Prosocial Values and Performance Management Theory: Linking Perceived Social Impact and Performance Information Use

Performance management techniques are presented as control mechanisms to save money and hold bureaucrats accountable, consistent with negative agency theory assumptions of bureaucrats. We propose an alternative theory of performance management that rests on prosocial values. This theory argues that public servants who see the social impact of their work are more likely to use performance metrics. We operationalize performance information use in terms of purposeful use for internal organizational means, and political use for external legitimation. Those who perceive that their work has a strong social impact are likely to pursue both types of uses, to improve both the effectiveness of their services, and to maintain resources. The data come from a cross‐sectional survey of U.S. public and nonprofit employees.     

Soviet Piracy of U.S High-Tech Secrets

The explosive expansion of high technology internationally threatens the United States with a nettlesome problem now and in the decade to come. The Soviet Union has increased its espionage to steal high-tech secrets in order to increase its military strength while bolstering a shaky economy. A major national concern is how to protect national security without damaging research and development of new technologies. This paper examines the motivations of the Soviets, current U.S. efforts to combat this threat, and some measures to deal with illegal technology transfers.     

A THEORY OF CULTURE‐SWITCHING: LEADERSHIP AND RED‐TAPE DURING HURRICANE KATRINA

This article draws upon studies of organizational culture and sense‐making to develop a theory of culture‐switching. Culture‐switching occurs when organizational actors shift emphasis from one existing organizational cultural assumption to another to reshape organizational action. The concept is demonstrated in a case study of the Hurricane Katrina response by the US Department of Defense (DOD). A slow initial DOD response arose because of self‐imposed red‐tape designed to limit engagement in crisis response, reflecting a cultural assumption of the need to maintain autonomy. DOD leaders altered the nature of the response by committing to another widely‐shared cultural assumption: a ‘can‐do’ approach to achieving difficult goals regardless of obstacles. The case illustrates how different organizational cultural assumptions interact with red tape to foster either inertia or a proactive response.     

Extra‐Network Organizational Reputation and Blame Avoidance in Networks: The Hurricane Katrina Example

Research on public service networks has identified a variety of mechanisms to foster coordination, including trust and reciprocity norms. This article argues that network actors are also driven by a desire to avoid blame. Network membership is often a political responsibility rather than a voluntary act, and members may be at least as attuned to their extra‐network organizational reputation as to their intra‐network reputation, creating an incentive to utilize blame avoidance strategies when failure occurs. Blame avoidance strategies undermine intra‐network trust and coordination, representing a significant threat to the implementation of public policy. To illustrate the potential of the concept for network theory, blame avoidance strategies are identified under the conditions of high political risk and task salience, as represented by the crisis response network in the U.S. disaster of Hurricane Katrina.     

Homeland Security and the U.S. Public Management Policy Agenda

The U.S. has been described as an "uninteresting laggard" in comparative public management policy. The passage of the Homeland Security Act in 2002 demands a reevaluation of this label. The Act created the Department of Homeland Security, but also marked a dramatic shift toward greater public personnel flexibility, both for the new Department and the entire federal government. It is tempting to suggest that the Act is an effort to "catch up" with the New Public Management benchmark countries. However, such an argument is overly simplistic and misleading. This article argues that the Act represents a triumph of a preexisting management agenda that was successfully tied to the issue of security during a political window of opportunity. The management agenda of the Bush administration pursues many of the concerns of the Clinton era, but does so with a more top-down and centralized interpretation of flexibility, reflecting an executive-centered philosophy toward government and a willingness to tackle the dominant stakeholder in this area, public service unions.     

THE CONTAGIOUS NATURE OF ANTISOCIAL BEHAVIOR

Attention is called to several recently advanced lines of evidence underscoring the role of contagion in antisocial behavior. One line of evidence consists of findings that the onset of antisocial behavior in one sibling increases the risk to other siblings. A second line of evidence shows that the tendency of monozygotic twins to be more concordant for antisocial behavior than dizygotic twins can be explained by contagion as well as heredity. In addition, there are differences in prevalence between same-sexed and opposite-sexed twins that contagion can explain, but heredity cannot, at least not without numerous ad hoc auxiliary suppositions. Third, behavioral contagion is also able to explain, and very precisely, the temporal course of aggregate delinquency through adolescence. Fourth, evidence has been presented that antisocial behavior is an equilibrial phenomenon, that is, that it depends on a balance between antisocial and prosocial forces, a balance (or imbalance) that would explain the sudden leaps and falls that crime statistics sometimes take. Finally, programs to combat drug use are often modestly successful and almost all such programs presuppose that drug use is contagious. The paper closes with two sections on the implications of these findings, first for theory and research and then for policy and practice.