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.