Introducing the "determinants of performance in public organizations" symposium

George A. Boyne, Richard M. Walker

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

37 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The performance of public organizations has become a topic of great interest to scholars and practitioners of public management around the globe. This interest stems from theoretical and methodological puzzles posed by organizational performance. This is not just an academic endeavor—the desire of politicians to improve public services has become more important over recent years. In the United Kingdom the Labour government has published and implemented a Public Service Improvement strategy (Office of Public Service Reform 2002), while the U.S. federal government's National Performance Review and Government Performance Results Act 1993 from the Clinton administration through to George W. Bush's President's Management Agenda have sought higher levels of performance from government. Recently, the Chinese government has published an index of measures to evaluate the performance of Chinese cities (China Daily 2004). The interest in performance also reflects the need for public organizations to cope with emergency events, such as the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the health epidemics of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome and bird flu in the Far East, and the tsunami that swept across the Indian Ocean at Christmas 2004.

Research on the performance of public organizations has typically emphasized the external environment: public agencies are seen as trapped by their socioeconomic contexts and the rule of administration and law. Empirical evidence supports this contention and indicates that the external context constrains the performance of public agencies (Andrews et al. forthcoming). However, an approach based solely upon the external environment is misplaced. A growing number of studies show that management does indeed matter (Andrews, Boyne, and Walker forthcoming; Boyne 2004; Brewer and Selden 2000; Meier and O'Toole 2002; Nicholson-Crotty and O'Toole 2004; O'Toole and Meier 2003).

While the number of studies on the organizational and managerial determinants of performance in public agencies is growing, the total number of studies remains limited (Boyne 2003), with the largest single body of evidence focused on school districts in Texas. Consequently, many issues remain to be addressed about how public management variables are related to organizational performance, the relative merits of different managerial strategies in different situations, and the best ways to conceptualize and measure performance.

These concerns formed the background to a seminar organized at Cardiff University in May 2004. The seminar was sponsored by the Advanced Institute of Management Research (http://www.aimresearch.org) and the Public Management Research Association (http://www.pmranet.org). The Advanced Institute of Management Research (AIM) is a £17 million flagship initiative that was launched in 2003 by the U.K. Economic and Social Research Council and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. AIM seeks to build capacity for effective management research that addresses academic, business, public service, and policy audiences. AIM has four objectives:

to conduct research that will identify actions to enhance the United Kingdom's international competitiveness,

to raise the scientific quality and international standing of U.K. research on management,

to expand the size and capacity of the active base for U.K. research on management,

and to develop the engagement of that capacity with world-class research outside the United Kingdom and with practitioners as coproducers of knowledge about management and other users of research within the United Kingdom.

The public services formed one theme within the AIM rubric. A dozen AIM research fellows were appointed to work on the public services. These fellows, as a group, have undertaken systematic reviews of existing work and new theoretical and empirical research. The fellows have also laid out research agendas in their areas of work and identified capacity-building requirements in the U.K. social science community. This symposium is edited by two of those fellows: George A. Boyne, whose work focused on public service failure and turnaround, and Richard M. Walker, who examined the relationship between innovation and organizational performance.

The AIM seminar at Cardiff University was cosponsored by the Public Management Research Association (PMRA), which is a nonprofit academic membership association that has grown out of the biannual U.S.-based series of public management research conferences. PMRA seeks to further research on public organizations and their management and serve as a voice for the public management research community. The event marked PMRA's first foray overseas as it seeks to internationalize its networks and membership and to nurture theory building and systematic testing of theory consistent with the canons of social science, using the full range of quantitative and qualitative methodologies in public management.

Fifteen papers were delivered over the two-day event that was held May 6–8, 2004, in the Glamorgan Building at Cardiff University. The papers, listed alphabetically by author, are as follows:

Rhys Andrews (Cardiff University), George A. Boyne (Cardiff University), Kenneth J. Meier (Texas A&M University and Cardiff University), Laurence J. O'Toole Jr. (University of Georgia), and Richard M. Walker (University of Hong Kong and Cardiff University), “Diversity and Organizational Performance: An Empirical Analysis”

Gene A. Brewer (University of Georgia), “In the Eye of the Storm: Frontline Supervisors and Federal Agency Performance”

Yousek Choi and Carolyn J. Heinrich (University of Wisconsin–Madison), “Privatization and Performance-Based Contracting in Public Welfare Programs: The Challenge of Promoting Accountable Administration”

Young Han Chun (Chung-Ang University) and Hal G. Rainey (University of Georgia), “Consequences of Goal Ambiguity in Public Organizations”

Ewan Ferlie and Rachael Addicott (University of London–Royal Holloway), “Determinants of Performance in Cancer Networks—A Process Evaluation”

Melissa Forbes and Laurence E. Lynn Jr. (Texas A&M University), “Studying Governance: Are the United States and the Rest of the World in Step?”

Katharina Hauck, Nigel Rice, Peter C. Smith, and Andrew Street (University of York), “Explaining Variations in Health Authority Performance: A Multivariate Hierarchical Modelling Approach”

Carolyn J. Heinrich (University of Wisconsin–Madison) and Carolyn J. Hill (Georgetown University), “How Does Governance Influence Substance Abuse Treatment Strategies? State Policies and Naltrexone Adoption”

Gregory Hill (Texas A&M University), “Long-Term Effects of Managerial Succession: An Application of the Boyne/Dahya Model”

Graeme A. Hodge (Monash University) and Anne Rouse (University of Melbourne), “Outsourcing Government Information Technology Services: An Australian Case Study”

Patrick Kenis (Tilburg University), “Control as a Determinant of Performance in Public Organizations”

Mary O'Mahony (National Institute of Economic and Social Research), “Outcome-Based Measures in International Comparisons of Public Service Provision”

Sanjay K. Pandey (Rutgers University), David H. Coursey (Florida State University), and Donald P. Moynihan (Texas A&M University), “Management Capacity and Organizational Performance: Can Organizational Culture Trump Bureaucratic Red Tape?”

David W. Pitts (University of Georgia), “Diversity, Representation, and Performance: Evidence about Race and Ethnicity in Public Organizations”

Keith G. Provan (University of Arizona), Kimberley Roussin Isett (Texas A&M University), and H. Brinton Milward (University of Arizona), “Cooperation and Compromise: A Network Response to Conflicting Institutional Pressures in Community Mental Health”

The seminar was also attended by other academics and practitioners, including H. George Frederickson (University of Kansas) and Derek Egan (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, England). Not all the papers from the seminar can be printed in one issue of a journal. Seven of the papers now appear in this symposium edition of JPART. The remaining papers will be published in a book edited by Boyne, Meier, O'Toole, and Walker to be published in 2006 by Cambridge University Press.

The first article in this symposium, “Goal Ambiguity and Organizational Performance in U.S. Federal Agencies” by Young Han Chun and Hal G. Rainey, empirically tackles the frequently asserted view that public organizations have high levels of goal ambiguity, which in turn have consequences for their achievements. Four types of goal ambiguity are defined: mission comprehensiveness ambiguity, directive goal ambiguity, evaluative goal ambiguity, and priority goal ambiguity. The impact of these variables on four dimensions of organizational performance is tested: managerial effectiveness, customer service orientation, productivity, and work quality. Data are drawn from the National Partnership for Reinventing Government survey of nearly 51,000 federal employees, of whom 25,814 in thirty-two departments are used in this analysis. The research demonstrates that goal ambiguity has negative consequences for the performance of public agencies.

In the second article, “In the Eye of the Storm: Frontline Supervisors and Federal Agency Performance,” Gene A. Brewer uses data from the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board survey in 2000 to explore the contention that management matters. The survey provides data on the attitudes and behavior of current management and policy issues. The multivariate analysis is conducted on a sample of 2,719 federal government employees in twenty-two agencies. The model draws on individual, management, regulatory, market, organizational, and resource variables. The empirical results point toward the importance of supervisory management, a performance orientation, strong cultures that emphasize work and empower employees, and workforce diversity.

The third and fourth articles examine the seldom studied relationship between representative bureaucracy and organizational performance. Article three, “Representative Bureaucracy, Strategy, and Organizational Performance: An Empirical Analysis of English Local Government” by Rhys Andrews, George A. Boyne, Kenneth J. Meier, Laurence J. O'Toole Jr., and Richard M. Walker, synthesizes models from management, political science, and public administration to explore the complex interactions that occur in public organizations. The authors use data from a multiple informant survey of managers in eighty English upper-tier local governments. They find a negative relationship between citizens' perceptions of the performance of local government and representative bureaucracy. This relationship, however, is mitigated in councils pursuing strategies associated with innovation, environmental scanning, and risk taking. Thus managerial strategies not only have a direct impact on performance but also moderate the impact of other organizational characteristics.

The fourth article, “Diversity, Representation, and Performance: Evidence about Race and Ethnicity in Public Organizations” by David W. Pitts, examines the impact of workforce diversity on performance, drawing on a pooled data set for almost 2,500 cases from the Texan schools data set. The results indicate the complex ways in which diversity and representation affect the performance of public schools. The analysis is undertaken on three measures of formal effectiveness (dropout rate, Texas Assessment of Academic Skills [TAAS] pass rate, and high TAAS scores). The results for the impact of diversity and representation differ across these measures of effectiveness, which illustrates the complex relationships between management and organizational performance.

The fifth article, “Short- and Long-Term Effects of Managerial Succession” by Gregory Hill, provides the first empirical test of a theory of executive succession posited by Boyne and Dahya. The analysis is undertaken on a pooled Texas school district data set of 2,027 cases, with supplementary analysis conducted on a subsample of 542 schools with an executive succession event. The results indicate that short-term negative consequences of succession occur only when a manger is externally hired and that in all cases the long-term effects of managerial change on organizational performance are positive. Indeed, the results show that higher levels of performance are achieved in schools where there is an executive succession event compared with those where no change occurs.

The sixth article, “How Does Public Management Affect Government Performance? Findings from International Research” by Melissa Forbes and Laurence E. Lynn Jr., applies the Hill and Lynn (2004) “logic of governance” analytical framework to literature on public management and government performance that uses international or non-American evidence. The authors' analysis is based upon 193 research articles. Forbes and Lynn note that non-U.S. studies differ, methodologically, from U.S. studies in two ways. Empirical non-U.S. studies favor more linear managerial hypotheses, and there is a greater reliance on qualitative methods. The substantive findings suggest, however, more similarities than differences in public management research between the United States and elsewhere.

The seventh and final article, “Multiple Public Service Performance Indicators: Toward an Integrated Statistical Approach” by Stephen Martin and Peter C. Smith, promotes a new methodological twist for public management scholars. It tackles the problem that many analyses of organizational performance in public organizations include only one performance indicator in a statistical model, thereby overlooking important relationships between different measures. Using the example of public hospitals in the English National Health Service, the authors work through the method of seemingly unrelated regressions (SUR), contrast these findings with those derived from ordinary least squares regression analysis, and find important differences between the results produced by the two methods. The authors recommend the use of SUR in future analyses.

A concluding article is also offered, “Where Next? Research Directions on Performance in Public Organizations.” Rather than looking back to summarize what has already been said by the contributors to this JPART symposium, George A. Boyne, Kenneth J. Meier, Laurence J. O'Toole Jr., and Richard M. Walker look forward to the next stage in the development of research on the performance of public organizations. A research agenda is laid out that focuses upon the further unpacking of the evidence that management matters, explores ways in which the performance of public agencies may be better understood and researched, and considers how our empirical methods might be improved.

We wish to record our thanks to all the participants at the Cardiff seminar and especially to H. George Frederickson for his help in producing the symposium edition of JPART.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)483-488
Number of pages6
JournalJournal of Public Administration Research and Theory
Volume15
Issue number4
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Oct 2005

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
These concerns formed the background to a seminar organized at Cardiff University in May 2004. The seminar was sponsored by the Advanced Institute of Management Research (http://www.aimresearch.org) and the Public Management Research Association (http://www.pmranet.org). The Advanced Institute of Management Research (AIM) is a £17 million flagship initiative that was launched in 2003 by the U.K. Economic and Social Research Council and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. AIM seeks to build capacity for effective management research that addresses academic, business, public service, and policy audiences. AIM has four objectives:

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