Public Administration Literature Research Articles

The role of courts in legislative policy diffusion and divergence

ABSTRACTA particular blueprint of legislative policy seems to have conquered western democracies. It comprises a set of regulatory tools such as impact assessments, consultation procedures, ex post evaluation and alternatives for regulation. At the same time, policy diffusion does not seem to lead to policy convergence. Literature in political science and public administration has pointed out a variety of factors to explain both policy diffusion and policy divergence, omitting, however, the potential role of courts. This article takes a legal perspective to this issue, by arguing, first, that courts contribute to policy diffusion of a rational model of regulatory policy and exploring, second, the extent to which courts take into account factors that hamper policy convergence.

Sectoral decision making: structures, processes and trust

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to synthesize multi-sector, cross-sector, and other interorganizational alliance structures and processes with particular focus on their saliency in partnership/alliance decision making.Design/methodology/approach– This is a conceptual paper focusing primarily on management and public administration literature that examines decision making in multi-sector, cross-sector, and other interorganizational alliances.Findings– The paper identified that decision making takes place at every stage of the partnership process, with complexity being dependent on organizational structure and design, i.e. dyad or network. Organization structures and key processes including coordination, cooperation, and trust are critical elements that impact decision making. Trust is foundational for the development and sustainability of collaborative alliances. Many of these same characteristics are also found in strategic alliance structures and processes.Practical implications– This analysis of selected literature on decision making and trust has the capacity to enhance awareness and expectation-setting for those entering a collaborative partnership. Trust is an integral and enduring component at every stage.Originality/value– This study crosses the boundary between sectoral partnerships and other interorganizational alliances in the analysis of decision-making structures and processes.

Spiritual leadership in the work of public administrators

This article focuses on the leadership practices of local public administrators that display elements of spiritual leadership in the workplace. It explores empirical research about municipal managers that suggests organizational leadership based on the notion of someone’s spirit, rather than merely someone’s bundle of workplace skills and abilities, is not only valid, but fairly common. The results illustrate that public administrators doing public administration admit that spiritual values, or a focus on the whole-soul of people, impact how they view leadership in their jobs and the public work they do every day. Potential elements of spiritual leadership culled from the research and leadership and Public Administration literature are shaped into a nascent model that serves to both describe and prescribe spiritual leadership perspectives, behaviors, and approaches to followers.

Administrative legal act and administrative agreement: legal characteristic

The article is devoted to the problem issues of legal characteristics of administrative legal acts and administrative agreements in the public administration activities. The main criteria classification of administrative legal acts are analyzed. Their main features and legal entity are defined. A comparative legal characteristic of administrative legal acts and administrative agreements is done. Based on the analysis of legal literature and practice of public administration the author offers the most meaningful classification of administrative legal acts: 1) by the body that made the act; 2) by the type of act; 3) by time of adoption of the act; 4) by the number of administrative legal act; 5) by alphabetical basis; 6) by subject of regulation. Contractual relationship let individual to make personified expression of approval and mutually beneficial joint decisions. Conclusion administrative agreement gives the benefits which it has in itself and is a call to action for both. Public administration in each case must justify their choice between the two means of influence and decide which is better to use: direct instruction or agreement. Administrative agreement as opposed to direct powerful imperative to take account of and comply interests and subordinate side that some measure is incentive to perform actions in the public interest. Conclusion of the administrative legal agreements as well as publication of administrative acts must be carried in the furrows competence of public administration. This is a prerequisite, which follows from the principle inherent right «all that is not permitted by law is prohibited».

Aspects of Understanding Government’s Public Institutions Behavior Necessary to Design Reforms

Abstract This paper presents some aspects found by the author in his research in field of government public institutions behavior. The author started some years ago to research the modality how should prepare a conceptual transfer of management from the companies practice to government public institutions and to implement them for enhance quality of their results. The main concept of the theoretical research is based on some well-known theoretical remarks. One of this shows that the public institutions are similar entities as companies. Eventually they have higher complexity. Following this logic, the public institutions should be led by management instead public administration. Considering public management and the new public management only some attempts without solving the main problems, the author consider that implementing procedural efficiency oriented management to the government public institution is equivalent with an important changes induced by outside. Preparing the conceptual transfer, for the first period of research was necessary to understand government’s public institution behavior. For this purpose the relational frame was the business organization. In this respect the research compares organizational behavior of companies and public institutions and their reaction to important changes. For understand similarities and differences it was necessary to discover theoretical standpoints regarding companies reaction to important changes induced by outside and main determinants from the organizational sciences literature. In the similar way was studied the public institution reaction and determinants of this to important changes, theoretically through documentary analyses of the literature of public administration. The benchmarking between the reactions of the mentioned two entities discovered different behaviors and the main determinants of the reactions of them to a new form of leading system by management, including modern instruments as knowledge management. The paper conclusions sustain that implementation of modern management systems to government’s public institutions should deal with a different behavior used to know at companies. In this respect, the paper highlights different aspects between companies and public institutions behavior admitting similarities on organizational structure and internal procedures.

Does the Charter Form Improve the Fiscal Health of Counties?

AbstractThe public administration literature has paid attention to the relationship between the structure of a government and its ability to provide public services, reflected by its fiscal health. Although this literature has provided a useful understanding of government structures, it has largely ignored the charter form of government. As a formal written document that grants counties the power of self‐governance, a charter frees the county from state control. Included in this freedom is the ability to establish its own tax policies and services. In this article, the effects of charter adoption on fiscal health are tested using Florida county data from 1980 to 2012. The results show that the presence of a charter can improve the fiscal health of a county, which, in turn, can affect overall service provision.

Can performance information motivate citizens to co-produce?

The article asks what governments can do to motivate citizens to engage in co-production. Based on the broader public administration literature we develop a general explanatory model of citizen co-production motivation. In our empirical study we focus especially on the impact of performance information on citizen co-production motivation. We test our model using data from a randomized survey experiment in which some but not all citizens were presented with information on local government school performance. The analysis shows that performance information influences citizen satisfaction with public school services and in turn also has some but weak impacts on their motivation to co-produce.

A Meta-Analysis of Job Satisfaction Correlates in the Public Administration Literature

What can we learn by applying a meta-analysis to the public administration literature on job satisfaction? More generally, how can public management scholars use this method to capitalize on the decades of research on other topics within our field? This study reports the findings of the first quantitative review of the public administration literature on job satisfaction. We retrieved quantitative data from primary studies published in 42 public administration journals since 1969 and performed a meta-analysis of the relationships between job satisfaction and 43 correlates. The findings include meta-analytically derived effect sizes, measures of the heterogeneity in the effect size underlying all primary studies, and several indicators of publication bias. In presenting the results of our meta-analysis, we address the merits and limitations of this methodology and discuss how public administration scholars could take full advantage of this information to advance knowledge in other areas within the field.

Politics-Administration Relationship in Developing Countries: The Case of Bangladesh

Determining the role of bureaucracy in a democracy has always remained a key concern in the public administration literature. Discussion on this particular concept has highlighted two important issues. First, it specifically points out that in a democratic political system, the public administrators are in effect, “unelected officials,” and they are bestowed with responsibilities which deeply affect the citizens’ lives. Second, it acknowledges the fact that the bureaucrats can never be only “passive instrument” of the elected officials and they do have the ability to exercise certain discretion in carrying out their duties. Therefore, contemporary public administration literature has indeed devoted a certain degree of effort in analyzing bureaucratic discretion and whereas some scholars call for the elimination of discretion, others conclude, “excising the discretion from the bureaucracy is impossible” (Meier &O ’Toole, Jr., 2006). However, a key limitation of the existing literature is in almost all cases, the analysis of bureaucratic discretion and possible methods of control have always been limited to the developed democracies. As a result, the scholars have mainly concentrated on the countries where the process of democratization has already gone a long way. Given that these countries enjoyed the opportunity of designing and redesigning bureaucratic principles according to the need of the democracy, their context is different than the developing ones which “had a long experience of bureaucratization first, and the demand for subordination of the civil service became part of an internal struggle for power, rather than fulfillment of the democratic goal of responsiveness to the people” (Carino, 1990: 66). Therefore, these studies do not explore the impact of democratic transition on bureaucratic discretion. In this paper, we make an effort to identify this relationship and while doing that limit our discussion to the discretion enjoyed and exercised by the street level bureaucrats. We have used Bangladesh as a case study to develop our theoretical argument.

Effects of different policy approaches on sport facility utilisation strategies

The consequences of subsidising sport facilities have so far not been a focus of sport facilities research. In this article, we propose a conceptual framework for assessing the effects that different public subsidies have on the utilisation of private non-profit sport facilities. Based on theories drawn from the public administration literature three different subsidy schemes are introduced: New Public Management, Governance and Budget. How they will influence the utilisation of a sport facility is assessed using insights from institutional and motivational theory from political science along with the role the voluntary sport organisations play in sport facilities. The resulting conceptual framework consists of twelve different strategies. It is argued that it is likely that a sport facility will choose one or more of these, and which strategies it chooses will impact the level of utilisation. The aim of the article is to show plausible conjectures for future empirical research into how to increase sport facility utilisation via different policies and thus inform future research into the complex interplay between the public sector, sport facilities and voluntary sport organisations.

Calling Attention to the Nature of Professional Knowledge and Its Impact on Perceptions of Performance Measures

Public administration literature pays little attention to public employees’ perceptions of performance measures. The present article studies the nature of their professional knowledge and its impact on the perception of performance measures. A multilevel regression confirms that Danish high school teachers relying on interpretive knowledge traditions perceive performance measures more negatively than teachers relying on science-based traditions. Since we have no reason to question the transferability of this finding, we argue that research needs to take the nature of employees’ professional knowledge into consideration if we are to fully understand the effects of performance measurement in the public sector.

How e-Government managers prioritise rival value positions: The efficiency imperative

E-Government strategies, investments, project selection, and implementations are influenced by value positions deeply enshrined in the traditions of public administration, which are in turn reflected in the everyday discourse of public managers. We analyse value traditions in the public administrat ion literature and their adaptation for e-Government and synthesise three prominent positions. Administrative efficiency focuses on cost-effectiveness logics highlighted by New Public Management thinking. Service improvement, derived from the tradition of public service, emphasises the provision of better services for citizens. Citizen engagement, with its roots in liberal democracy arguments, promotes responsiveness, consultation, collaboration and participation. A set of foundational values grounded in the deeply rooted bureaucratic tradition is also distinguished. A qualitative survey of Danish local authority managers' value positions shows a heavy bias towards administrative efficiency and an absence of concern for citizen engagement. The implications of this efficiency imperative are discussed.

Managing e‐Government: value positions and relationships

AbstractPublic sector managers take much of the responsibility for selecting, commissioning, implementing and realising benefits from information technology (IT) projects. However, e‐Government initiatives often suffer from complexity, vision failure, lack of goal clarity and insufficient commitment. These problems may stem from value traditions that are deeply ingrained in managers' cultural environments but not always in harmony with each other. A first step towards working with value complexity is to understand it; we synthesise a model of value positions for e‐Government derived from major traditions in the public administration literature. Four value positions relevant to e‐Government together with their IT assumptions are identified; they reflect the ideals of professionalism, efficiency, service and engagement. A qualitative investigation of Danish local authority managers displays both value congruence and value divergence. The interpretive study results in a theoretical model that combines value positions and relationships, and the model's implications for researchers and practitioners in focusing successful e‐Government initiatives are outlined.

Local Government Capacity and Citizen Co-production: A Review of Theory and Evidence

AbstractGovernment capacity is an important topic in the study of public administration (Burgess 1975; Honadle 1981). The terms capacity, capability or ability have become a concern of government agencies because of the need to develop policies and programs (Gargan 1981). More recently failures of public programs and the increasing demands of the public have also brought attention to this important topic (Ingraham 2003; Andrews and Boyne 2010). Despite the common use of capacity, the term is not well defined in the current public administration literature. In this paper the focus is upon the implementation capacity in local government. They are largely responsible for service delivery, whereas higher levels of government are more removed and have coordination and policy development responsibilities. In this study, the researcher undertakes a comprehensive approach to investigate what is currently known about government capacity by integrating the empirical research that has been published in the past fifty years. It reviews 43 articles that rigorously discuss capacity or capacity building at the local level and 62 articles on citizen co-production. The analysis suggests that government capacity only perceived within organizations is limited. The majority of attention has been paid to management capacity particularly policy formulation capacity, leaving implementation capacity less touched. Sub-analyses reveal different dimensions of government capacity which are dominantly studied in western literature. The evidence points to an association between government capacity and citizen co-production. This paper enriches the literature by developing a new relationship of government capacity and citizen co-production at the local level.

Efficiency, Participation, and Quality: Three Dimensions of E-Government?

This book review essay offers a picture of e-government scholarship that involves three major themes: efficiency, citizen participation, and quality. Two of the themes, efficiency and citizen participation, have sometimes been counterposed in public administration literature, seeing citizen participation coming at the expense of efficiency. In this essay, the effects of the goals of efficiency and citizen participation on the third theme, “quality” in e-government literature, are explored via a thematic map based on multidimensional scaling. This analysis offers that efficiency and political participation in e-government literature stem from macro-political conceptions, and they are separate from “quality” concerns.

In the Union Now

Despite periodic consideration of public sector unions in the public management and administration literature, empirical evidence on the union membership decisions of public employees remains scant. In this article, we begin to address this issue by considering unique data on union membership drawn from a local educational agency in a midsize American city. We find union membership rates to be highest in schools that are hardest to staff and where working conditions may be most difficult. We consider this evidence in light of recent efforts to reform public sector unions in general and teacher unions in particular.

Representative Bureaucracy in the Public Service? A Critical Analysis of the Challenges Confronting Women in the Civil Service of Ghana

In the public administration literature, the debate concerning the representation of minorities in the public bureaucracy continues to attract attention. The idea is that passive representation may lead to active representation with the later helping to develop policies and programs that will benefit minorities. Consequently, a number of governments have been implementing policies to enhance the involvement of minorities in public services. The Ghana government has not been left out in this endeavor. Since 1957, it has continued to institute measures to ensure a fair gender representation in the bureaucracy. This notwithstanding, the upper echelons of the bureaucracy continue to be dominated by males despite the over representation of women at the lower levels. What are the challenges confronting women in the public sector that make it difficult to achieve active representation? In this article, we examine the challenges confronting women to achieve active representation from a representative bureaucracy perspective.

Complexity Theory and Its Evolution in Public Administration and Policy Studies

This paper traces the evolution of the application of the complexity sciences in the literature of public administration and public policy. A four stage evolutionary model is used to track the development of this literature. The evolution of the literature has now reached a third evolutionary stage. This third stage is a proliferant stage in the development of the literature in which applications and knowledge production has increased dramatically.

Local Government Management

This special issue of ARPA seeks to fill a void in the public administration literature by bringing to the forefront analyses of local government and metropolitan challenges from the perspective of public administrationists: Those who manage cities and counties, and those who both teach and study local government management. The public administration perspective on local government and metropolitan governance has traditionally been grounded in jurisdictions—cities, counties, school and special districts. Today, however, there is often a disjuncture between problems to be solved and jurisdictional boundaries. Accordingly, local governments have changed, and continue to change in response to boundary-crossing challenges as Wheeland, Paulus and Wood evaluate, and new patterns of metropolitan governance are emerging, as Leland and Thurmeier analyze. According to Agranoff, these patterns of change are both horizontal, between and among connected units of local government and vertical, among local governments, states, and the national government. Civic engagement in local public affairs is growing in creative new ways as citizens seek to participate, a topic probed by Nabatchi and Amsler. In the same way that all politics is local, all policy is also local and none is more important than the need to balance the risk of disaster with the need for preparedness, as Donahue, Eckel, and Wilson explore. Together these articles are a timely treatment of compelling challenges facing governments and governance nearest at hand: Our cities, counties, districts and metropolitan areas.

Coordination of and Through E-Government: The Case of the Czech Republic

Abstract Although e-government as a research topic is rather embedded in public-administration literature, and coordination of and through e-government is visible in European countries, coordination of and through e-government has not been paid much attention. Consequently this paper deals with this topic. Its text outlines emerging coordination practices that can be observed in European countries, and it also indicates issues using the Czech e-government development and some key national initiatives as examples. Th e presented text concludes that although elements of strategic planning may become embedded and institutional and regulatory mechanisms stabilized in the country, other issues such as a weak accountability culture may exist and hinder coordination practices.