Strategic Management and Performance in Public Organizations: Findings from the Miles and Snow Framework

This article integrates the research evidence that applies Miles and Snow's strategic management framework to the performance of public agencies. Miles and Snow developed several strategy types, arguing that prospectors (searching for new approaches) and defenders (sticking with the existing pattern of services) are aligned with processes, structures, and the environment in ways that lead them to outperform reactors (awaiting for instructions from the environment), which have no consistent strategy or alignment. Six key lessons for the practice of strategic management in public organizations are provided based on a critical review. Findings point toward the importance of employing a mix of strategies in public organizations, contrary to Miles and Snow—a strong evidence base for the association between prospecting and defending and performance and for relationships between strategy types and processes and structures. However, no empirical evidence is provided for alignment across strategy, structure, process, and the environment. The findings, largely derived from the United Kingdom and United States, suggest that the most successful strategy recipe depends on the ingredients, and thus managers must pay attention to the connections between the outlined contingencies to generate the best results using the adopted strategy.     

Book reviews

Par le Peuple, Pour le Peuple: le populisme et les démocraties. By Yves Mény and Yves Surel. Paris: Editions Fayard 2000. Pp.312 + biblio. FF140 (paper) ISBN 2–213–60077–5.

I Confini dell'Odio: il nacionalismo etnico e la nuova destra europea. By Bruno Luvera’. Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1999. Pp.xiii + 151, index, biblio. 10 euros (paper) ISBN 88–359–4760‐X.

Il Dottor H.: Haider e la nuova destra europea. By Bruno Luvera’. Roma: Einaudi 2000. Pp.194 + biblio. 10 euros (paper), ISBN 88–06–15597–0.

A Virtuous Circle. Political Communications in Postindustrial Societies. By Pippa Norris. New York: Cambridge University Press 2000. Pp.xvii + 398, 54 tables, 38 figures, biblio, index. £40 (cloth) ISBN 0–521–79015–8; £14.95 (paper) ISBN 0–521–79364–5.

Democracy and the Media: A Comparative Perspective. Edited by R. Gunther and A. Mughan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2000. Pp.496. £55 (cloth) ISBN 0–521–77180–3; £19.95 (paper) ISBN 0–521–77743–7.

Coalition Governments in Western Europe. Edited by Wolfgang C. Müller and Kaare Str?m. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2000. Pp.xvi + 602, biblio, index. £55 (cloth) ISBN 0–19–829760–2.

The Political Mobilization of the European Left, 1860–1980: The Class Cleavage. By Stefano Bartolini. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2000. Pp.xxiv + 637, 100 tables, 41 figures, biblio, index. £45 (cloth) ISBN 0–521–65021–6.

Social Democracy and the Challenge of European Union. By Robert Ladrech. London: Lynne Rienner 2000. Pp.xiv + 165, biblio, index. £37.50 (cloth) ISBN 1–55587–902–0.

Europe in Change ‐ Committee Governance in the European Union. Edited by Thomas Christiansen and Emil Kirchner. Manchester: Manchester University Press 2000. Pp.199. £40 (cloth) ISBN 0–7190–5552–0.

Rethinking European Order: West European Responses, 1989–97. Edited by Robin Niblett and William Wallace. Basingstoke: Palgrave 2001. Pp.xiv + 298, 2 maps, index. £50 (cloth) ISBN 0–333–91571–2.

Franco‐German Relations. By Alistair Cole. Edinburgh: Pearson 2001. Pp.178, biblio, index. £14.99 (paper) ISBN 0–582–31997–8.

Environmental Transitions: Transformation and Ecological Defence in Central and Eastern Europe. Edited by P. Pavlínek and J. Pickles. London: Routledge 2000. Pp.xxii + 362, 22 plates, 39 figures, 19 maps, 56 tables, biblio, index. £70.26 (cloth) ISBN 0–415–16268–8; £22.99 (paper) ISBN 0–415–16269–6.

Ethnicity and Globalization. By Stephen Castles. London: Sage 2000. Pp.xii + 228, biblio, index. £47.50 (cloth) ISBN 0–7619–5611–5; £16.99 (paper) ISBN 0–7619–5612–3.

A Not‐So‐Dismal Science: A Broader View of Economies and Societies. Edited by M. Olson and S. Kakhonen. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2000. Pp.x + 274, biblio, index. £14.99 (paper) ISBN 0–19–829490–5.     

Patrimonial Economic Voting: Legislative Elections in France

Patrimonial economic voting has been neglected in favour of classical economic voting studies. This assertion holds less, however, with French election investigations, where the neglect is relative rather than absolute. Whereas classical economic voting holds the economy to be a valence issue, patrimonial economic voting regards the economy as a positional issue. Voters who own more property, in particular high-risk assets, are held to be more right-wing in their political preferences. This patrimonial effect shows itself to be statistically and substantively strong in one of the few election data-sets with sufficient measures available – surveys on the National Assembly contests of 1978, 1988, 2002. The electoral effect exceeds that from the traditional ‘heavy variables’ of class and income. Moreover, further work might show its impact comparable to that of classic sociotropic retrospective evaluations of the national economy. Certainly a case can be made for further study of patrimonial economic voting, as compared to classical economic voting.     

Beyond committees: parliamentary oversight of coalition government in Britain

Abstract

A legislature’s ability to engage in oversight of the executive is believed to derive largely from its committee system. For example, powerful parliamentary committees are considered a necessary condition for the legislature to help police policy compromises between parties in multiparty government. But can other parliamentary instruments perform this role? This article suggests parliamentary questions as an alternative parliamentary vehicle for coalition parties to monitor their partners. Questions force ministers to reveal information concerning their legislative and extra-legislative activities, providing coalition members unique insights into their partners’ behaviour. In order to test our argument, we build and analyse a new dataset of parliamentary questions in the British House of Commons covering the 2010?2015 coalition. As expected, government MPs ask more questions as the divisiveness of a policy area increases. Legislatures conventionally considered weak due to the lack of strong committees may nevertheless play an important oversight role through other parliamentary devices, including helping to police the implementation of coalition agreements.     

Correct Voting in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Nominating Elections

Criticisms of the system by which the American political parties select their candidates focus on issues of representativeness—how choices are dominated by relatively small numbers of ideologically extreme primary voters, or how residents of small states voting early in the process have disproportionate influence. This paper adds a different concern, albeit one that still addresses representativeness. How well do primary and caucus voters represent their own values and interests with their vote choices? Lau and Redlawsk’s notion of “correct voting” is applied to the 2008 U.S. nominating contests. Four reasons to expect levels of correct voting to be lower in caucus and primary elections than in general election campaigns are discussed. Results suggest that voters in U.S. nominating contests do much worse than voters in general election campaigns, often barely doing better than chance in selecting the candidate who best represents their own values and priorities. Discussion focuses on institutional reforms that should improve citizens’ ability to make correct voting choices in caucuses and primaries.     

Politicized Science

Publication of the study, How Different are the Adult Children of Parents Who Have Same-Sex Relationships? Findings from the New Family Structures Study (Regnerus, 2012), caused a firestorm in the scientific community. Unlike previous studies, it found differences between the children raised by parents who had experienced a same-sex relationship as compared to those raised by heterosexual parents. Most would acknowledge that policy-relevant social science is seldom value free and frequently gets politicized, but the Regnerus controversy illustrates that it is value dependent, with scientist deeply embedded in its politicization. The kind if science that gets conducted, how findings are interpreted and received, and the degree of critical scrutiny such studies receive is dependent upon scientists’ sociopolitical views. Making every effort to apply the same standards when scrutinizing studies that provide politically palatable results as those that do not, and promoting rather than discouraging ideological diversity among researchers and their funders, are the best way to ensure value-pluralism and the integrity of science in the oft-politicized field of social science.     

Englishmen in New York: The SIS American Station, 1915-21

This article examines the organization, personnel and selected operations of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) in New York during and immediately after the First World War. Under the leadership of Sir William Wiseman, SIS agents successfully combated German intrigues as well as Irish and Indian nationalists. The greatest challenges, however, were managing the shifting relationship with American authorities and the encroachments of rival British agencies such as MI5. The roles of Guy Gaunt, Robert Nathan and Norman Thwaites are given particular attention.     

What the Intelligence Community Got Right About Iraq

Although widely criticized for inaccurate estimates of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in 2002, the United States Intelligence Community was far more prescient about the likely consequences of a military campaign to remove Saddam Hussein. Intelligence assessments of the challenges likely to be faced by a post-war Iraq were widely disseminated within the Executive Branch and Congress and may have served to justify the Bush Administration's decision to undertake extensive reconstruction efforts rather than to turn power over at once to Iraqi leaders.