Organizational Red Tape: A Measurement Experiment

M. K. Feeney

doi:10.1093/jopart/mus002

Abstract

Multiple public administration survey research projects have asked respondents to assess the level of red tape in their organizations. Many of these surveys use the following questionnaire item: “If red tape is defined as ‘burdensome rules and procedures that have negative effects on the organization’s effectiveness,’ how would you assess the level of red tape in your organization?” Unfortunately, no research has tested the ways in which the language used in this item may bias responses. This research uses data from a 2010 national survey of 2,500 local government managers in the United States to test three variations of the Organizational Red Tape scale, investigating whether there is variation in perceived organizational red tape based on the question wording. The findings from this research contribute to the red tape literature by providing empirical evidence that the definition used in the Organizational Red Tape scale, a commonly used questionnaire item in public administration research, influences responses about red tape perceptions.

Highlights

As noted in other places (Bozeman and Feeney 2011; Pandey and Scott 2002) there is an abundance of empirical red tape research investigating the ways in which managers perceive red tape and how those perceptions are related to job satisfaction, organizational commitment, public service motivation, and performance
As with other areas of public administration research, there are a number of weaknesses with the empirical red tape research including an overreliance on self-administered surveys (Houston and Delevan 1990; Wright, Manigault, and Black 2004), a dearth of research testing the reliability and validity of measures, and simplistic research designs and methods (Gill and Meier 2000; Houston and Delevan 1990, 1991, 1994; McCurdy and Cleary 1984; Meier 2005)
Researchers have used a variety of items to capture different types of red tape including personnel, communication, internal, external, budgeting, and information services red tape (Brewer and Walker 2010a, 2010b; Coursey and Pandey 2007; DeHart-Davis and Pandey 2005), they continue to use the following item as a global measure of organizational red tape: ‘‘If red tape is defined as ‘burdensome rules and procedures that have negative effects on the organization’s effectiveness,’ how would you assess the level of red tape in your organization?’’ On one hand, because many researchers have used this item, the questionnaire item has face validity

Summary

Introduction

As noted in other places (Bozeman and Feeney 2011; Pandey and Scott 2002) there is an abundance of empirical red tape research investigating the ways in which managers perceive red tape and how those perceptions are related to job satisfaction, organizational commitment, public service motivation, and performance. The present analysis investigates the ways in which the four red tape items are related to the following individual managerial perceptions: public service motivation, job satisfaction, centralization, and personnel flexibility and the following organizational and individual characteristics: city size, department type /function, organizational size, respondent gender, age, race, education level, and job tenure.

Results

Conclusion