst exposing the organisational constraints of partnership working, managerialism and outsourcing.     

INTRODUCTION: DETERMINANTS OF PERFORMANCE IN PUBLIC ORGANIZATIONS

The performance of public organizations is one of the key topics in public administration research and practice. This topic was examined at the 'The Determinants of Performance in Public Organizations II' conference held at the University of Hong Kong in December 2006. The conference was held in association with the Public Management Research Association . In the present symposium we introduce four of the articles presented at conference. The articles explore: network performance (Kenis and Provan), goal ambiguity (Lee et al .), environmental shocks (Meier and O'Toole), and diversity (Pitts and Jarry). Alongside this we spotlight the importance of this field and introduce three research themes—contingency theory, measurement and data, and analysis.     

Regionalism and African agency: negotiating an Economic Partnership Agreement between the European Union and SADC-Minus

This article investigates the regional dynamics of African agency in the case of negotiations on an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between the EU and a group of Southern African countries, known as SADC-Minus. I argue that these negotiations were shaped by a pattern of differentiated responses to the choice set on offer under the EPAs by SADC-Minus policy makers and by a series of strategic interactions and power plays between them. I offer two contributions to an emerging literature on the role of African agency in international politics. First, I argue for a clear separation between ontological claims about the structure–agency relationship and empirical questions about the preferences, strategies and influence of African actors. Second, I suggest that, in order to understand the regional dynamics of African agency, it is important to pay close attention to the diversity and contingency of African preferences and to the role of both power politics and rhetorical contestation in regional political processes.     

How Does Sustainability-Oriented Human Resource Management Work?: Examining Mediators on Organizational Performance

This study proposes a path model with a set of intermediary outcomes, namely, teamwork, employee satisfaction, and work motivation, to explain how the practices of sustainability-oriented HRM affect organizational performance. The analysis of 2015 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey reveals that the three practices of sustainable management identified from the literature had indirect effects on organizational performance through a complex interaction among the three intermediate outcomes. In addition, it is found that diversity program has a negative total effect on performance. These findings imply that organizational justice and work/life balance program will lead to an increase in performance by strengthening the backbone of organization. Additionally, conducting the diversity programs for achieving democratic values may entail the cost of diminishing organizational performance probably in the short run.     

Process Management as a Contagious Idea: A Contribution to Røvik's Virus-Inspired Theory

‘Travelling ideas’ denotes the fact that virtually identical management ideas crop up more or less simultaneously in similar organizations. Røvik, who recently launched his ‘virus-inspired theory’ approach, seeks to pinpoint the possibility that the encounter between idea and practice may be lasting, ideas may affect practice, and leaders in organisations may play a more active role than the one often depicted in management fashion theory. This article is a contribution to his virus-inspired theory. It focuses on processes in their pragmatic form, as value-creating flows in organisations. We have studied Process Management (PM) as an idea, and how it has penetrated and flourished in the Swedish Customs Service. We argue that the empirical test in this article supports Røvik's belief that a virus-inspired theory gives a richer picture than the fashion theory. Through our analysis we show that four of our six hypotheses, derived from the virus-inspired theory, are strengthened by the empirical story from the Customs Service.     

MANAGERIAL STRATEGIES IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT

The organizational arrangements of local authorities are known to vary. Explanations of the variation observed have usually been set within the contingency theory perspective. The present paper utilizes a different approach, examining how far structural variations are a consequence of differences in strategic style. The concept of strategic style is discussed and applied to data from English local authorities. Results indicate that strategic style does influence local authority structural arrangements.     

Archetype Transition in the German Health Service? The Attempted Modernization of Hospitals in a North German State

In this paper, we argue that, rather than aiming at universal contingency relationships, archetype theory needs to go down a path where 'local variants' can be discovered and understood by relating them to their organizational and institutional context(s). The case study of a public sector hospital group in a North German state (Hamburg) is drawn on here to elaborate the argument. We found evidence for a change from a Public Sector hospital archetype to a Public Hospital Corporation archetype. Drawing on this model permits us to explore the impact of the introduction of new forms of public management organization and the implications the managerial ideology underpinning this may have for the professional organization. The study explores the consequences of the innovations for professional/managerial relations. We also suggest that the 'archetype' approach may be particularly useful for the comparative study of organizations. This is particularly pertinent given the different – corporatist – organization of the German health care system and its different approach to public sector reform to that of the Anglo-American and Scandinavian systems where the 'archetypal' approach has so far been applied.     

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.     

Terror Politics and Medicine: The Role of Leadership

The ongoing intensive wave of terror assaults against Israel is already approaching its fourth year. The endurance of the Israeli population to this hardship can be attributed, to a certain extent, to proficient leadership. Directing a tertiary university hospital, such as Hadassah, throughout this dire period has required distinctive leadership capabilities. Problems such as staff management during crisis, security, provision of information to the public and media, coping with the clinical routine, teaching and research activities and handling the economic burden, were all aspects of hospital administration that had to be taken care of. We believe that the core issue of medical management in time of terror attacks is establishing the right balance between the specific and peacetime routine. The measures taken to deal with these difficulties can serve as a model of contingency management in the field of medicine as well as other areas.‐     

Governance and Interpretation: What are the Implications of Postfoundationalism?

Interpretive approaches to governance include poststructuralism, constructivist institutionalism, practical philosophy and democratic pluralism. All of these interpretive approaches share a focus on meanings, sympathy for bottom-up studies and an emphasis on contingency. All of them also confront theoretical issues that have arisen from the postfoundational turn within philosophy: they face questions about the nature of the meanings we study, the possibilities for recentring given an emphasis on diversity and the normative and policy implications of their approach. Although poststructuralists have made the running in addressing these questions, their answers are ambiguous or even misleading: they often appear, in particular, mistakenly to renounce situated agency along with autonomy. This essay seeks to provide alternative answers to these theoretical questions and thereby to provide a more robust theoretical framework for interpretive approaches to governance.     

Action research in mental health: acute care teams

Action research applies knowledge and research findings to practical problems in order to strengthen the capability of the work unit, to contribute to the personal growth and satisfaction of organization members, and to improve theory. An action research project studying acute care teams at a state residential psychiatric facility found that foreign-born physicians chair high-performing teams. This unexpected result strengthens theories of diversity, status inconsistency, and project team effectiveness.     

The role of imprinting on the adoption of diversity management in German universities

This study questions the universal effect of organizational imprinting and argues that the relevance of the imprint differs across organizations' administrative levels. Specifically, this study analyses how institutional founding conditions affect the adoption of diversity management, as a method of responding to increasing institutional pressure to conform to a logic of inclusion and equality in institutions of higher education. Focusing on 112 universities in Germany, results show that the imprint does not affect the adoption of diversity management in general but does so at higher administrative levels. Through a discussion of these findings, this study contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of how imprinting affects organizations. Further, it contributes to a better understanding of factors that influence the diffusion of diversity management in universities.     

Innovation in Public Management: Is Public E-Procurement a Wave of the Future? A Theoretical and Exploratory Analysis

Project management has become an answer to many traditional organizational structuration and performance shortcomings, while gaining currency in business and public sector organizations. Public procurement systems have evolved into public electronic procurement systems with variations and distinctions in the age of globalization and digitalized complexities. This article examines the development of public e-procurement as an innovation in public management in the contexts of project management, public procurement management, and e-governance. It also links practice to theory—through a fourfold theoretical perspective—with contributions to the knowledge in public procurement, governance, and public administration.     

Contract Management from the Perspectives of Bureaucrats and Contractors: A Case Study of Hong Kong

New Public Management (NPM) encourages private sector participation in the provision and delivery of public services through outsourcing. Bureaucrats and contractors assess the values, processes, and outcomes of contract management differently. This study adopts transaction cost economics (TCE), the resource-based view (RBV), and the principal–agent theory to analyze Hong Kong bureaucrats’ and contractors’ views on contract management. It finds that both groups are critical of the existing contract management system in Hong Kong. The study shows that the government’s neglect of the risks is causing transaction costs because it lacks a proper monitoring mechanism, two-way communication channels, and appropriate training, and because of contract complications and issues of accountability. There is insufficient proof to assert that the government purposefully conceals these risks, but they are not properly addressed.