Bureaucratic Control Research Articles

Organizational influence systems as a function for strategy building: An applied study in Jordanian economic sectors

The study aims to identify the reasons driving internal and external entrepreneurs to use their power to produce the intended effects in organizations, and how this power affects the methods of building strategies they seek to use, based on Mintzberg’s theoretical assumptions. The research was conducted in 90 large Jordanian companies operating in finance, industry and service sectors. Data were collected from 204 managers using a questionnaire with a high degree of validity and reliability. Analysis and interpretation of the results proved that much of the organizational power held by the head of a company and top management was due to the dominance of the personal, bureaucratic, centralized and formal control systems. As a result, the classical tendency to build strategy in the planning and integrative forms was firmly established, and the participatory and democratic methods in their bargaining and adaptive forms retreated. Based on the results, the researched companies were recommended to design balanced power structures to shift the methods of strategy building from the classical tendency represented by the control of top management and external coalition to the modern tendency represented by integrating workers in democratic ways.

Gridlock, Bureaucratic Control, and Nonstatutory Policymaking in Congress

AbstractIncreasing ideological polarization and dysfunction in Congress raise questions about whether and how Congress remains capable of constraining the activities of other actors in the separation of powers system. In this article, I argue Congress uses nonstatutory policymaking tools to overcome the burdens of legislative gridlock in an increasingly polarized time to constrain executive branch actors. I leverage a new data set of committee reports issued by the House and Senate appropriations committees from fiscal years 1923 through 2019 to empirically explore these dynamics and evaluate my argument. Traditionally, these reports are a primary vehicle through which Congress directs agency policymaking in the appropriations process. Committees increasingly turn to them when passing legislation is most difficult and interbranch agency problems are most pronounced. In this way, nonstatutory mechanisms may help maintain the balance of power across branches, even when Congress faces gridlock‐induced incapacity.

State Formation in Korea and Japan, 400–800 CE: Emulation and Learning, Not Bellicist Competition

AbstractState formation occurred in Korea and Japan 1,000 years before it did in Europe, and it occurred for reasons of emulation and learning, not bellicist competition. State formation in historical East Asia occurred under a hegemonic system in which war was relatively rare, not under a balance-of-power system with regular existential threats. Korea and Japan emerged as states between the fifth and ninth centuries CE and existed for centuries thereafter with centralized bureaucratic control defined over territory and administrative capacity to tax their populations, field large militaries, and provide extensive public goods. They created these institutions not to wage war or suppress revolt: the longevity of dynasties in these countries is evidence of both the peacefulness of their region and their internal stability. Rather, Korea and Japan developed state institutions through emulation and learning from China. The elites of both copied Chinese civilization for reasons of prestige and domestic legitimacy in the competition between the court and the nobility.

Networked Authoritarianism at the Edge

This paper describes how village-level officials, relatively new to the Internet, use popular digital platforms on smartphones to supplement and extend long-standing patterns of information control and authoritarian power in rural Cambodia. They use these tools to monitor local affairs, report to the central government, and promote local government activities, practices which intimidate villagers and encourage their political withdrawal and self-censorship. This paper makes three contributions to the literature on networked authoritarianism and rural governance. First, technological changes currently underway in the Cambodian rural bureaucracy reflect a generational transition, as long-standing officials struggle to use new media easily or effectively, leading to new anxieties and breakdowns for these traditional holders of power. Second, bureaucratic information practices in these villages rely on material practices ranging from paper, face to face meetings, and loudspeakers, to new tools such as Facebook and smartphones - underlining significant continuities in mechanisms of bureaucratic power and control. Third, networked authoritarian practices conjure for villagers the historical links between information control and violence, and the effectiveness of these tactics on chilling speech is often rooted in villagers' memories of fear.

Political and administrative control of expert groups—A mixed‐methods study

AbstractGovernments face a fundamental dilemma when asking expert groups for advice. Experts possess knowledge that can help governments design effective and legitimate policies. However, they can also propose different policies than those preferred by government. How do governments solve this conundrum? Through a mixed‐methods study, the article examines politico‐administrative control with expert advisory commissions in Norway. Arguing that both politicians and bureaucrats can take interest in limiting the gap between political/administrative policy preferences and expert group output, the article examines by what means they seek to control expert groups and how control varies across policy portfolios. It finds that while politicians rely on control by design, bureaucrats use both design and interventions. Moreover, political and bureaucratic controls are stronger in the area of financial/economic policy than elsewhere. The article makes a novel contribution to scholarship at the intersection of public administration and knowledge and policymaking.

Changing and challenging dimensions of principal autonomy in South Australia: A lived experience phenomenological analysis of the courage to care

Abstract This paper employs critical policy historiography of South Australian public education as a contextual backdrop that speaks to a hermeneutic phenomenological study of the lived experiences of two former public-school principals, who describe how their ongoing social justice schooling agendas in public education met with considerable departmental resistance. Both resigned at the peak of their public education careers to pursue their schooling vision in the federally funded independent school system which traditionally catered for the wealthy, elite schools and forms the third tier of the complex funding arrangements of education in Australia that has festered for years under the label “the funding wars” (Ashenden, 2016). Changes to funding arrangements opened up the system and gave the opportunity for our two principals to pursue a public vision in the independent schooling sector, free from what they described as the “shackles” of bureaucratic command and control. The phenomenological essence of their journeyed leadership narratives reveals the courage to care, driving their narrative reflections. They perceived that increasing demands of departmental compliance took them away from being able to pursue a socially just vision with autonomy and freedom. Stepping into the uncertainty of their new independent schooling aspirations, the principals felt professional relief and found real autonomy. We conclude with an exploration of the phenomenological notion of “the courage to care.”

문화행정 의사결정 영향요인에 관한 실증연구: 행정인, 기획인, 예술인 집단 비교분석

This study was motivated by the following question: Which influence factors have a greater impact on workers in Korean cultural administrations when they must decide between reality and imperative ideals? The factors influencing decision making are analyzed by dividing workers into government administrators, support institution administrators, planners, and artists, according to the hierarchy within which the budget is allocated. The main factors are divided into bureaucratic control and the expectations of interested parties, and the study analyzes the factors that are more influential in oughts and reality when they clash. The subfactors of bureaucratic control are divided into the demands of the parent organization, the demands of the heads of ministries (institutions), and the demands of immediate supervisors. The expectations of interested parties can be divided into the following subfactors: those of general customers, professional groups, and internal colleagues. In terms of the analysis method, this study applied the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to 40 participants consisting of N = 10 current participants in each group. The AHP derives the importance of factors by stratifying and structuralizing the decision-making process, dividing factors according to stages, and conducting pairwise comparison among factors. According to the study results, all groups indicated that the bureaucratic control factor has a greater impact on reality. Among the weighted subfactors, the impact was felt most in the following order: demands of the parent organization, demands of the heads of ministries (institutions), and demands of immediate supervisors. On the other hand, among the subfactors of expectations of interested parties, the expectations of general customers had the lowest influence among all groups, except the planner group (fourth place). The variable that should influence decision making with imperative ideals, rather than reality, shows a difference. While government administrators said that bureaucratic control should be more influential but alleviated compared to reality, the other groups said the expectations of interested parties should be better reflected. In terms of subfactors, the artists said the expectations of general customers should have the greatest influence. The support institution administrators said the expectations of professional groups should be reflected first, while government administrators said the demands of the heads of ministries should be reflected first. In particular, support institution administrators, planners, and artists said that the demands of the parent organization should have the least influence. This demonstrates a certain cognitive dissonance, because, in reality, such demands had the greatest influence. Through the analysis of influence factors that affect decision making by participation groups in Korean cultural administrations, this study shows that bureaucratic control, which pursues disorder, rather than the autonomy that is required, operates strongly. Moreover, the expectations of customers are less well reflected than what is thought to be necessary.

Chevron, State Farm, and the Impact of Judicial Doctrine on Bureaucratic Policymaking

We explain how two landmark Supreme Court cases, Motor Vehicles Manufacturers Association of the U.S. v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. (1983) and Chevron U.S.A., Inc., v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. (1984), have constrained congressional and presidential control of the bureaucracy. We provide an overview of these cases, and we note how the dominant theories of bureaucratic policy making in the political science literature fail to account for judicial doctrine in a meaningful way. We illustrate the implications of these cases for recent debates regarding regulatory rollbacks in the Trump administration, and we argue that bureaucratic control over the past forty years has tilted in favor of the judicial branch of American national government.

Social control or bureaucratic control? -The effects of the control mechanisms on the subsidiary performance

This study empirically examined how social control and bureaucratic control would affect the short-term performance of a subsidiary and how these two control mechanisms would interact with each other. Analyzing 907 Taiwanese FDI cases in China from 2011 to 2012 by ordinal logit regression and OLS regression, this study found that social control delivered an inverted sigmoid effect on the subsidiary performance, whereas bureaucratic control yielded an inverted U-shape effect. Furthermore, these two control mechanisms were positioned substitutively in affecting the subsidiary performance. Broadly speaking, this research contributes to the international management literature by providing empirical evidence regarding the effects of different control mechanisms on the short-term performance of a subsidiary. More narrowly, the findings suggest that multinational corporation (MNC) practitioners should strike and maintain an optimal balance between social control and bureaucratic control when governing their subsidiaries.

DIGITAL SOCIETY AS “A SNEER OF HISTORY”

The article examines digital society from a historiosophical point of view using such Hegel’s category as universal world irony. It is stated that the implementation of the Modern project based on the principles of rationalism and anthropocentrism has led to the threat of dehumanization of society and desocialization of a human. The digital society is interpreted as the result of a specifi c social practice with relevant actors and goals. The origins of the technocratic development of society are found in the sphere of politics and the constructive-projective attitude towards society and a human, characteristic of the Enlightenment ideology. The example of the education sector illustrates that criticism and denial of traditional institutions and forms of social communication are explained by the impossibility of subjecting them to complete digitalization and, accordingly, to the process of political and bureaucratic control. Hegel’s “irony of history” manifested itself in the fact that science, emancipated from religion and philosophy, within the framework of modern digital reality, obediently turns into “a maidservant” of technology and technocrats.

Disconnected human resource? Proximity and the (mis)management of workplace conflict

AbstractThe development of more remote sources of advice has been a notable feature of the contemporary human resource (HR) function. However, the consequences for the management of workplace conflict are largely ignored within the academic literature. This study draws on data from two qualitative studies, which examine the experiences of HR practitioners (HRPs), line managers and trade union representatives in handling and resolving conflict. It explores how different dimensions of organisational proximity shape the relationships between HRPs and other key stakeholders, and the impact of this on conflict management. The findings suggest that formal, risk averse approaches to conflict are not simply a result of geographical distance. Instead, functional specialisation has not only eroded cognitive and social proximity between HRPs, line managers and employee representatives but also within the HR function itself. This has triggered the reinforcement of bureaucratic control and embedded responses that emphasise compliance rather than resolution.

On the matter of teacher quality: lessons from Singapore

ABSTRACT Singapore is known as a high-performing country with high-quality teachers and is considered a model system for educational benchmarking. Still, many accolades for the system address teachers’ productivity in raising student achievement, which could reinforce a partial understanding of teacher quality in the system. Aiming at developing a more comprehensive and balanced understanding of the concept of teacher quality, this study explores the perspectives of two primary stakeholders in education in Singapore: the policymakers and the teachers. Although both groups value teachers’ role in students’ all-round development rather than mere academic achievement, they present different perspectives regarding the purpose and significance of teacher quality and its key factors. The policymakers perceive teacher quality as an apparatus for nation building and make it a target for bureaucratic control, whereas teachers consider the ‘self’ of individual teachers a key driver for quality teaching that caters to students. It is indicated that the current situation prioritizes the policymakers’ preference of productivity approach regarding teacher quality. However, this may overlook the significance of teachers’ selves and their efforts at care and student engagement, which could reduce teaching to a merely performative act.

Intensity of Regulations as a Cause of the Informal Sector

It is argued in the literature that the intensity of regulations and control in an economy is a determinant of the informal sector which however is ignored in most of its estimates. This article uses a new variant of the currency demand approach where ‘unemployment’ and ‘intensity of government control’ are used to estimate a shadow economy, alongside a the traditional tax variable. We choose Pakistan since it has a significant share of its activities in the informal sector along with the history of various political and dictatorial regimes. Further, there are examples of bureaucratic control leading to corruption in the economy. It provides an opportunity to study the nexus between regulation intensity and informal economy and present a case study for other developing countries exercising control over the economy through the large size of its public sector. The results show that the intensity of the control variable has statistically and economically significant role in increasing the shadow economy, almost equivalent to the tax coefficient. Once the yearly variation in our estimates is mapped with various political regimes, it seems that the validity of estimates is reinforced considering policy inconsistencies and prominent events of each regime.

VET market prognostications two decades later: using ‘big data’ to compare omens with outcomes

ABSTRACT Publishing the results of thoughtfully designed research projects allows contemporary investigators to revisit the findings years later. The willingness of academics to make specific predictions about the impact of introducing user-choice principles into a state vocational education and training market has enabled comparisons to be drawn using extensive statistical collections. These data sets do not cover each of the forecasts; for example, employer reactions to increased marketisation can only be inferred. However, extensive information has been recorded on the training provider and student responses. The jurisdiction under study has a long history of centralised government decision-making and bureaucratic regulatory control; which allows for a substantial level of confidence in the causal relationship between public policy implementation and outcomes observed in the vocational education and training market. By making data-driven comparisons between what was hypothesised and the results over a long period of time, it is re-affirmed that good research is relevant and can assist governments in achieving their intended public policy priorities.

Taxation, fiscal capacity, and credible commitment in eighteenth‐century China: the effects of the formalization and centralization of informal surtaxes†

AbstractThis article explores a tax reform in eighteenth‐century China that formalized county‐level informal surtaxes and centralized control over them in the hands of provincial governors, in an effort to strengthen provincial fiscal capacity. The findings show that this reform increased the frequency of famine relief in cases of exceptional disaster relative to other weather conditions. The study shows that the effects were driven by the new fiscal revenues—public funds—at the governors’ discretion, not by the central government's relief actions, bureaucratic control over lower officials, or other concurrent fiscal reforms. Moreover, the reform facilitated intertemporal smoothing and inter‐regional risk sharing. However, the effects declined as soon as the central government broke its promise and began to appropriate provincial fiscal revenues. These findings not only provide evidence that fiscal centralization could enhance the provision of public goods in a premodern context, but also highlight that it was the lack of a credible commitment by the central government to the provincial governments that accounted for the short‐lived effects of the reform.

The Bureaucratic Takeover of Criminal Sentencing

Criminal sentencing in the federal courts was transformed by the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, which launched a bureaucratic takeover of sentencing. It was an extraordinary transfer of authority from federal trial judges to the new United States Sentencing Commission, a centralized and essentially non-judicial bureaucracy. Liberals and conservatives in Congress joined to do this out of mistrust, for very different reasons, of federal judges. The Commission’s sentencing Guidelines - misnamed insofar as they were at least for a time compulsory - still loom powerfully over federal sentencing, with a distinct tilt toward severity. Although the Supreme Court in 2005 cut back the compulsory force of the Guidelines, the “gravitational pull” of the Guidelines is such that most federal sentences still conform to the Guidelines. Moreover, pressure to maintain or increase bureaucratic control over sentencing is likely to persist. This article explains how and why power over criminal sentencing was largely withdrawn from federal judges, and how this accelerated the trend toward more severe sentencing. When individual figures of authority, like judges, are mistrusted, there is a tendency to place or misplace faith in bureaucracy, with its real or imagined attributes of regularity, rationality, and impartiality. Those on the liberal or progressive Left who supported the Reform Act and the ensuing Guidelines regime might not have much reason to be pleased with the results. Those on the Right who supported the change in order to stiffen federal sentencing did, at least for a time, achieve their goal.

The Bureaucratic Making of Disability

Making use of interpretive methods of social inquiry, informed by disability studies, I show how the Western bureaucratic orientation is particularly troubled by those unable to keep the rules. Disability is, today, a term used to delineate such an inability. Exploring the meaning of bureaucratic definitions of disability can help us learn something about the organising force of bureaucracy on our lives. In particular, this paper explores a paradox found within the bureaucratic orientation whereby disability is conceptualised as lack of function resulting in an inability to keep the rules that is, nonetheless, managed by the imposition of further rules that need to be kept. Ultimately, this paper tries to reveal what becomes of disability under bureaucratic control not only to learn something about how bureaucracy works but also to learn something about how disability is made meaningful.

Community and the education market: A cross-national comparative analysis of ethnographies of education inclusion and involvement in rural schools in Spain and Sweden

The present article uses 25 ethnographic publications as data for a cross-national meta-ethnographic analysis of school development in rural communities. The publications come from research in four research projects in two countries in the past decade that were ethnographically exploring different challenges in schools in rural areas in relation to changes in State regulation from bureaucratic and professional control to market governance. Different schools in different types of rural area with different types of pedagogical and leadership challenges have been identified. Two different types of school; communitas schools and magnet schools; have emerged from the investigation as two common, different and analytically important ways of responding to market pressures. Parental co-operation and community involvement characterizes the former whilst finding ways to competitively expand and exploit resources to refine and expand recruitment characterize the other. They are both contextual developments from market governance but the latter is also recognized as a default position for school development in market conditions. Both are described as adding value for or to rural communities but in very different ways. These different ways are presented and discussed in the article and based on this discussion, the development of markets in education is described as potentially very problematic in some rural areas. Schools with greater access to resources are benefitted at the expense of other schools in ways that undermine fundamentally important rural community values.

Teacher Dissent in Neoliberal Times: Counter‐Publics and Alternative‐Publics in Teacher Activism

AbstractIn this essay, Terrenda White examines distinct forms of activism by two influential organizations: the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and Teach for America (TFA). Despite differences between these groups, both have created new discourses and alliances among teachers in the public sphere — what White calls “teacher publics.” These new alliances, White argues, can be conceptualized as counter‐publics and alternative‐publics. CTU is a counter‐public because its activities counter the tradition of top‐down insular unionism and embrace “social movement unionism” where teachers are part of an expansive coalition for social transformation, including contesting city and state bureaucracies for adequate resources and equitable practices on behalf of minoritized communities. TFA has also created expansive coalitions for change, embracing a “new professionalism” that rejects public contestations with state leaders for resources. As an alternative‐public, TFA engages a network of private philanthropists and business leaders to generate change in public education through market‐based initiatives that challenge bureaucratic control of teachers and schools and that incentivize competition, audit culture, and data‐driven decision‐making. These two cases, because their approaches to educational change are so different, provide fertile ground for White's evaluation of what new forms of activism mean for the democratic goals of public schools.

Seeking performance or control? Tethered party innovation in China’s performance evaluation system

In the Xi Jinping era of rising central power and reduced local autonomy, is there still room for policy experimentation? If any, what is the nature of this innovative behavior? This article argues that the party state still allows much room for policy innovation, only that this space for innovation is conditioned by the Party’s concern for political control. Drawing on original field research, the article examines two cases of the Chinese Communist Party’s innovation in personnel management, with a particular focus on reforming the Performance Evaluation System (PES) to better incentivize cadres to fulfill work targets. The analyses of the systemic changes of the PES resulting from the Party’s innovation efforts as well as the nature of such changes show that despite the Party’s tireless efforts to reinvent the PES regime so as to better motivate cadres to fulfill work targets, these efforts are undermined at the same time by the Party’s pursuit of bureaucratic stability, personnel control, and grip on power. The research seeks to bring findings about the PES into more meaningful conversations with the scholarship on policy innovation and experimentation.