Large Bureaucratic Organizations Research Articles

Stuck in the playground: a (failed) organizational entrepreneuring process

ABSTRACT Collaborative spaces such as fab labs, incubators, and coworking spaces have become a worldwide phenomenon based on their promise of fostering creativity and entrepreneurship. Mature, large organizations have also tried to benefit from this by creating such spaces in-house. This paper studies a failed attempt to create one such space in a large bureaucratic organization. Our study shows that succeeding in actualizing a space for play, creativity, and entrepreneurship in the place of the office requires attention to organizational ‘common sense’. With our process perspective and its upgrading of the role of affect, our study’s contributions highlight (1) The potential for research in organizational entrepreneurship of an affect-based conceptualization of common sense, which also emphasizes the political, in understanding the failure of entrepreneuring, and (2) The importance of ‘spacing’ and the space-place dynamics for entrepreneuring in organizations.

Barriers to Implementing the Concept of Learning Organization in Public Administration – the Example of PIORiN

Theoretical background: An efficient public administration is a prerequisite for a harmonious development of business, and for the security and prosperity of society. Its rapidity and quality are particularly important in the situation of dynamic economic, political and social changes. However, the model upon which administration is built and functions fails to meet the requirements of the present day. The subject of dysfunctional bureaucracy has been thoroughly analyzed and described in detail. Blind adherence to regulations, reluctance to introduce changes and lack of motivation to help clients are well-known vices of bureaucratic organizations throughout the world. Although countless attempts have been made to change the way these organizations function, the design and implementation of such improvements is hindered by a variety of obstacles. In this article, we shall describe barriers to the process of implementing the concept of a learning organization in a large bureaucratic organization. Purpose of the article: The purpose of the article is to discuss a number of barriers to the process of implementing the concept of a learning organization within a specific bureaucratic organization, namely the State Plant Health and Seed Inspection Service (Państwowa Inspekcja Ochrony Roślin i Nasiennictwa, PIORiN). The barriers discussed were identified in the course of research. Thus, the article adds to the existing body of knowledge about the functioning of bureaucratic organizations, their specificity and processes that take place within them. By identifying potential and actual barriers to the process of change, we can better understand organizational behavior. It also provides practical knowledge about the critical elements of the process of change. Research methods: Research was conducted within a large public institution in charge of phytosanitary controls. Three types of triangulation were used in the study: methodological, theoretical and investigator triangulation. Conclusions were drawn on the basis of a total of 51 interviews, of which 31 were conducted within the organization and 20 with external partners (clients). The basic tool used for collecting data was an open interview, always conducted by two researchers at a time. Interviews were transcribed and read on an ongoing basis with a view to carrying out a preliminary selection and category coding. Four team members participated in the coding process. Codes were subsequently analyzed and grouped into categories that served for drawing conclusions. Main findings: A number of barriers of great consequence for the process of implementing the concept of learning organization in administration have been identified; the most important are: excessive formalization, limited use of clients’ knowledge, insufficient financing, inadequate IT support, and limited cooperation with other public institutions.

The Applied Strategic Leadership Process: Setting Direction in a VUCA World

Strategic leadership frameworks have become more complex in response to our increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world. While comprehensive strategic approaches may help leaders of large bureaucratic organizations exercise control over their staff and resources, these approaches may not be optimal for all organizations and contexts. Given the acceleration of environmental volatility, complexity, and competition, we offer leader developers and aspiring strategic leaders the Applied Strategic Leadership Process (ASLP), a focused and simplified strategic leadership approach that integrates relevant scholarship and practical tools to better enable the success of strategic leaders across cultures, situations, and leadership styles. The ASLP is organized with the themes of strategic judgment, strategic influence, and strategic resilience. Strategic judgment includes assessing the external environment, assessing the internal environment, and setting strategic direction by choosing the optimal big ideas. Strategic influence includes leading the organizational change needed to accomplish the big ideas. Strategic resilience includes developing its leaders’ strategic competencies, character, and wellness while attracting and building a pipeline of junior leaders. We conclude by sharing the 10 strategic leader competencies that several modern-day senior leaders believe will be the most important to leading successfully in the future.

Public administration and politics meet turbulence: The search for robust governance responses

Public administration and politics meet turbulence: The search for robust governance responses

Facility Managers Can Impact the Procurement Landscape by Modifying the Technical Requirements

A major problem for Facility Managers (FMs) is to get the procurement department to procure expert vendors. Hiring an expert is often neglected by a low-bidding vendor who seems to meet the organizations’ minimal technical requirements. A new approach has been developed and tested which changes the procurement landscape and ensures that the FM gets an expert vendor who pre-plans, identifies what they will deliver ahead of time in a simplistic fashion, and continually measures deviations as they perform their service. The new approach will automatically filter proposals that are not doable or deliverable and minimize risks that are caused by non-expert stakeholders’ decision making. Recent testing of this approach for a large bureaucratic organization led to 15% savings in cost, 50% savings in procurement time and elimination of extenuating and complex issues caused by stakeholders in a bureaucratic organization. This new approach is controlled by the FM professional. The approach eliminates major problems that procurement causes. The paper will review the case study and the method of application of this new approach.

Agentic Denial: How Athletic Teams Sustain Divergent Structures During Concussion Events

This study reveals how athletic health care teams, embedded within large bureaucratic organizations and complex social systems, negotiate and sustain multiple divergent structures. An iterative analysis of 69 in-depth interviews with National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I athletes’ certified athletic trainers (ATCs) and coaches from four high-contact sports (i.e., women’s lacrosse, men’s wrestling, men’s soccer, and men’s football) revealed that team members coconstructed and negotiated multiple conflicting structures during concussion events. The divergent macro-, meso-, and micro-level structures include (a) formal versus hidden authority structures, (b) prevention versus inevitability discourse, (c) assigned versus enacted roles, and (d) authentic versus inauthentic injury performance. The analysis also revealed how a specific speech act, termed agentic denial, enabled members to obscure their agency within concussion events. Theoretical implications and practical recommendations are discussed.

Framing computer security and privacy

This paper provides historical perspective on recent debates about professional ethics and computer security by discussing the relationship between conceptions of professional responsibility and framings of computer security. It begins by describing Willis Ware's changing conception of the relationship between computer security and privacy. It then describes three different ways that computer security was framed between the late 1960s and early 1980s: as a tool for protecting the privacy of individual citizens and consumers from the intrusions of large bureaucratic organizations; as a means of protecting corporations from computer-related crime; and as a means of protecting U.S. national security from foreign adversaries. In each case, the framing of computer security intertwined with distinctive conceptions of professional responsibility, and motivated different kinds of collective action.

School Identity in the Context of Alberta Charter Schools

ABSTRACTThe central tenet of this investigation is that educational institutions possess their own school identity. Acknowledging that school identity is influenced by institutional mechanisms and personal dynamics, we examine school identity in the context of 13 Alberta charter schools. Narratives of 73 educational stakeholders across the network of Alberta charter schools reveal a heightening of trust and authenticity as related to school identity. We propose that lessons learned from this study can inform stakeholders within other school settings. In particular, that an explicitly articulated vision of school identity may challenge the entrenched norms and practices typical of large bureaucratic organizations.

The applicability of commitment models in a unionized professional workplace

Purpose – The changing dynamics of current workplaces and the increasing employment of professionals in large bureaucratic organizations calls for a renewed examination of commitment at work. This study assesses a three-component model of professional commitment in a unionized environment to determine the applicability of a three-component model of professional commitment and its effect on participation in union and professional activities. This paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – A cross-sectional survey of licensed practical nurses tests the validity of a three-component model of professional commitment concurrent with union commitment; the impact of commitment on varying levels of participation in union and professional activities is examined. Findings – Support is found for a three component of professional commitment based on Meyer and Allen's model of organizational commitment. Normative professional commitment has an inverse relationship to outcomes compared to professional affective commitment and union affective commitment, eflecting the professional socialization process. Research limitations/implications – Sample size limits the generalizability of the findings. A larger study, with longitudinal design, would contribute to understanding the operation of union and professional commitment in the same workplace. Practical implications – Support for a variety of union and professional activities is linked to both union and professional commitment, indicating there may be shared values motivating participation in these activities. It may be possible to overcome the negative association between normative commitment and engagement in activities through emphasis on affective commitment to both the union and the profession. Originality/value – The findings are important for the increasing number of professionals employed in unionized settings, particularly in the public sector, whose collective bargaining rights are being threatened.

Climate Change Policy Capacity at the Sub-National Government Level

The capacity of large bureaucratic organizations to address climate change issues is an area that many consider to be important yet there is very little empirical evidence available. This article employs a structural equation model (LISREL) from survey data of mid-level public servants in the Province of Alberta, Canada and considers such factors as the extent that they work with climate change information, the use of risk-based tools, risk perception, and broader organizational factors. The results suggest that policy-based staff is more engaged in climate change issues than researchers and are also more likely to employ risk-based tools and techniques. We conclude that structural equation modeling can provide valuable indicators of policy capacity to decision makers who are charged with developing climate change policies.

Mainstreaming gender in refugee protection

The issues of gender-related persecution and violence against women have been put onto the international agenda, largely thanks to lobbying by feminist NGOs and transnational networks. There is a question, however, of how successfully this agenda-setting has translated into effective policy-making and policies that will increase the protection of women who are victims of gender-related persecution. One of the problems with policies to support women refugees and asylum seekers lies in a failure of transmission of the goals of gender sensitivity through all the various bureaux and representatives of a large bureaucratic organization such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). For nearly twenty years, since the early 1990s, the UNHCR has identified ‘refugee women’ as a policy priority, and yet, despite this prioritization of concerns about women refugees and gender issues in the asylum and refugee process, it could be argued that little progress has been made in implementation of policies on refugee women. This article will examine the way in which the concept of gender has been adopted within the UNHCR and the processes that have been put in place to mainstream gender within refugee protection activities. How far has mainstreaming managed to move policies to protect women beyond a mere focus on ‘vulnerable’ groups, and to integrate a gendered understanding of the global processes that produce refugees, and of the protection needs of these refugees?

Thinking About Privacy: Chapter 1 of "Engaging Privacy and Information Technology in a Digital Age"

Just as recent centuries saw transitions from the agricultural to the industrial to the information age and associated societal and technological changes, the early 21st century will continue to pose dynamic challenges in many aspects of society. Most importantly from the standpoint of this report, advances in information technology are proceeding apace. In this rapidly changing technological context, individuals, institutions, and governments will be forced to reexamine core values, beliefs, laws, and social structures if their understandings of autonomy, privacy, justice, community, and democracy are to continue to have meaning. A central concept throughout U.S. history has been the notion of privacy and the creation of appropriate borders between the individual and the state. In the latter 19th century, as industrial urban society saw the rise of large bureaucratic organizations, notions of privacy were extended to the borders between private organizations and the individual. This report focuses on privacy and its intersections with information technology and associated social and technology trends.

Partnering in construction: Investigation of problematic issues for implementation in Vietnam

Partnering in construction industry has been prosperous in recent years. This new approach has been proved applicable to construction projects in Vietnam and other developing countries; however, many problems have emerged during partnering implementation process. This paper has identified some prominent problematic issues of partnering in Vietnam construction projects through a questionnaire survey conduct. Partners’ attitudes governed by commercial pressure and dealing with large bureaucratic organization(s) are the most concerned problems with foreign organizations and local practitioners respectively. Factor analysis has pointed out seven underlying dimensions of problems existing in partnering process. These are: unsuitability of partnering application; lack of commitment to partnering; unfamiliarity with the partnering concept; poor communication between partners; lack of key stakeholders’ involvement; external constraint issues; and failure to compromise. This study could help practitioners in the Vietnamese market to comprehend issues in executing a partnering construction project. The understanding of these issues will increase the chance to succeed in partnering on construction projects.

The emergence of clinical practice guidelines.

Clinical practice guidelines are now ubiquitous. This article describes the emergence of such guidelines in a way that differs from the two dominant explanations, one focusing on administrative cost-cutting and the other on the need to protect collective professional autonomy. Instead, this article argues that the spread of guidelines represents a new regulation of medical care resulting from a confluence of circumstances that mobilized many different groups. Although the regulation of quality has traditionally been based on the standardization of professional credentials, since the 1960s it has intensified and been supplemented by efforts to standardize the use of medical procedures. This shift is related to the spread of standardization within medicine and especially in research, public health, and large bureaucratic health care organizations.

Information Sources and the Coverage of Social Issues in Partisan Publications: A Content Analysis of 25 Years of the Progressive and the National Review

An extensive research literature concludes that, in the United States, mainstream media tend to present a remarkably narrow, homogenous and centrist conservative view of political life that tends to support maintenance of the status quo. This is often attributed to heavy media reliance on government officials, leaders of political groups, and large bureaucratic organization as routine, predictable sources of information. In this context, it is important to understand how explicitly partisan publications construct their accounts of public affairs that provide citizens with alternatives to this perspective proffered by the dominant media. A content analysis of 25 years of 2 of America's leading partisan magazines, the conservative National Review and the liberal Progressive, provides data that raise questions about the extent to which information sources do influence the partisanship of media content.

The world's newest profession: management consulting in the twentieth century

In 1930 Business Week alerted its interested readers to a new professional service: management consulting. As the writers at Business Week explained, the existing system of business professionals had become so complicated that, according to James McKinsey at the University of Chicago, a new type of professional was “increasing in numbers and influence . . . the adviser that tells business what other advisers to use and when.” Although Business Week would go on to chronicle the rise of management consulting over the next seventy years, consultants would continue to style themselves as an emerging profession through the end of the twentieth century. My dissertation title, “The World's Newest Profession,” plays off both the longstanding perception that consulting is an emerging profession and the widespread apprehension that consultants' advice is little more than corporate pandering. In response to these concerns, I address both the origins of management consultants and their influence on the strategies, structures, and operations of large bureaucratic organizations. Because the institutionalization and professionalization of management consulting occurred within firms, not among solo practitioners, I focus on management consulting firms like McKinsey & Company; Booz, Allen & Hamilton; and Arthur D. Little, Inc., which have advised large corporations since the 1920s. During the 1920s and 1930s these consulting firms were integral in reorganizing many of the largest companies in the United States, including General Motors, Swift, U.S. Steel, and Sears. By the 1960s the use of American management consultants had expanded beyond their initial domestic corporate clients to include international nonprofit organizations, businesses, and governments as diverse and influential as Air France, the Bank of England, Volkswagen, the University of Liberia, and the Government of Tanzania.

A note on the appearance of wisdom in large bureaucratic organizations.

Any organization is happy with—and likely to promote—a man who is wise enough to make correct decisions for its successful operation. But in a large bureaucratic organization, may not statistical probability alone result in there being at least one man who makes all the correct decisions but who is no more truly competent than his less successful peers? How do we distinguish the wise from the pseudowise? These intriguing questions and some of their ramifications for political and organizational behavior are here discussed.

Leadership Turnover among University Presidents

This study examines leadership succession among university presidents. Strategy researchers have emphasized that changing leaders is an important organizational decision which is likely to affect the strategic direction of the organization (e.g. Hambrick/Fukuto mi 1991). Using longitudinal data on German university presidents and rectors, three issues are addressed: (1) Presidential tenure is related to selected organizational features. One characteristic to which particular importance is attributed in the succession literature is organizational size. This study analyzes on an organizational level how the office tenure of current university presidents and rectors relates to university size. (2) On the level of the overall university system, a longitudinal study is conducted in order to determine how the average tenure of German university presidents changed between 1960 and 2000. Five different methods for measuring presidential tenure are developed and compared. The results indicate a decrease in presidential tenure since the early 1990s. (3) In order to analyze potential determinants of the decreasing time in office, correlation analyses are conducted. The results suggest that public funding for teaching and increasing pressures for reforms are significantly related to presidential time in office. Resource endowments for research are not related to presidential tenure. Finally, the implications of the decreasing office tenure for managing organizational change in universities are discussed. Key words: Leadership Turnover, Succession, Presidential Tenure, University Presidents, Organizational Change Introduction Higher education institutions, like businesses, non-profit organizations or the military, face the challenge of leadership succession. Turnover among university presidents is inevitable, and the transition of leadership is likely to affect the ongoing operations as well as the long-term direction of the institution (Neck 1996, Wiersema/Bantel 1992). The perceived significance of a leadership succession event has led to number of publications, particularly in recent years (Boyne et al., 2001). Between the 1970s and 1990s alone, the number of articles on this issue in management and strategy journals rose by 250% (Kesner/Sebora 1994). Most of the studies on leadership turnover have, however, been conducted for private firms (Haveman 1995, Virany et al. 1992), a few focus on public organizations (e.g. Boyne et al. 2001), and even fewer on educational institutions (e.g. Padilla 2001). If leadership succession is an important event in the private sector, it is reasonable to suggest that succession events can have profound effects on change in higher education institutions, too. Cohen and March (1986) have pointed out that identifying the dimensions of when and why university presidents leave their office helps to understand how universities deal with changes in their external environment and how they translate these changes into their internal organizational structures. Since leadership turnover touches fundamental organizational processes such as deep organizational change and structural inertia (Hannan/Freeman 1984), this topic is of particular relevance for managing large bureaucratic organizations such as universities (e.g. Miskel/Cosgrove 1984). The role university leadership ought to play in initiating organizational changes has also assumed an important place in the current higher education reform debate in Germany. A number of authors and policy makers (e.g. Muller-Boling/Kuchler 1998) attribute educational leaders a critical role in determining the levels and quality of university processes and outcomes. Accordingly, the calls to further strengthen university leadership have become louder. Decentralized governance structures with strong and influential university leadership are seen to be more responsive and better able to deal with individual university contingencies than centralized governance systems. …

Mechanisms of Disability Discrimination in Large Bureaucratic Organizations: Ascriptive Inequalities in the Workplace

Studies of workplace discrimination have typically focused on empirically unobservable motives to explain ascriptive inequalities associated with class, gender, and race. Such studies usually have overlooked disability as an ascriptive status, and have offered little systematic research on the central question of this study: How, through what mechanisms, does disability discrimination operate in large, bureaucratic organizations? The in-depth personal interviews upon which this study is based reveal that interpersonal mechanisms of discrimination manifest as blatant and subtle acts of marginalization, fictionalization, and harassment. However, such interpersonal acts of discrimination would likely be less frequent or less consequential if not for the organizational mechanisms of tolerance and encouragement. The authors conclude that one of the central promises of the Americans with Disabilities Act, full inclusion and participation of people with disabilities in the workplace, is unlikely to be realized without renewed pressure for legislation that explicitly specifies the nature and extent of work organizations' responsibilities for creating a nonhostile environment and the consequences of not doing so.

Quality, Value, Accountability and Information as Transforming Strategies for Patient-Centred Care: A Commentary from an International Perspective

The reviewed paper describes how one of the largest integrated healthcare systems in the US has successfully transformed itself to provide 21st-century healthcare. Even though there are other examples of successful transformation of public health services, it is difficult for large, bureaucratic systems to change, and a substantial number of ministries of health or social security health systems in the developing world are run under the assumption that change is very difficult if not impossible to achieve. The VA has significant differences and more financial resources compared to most of the developing world public health institutions; but still, change is often not only about money, but also about strategic direction, commitment and leadership. On the basis of the main strategies used by the VA in its transformation process, the author makes some comments and suggestions for improving developing world healthcare organizations through lessons learned from the VA management strategies. Demand-driven or patient-centred systems are key for success and for the buy-in and involvement of the population and users of healthcare services, but this is easier said than done, especially in developing healthcare systems with immature information systems, access mechanisms and knowledge management. There is a belief in general that large bureaucratic organizations have a hard time adapting and transforming in response to the rapid change of society, technology and most importantly the needs and expectations of their users. The article describes how the largest integrated healthcare organization in the United States, the Veterans Health Administration, has undertaken changes that have turned it into a modern, well-managed organization that outperforms its competitors and has significantly increased its efficiency and users' satisfaction.