The external control of public organizations and their members, commonly referred to as accountability, is an enduring theme in public administration. This article shifts attention from a traditional focus on accountability as a macro-institutional matter to the psychology of accountability, that is, whether and how employees internalize accountability systems. The internalization of rules and expectations varies by individual, which, in turn, has significant consequences for accountability outcomes. We theorize that the micro-foundations of employee accountability are affected by five factors: attributability, observability, evaluability, answerability, and consequentiality. These five dimensions are conceptually distinct but interrelated, representing a deeper common psychological construct of employee accountability. Incorporating the psychological approach of accountability advances the potential of public accountability research. We conclude with a discussion of future research and practical implications.
{"title":"Conceptual Bases of Employee Accountability: A Psychological Approach","authors":"Yousueng Han, J. Perry","doi":"10.1093/ppmgov/gvz030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ppmgov/gvz030","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The external control of public organizations and their members, commonly referred to as accountability, is an enduring theme in public administration. This article shifts attention from a traditional focus on accountability as a macro-institutional matter to the psychology of accountability, that is, whether and how employees internalize accountability systems. The internalization of rules and expectations varies by individual, which, in turn, has significant consequences for accountability outcomes. We theorize that the micro-foundations of employee accountability are affected by five factors: attributability, observability, evaluability, answerability, and consequentiality. These five dimensions are conceptually distinct but interrelated, representing a deeper common psychological construct of employee accountability. Incorporating the psychological approach of accountability advances the potential of public accountability research. We conclude with a discussion of future research and practical implications.","PeriodicalId":29947,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Public Management and Governance","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2020-12-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85657791","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
All countries with complex geographies must extend national power to local areas. Field administration is a primitive in government: it is inevitable in modern national governments, but its variety and impact is rarely discussed in modern public administration. Building on the work of James Fesler and formal results on agenda-setting in organizations, this article demonstrates dilemmas in the use of historically important, widespread mechanisms for designing the field operations of national governments. The experiences of different nation-states provide context for these dilemmas. How governments address these dilemmas shapes policy implementation and the performance of national governments.
{"title":"Strategy, Structure, and the Administration of Complex Geographies","authors":"Andrew B. Whitford","doi":"10.1093/ppmgov/gvaa013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ppmgov/gvaa013","url":null,"abstract":"All countries with complex geographies must extend national power to local areas. Field administration is a primitive in government: it is inevitable in modern national governments, but its variety and impact is rarely discussed in modern public administration. Building on the work of James Fesler and formal results on agenda-setting in organizations, this article demonstrates dilemmas in the use of historically important, widespread mechanisms for designing the field operations of national governments. The experiences of different nation-states provide context for these dilemmas. How governments address these dilemmas shapes policy implementation and the performance of national governments.","PeriodicalId":29947,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Public Management and Governance","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2020-12-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75003313","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Administrative burden on its most basic level refers to “an individual’s experience of policy implementation as onerous”. The concept of administrative burdens raises complex questions of both theory and practice for public administrators and scholars. Ambitious agendas have been laid out for investigating the origins, mechanisms, and impacts of administrative burdens, and for building practical knowledge about how to minimize administrative burdens without sacrificing program effectiveness and efficiency. Those same authors, and others, have advanced the concept theoretically as well. This article builds on those efforts to address a normative question at the concept’s core—namely, the question of what makes an administrative burden acceptable or excessive, reasonable or unreasonable. Our inquiry begins with the recognition that administrative burdens sometimes perform important functions and principles and methods are needed for determining when a specific type or degree of burden crosses the threshold from reasonableness to unreasonableness. Toward that end, we propose a five-part test, similar to those employed by the Supreme Court, for bureaucrats to use when assessing the justifications for bureaucratic procedures and requirements that involve administrative burden.
{"title":"“Hostages to Compliance”: Towards a Reasonableness Test for Administrative Burdens","authors":"M. Doughty, Karen J. Baehler","doi":"10.1093/ppmgov/gvaa010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ppmgov/gvaa010","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Administrative burden on its most basic level refers to “an individual’s experience of policy implementation as onerous”. The concept of administrative burdens raises complex questions of both theory and practice for public administrators and scholars. Ambitious agendas have been laid out for investigating the origins, mechanisms, and impacts of administrative burdens, and for building practical knowledge about how to minimize administrative burdens without sacrificing program effectiveness and efficiency. Those same authors, and others, have advanced the concept theoretically as well. This article builds on those efforts to address a normative question at the concept’s core—namely, the question of what makes an administrative burden acceptable or excessive, reasonable or unreasonable. Our inquiry begins with the recognition that administrative burdens sometimes perform important functions and principles and methods are needed for determining when a specific type or degree of burden crosses the threshold from reasonableness to unreasonableness. Toward that end, we propose a five-part test, similar to those employed by the Supreme Court, for bureaucrats to use when assessing the justifications for bureaucratic procedures and requirements that involve administrative burden.","PeriodicalId":29947,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Public Management and Governance","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2020-12-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78592977","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Andrew B. Whitford, H. Milward, J. Galaskiewicz, A. Khademian
{"title":"Correction to: A Place at the Table: Organization Theory and Public Management","authors":"Andrew B. Whitford, H. Milward, J. Galaskiewicz, A. Khademian","doi":"10.1093/ppmgov/gvaa012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ppmgov/gvaa012","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":29947,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Public Management and Governance","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2020-12-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91211193","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Corrigendum to: Conceptual Bases of Employee Accountability: A Psychological Approach","authors":"Yousueng Han, J. Perry","doi":"10.1093/ppmgov/gvaa014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ppmgov/gvaa014","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":29947,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Public Management and Governance","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2020-12-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83147768","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Recently, scholars have claimed that public management theory has too much ignored law. Consequently, the under-legalized conception of public management has produced a flawed understanding of public management theory as well as public management practices, threatening public institutions’ legitimacy. In this article, we argue that law never left public management theory. Rather, the link between government and law has been redefined twice. We refer to the assumptions that constitute this link as the law-government nexus. This nexus changed from lawfulness in a public administration paradigm, to legal instrumentalism in a (new) public management paradigm, and to a networked concept in the public governance (PG) paradigm. In order to prevent a faulty over-legalized conception of public management, bringing the law back in should be built on lessons from the past. This article elaborates on three strategies to reconnect law and public management. We map the strengths and weaknesses of each law-government nexus and illustrate these with the case of the Dutch tax agency. In our strategies that aim to reconceptualize the current law-government nexus, we incorporate the benefits of each paradigm for public management theory. The revised law-governance nexus enables the PG paradigm to correspond to contemporary issues without encountering old pathologies.
{"title":"Bringing the Law Back In: The Law-Government Nexus in an Era of Network Governance","authors":"S. Zouridis, Vera Leijtens","doi":"10.1093/ppmgov/gvaa022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ppmgov/gvaa022","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Recently, scholars have claimed that public management theory has too much ignored law. Consequently, the under-legalized conception of public management has produced a flawed understanding of public management theory as well as public management practices, threatening public institutions’ legitimacy. In this article, we argue that law never left public management theory. Rather, the link between government and law has been redefined twice. We refer to the assumptions that constitute this link as the law-government nexus. This nexus changed from lawfulness in a public administration paradigm, to legal instrumentalism in a (new) public management paradigm, and to a networked concept in the public governance (PG) paradigm. In order to prevent a faulty over-legalized conception of public management, bringing the law back in should be built on lessons from the past. This article elaborates on three strategies to reconnect law and public management. We map the strengths and weaknesses of each law-government nexus and illustrate these with the case of the Dutch tax agency. In our strategies that aim to reconceptualize the current law-government nexus, we incorporate the benefits of each paradigm for public management theory. The revised law-governance nexus enables the PG paradigm to correspond to contemporary issues without encountering old pathologies.","PeriodicalId":29947,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Public Management and Governance","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2020-11-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91138004","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Law is a fundamental aspect of public management, but many public management scholars and jurists view each other with mutual incomprehension. The misunderstanding stems in part from incompatible concepts about the nature of government and the nature of people. By combining a legal perspective on the nature of government with a managerial perspective on the nature of people, this article produces law-based management principles that are relevant in any common law country. Officials’ actions could be improved by observing three simple rules of thumb: every action needs legal authority; every decision needs relevant facts; and every person may make a case. These principles are not law, but they are derived from court judgments: they are judge-made lore. A central aspect of judge-made lore is the importance and implications of the use of public authority.
{"title":"Judge-Made Lore: Public Management and Public Authority","authors":"M. Prebble","doi":"10.1093/ppmgov/gvaa021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ppmgov/gvaa021","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Law is a fundamental aspect of public management, but many public management scholars and jurists view each other with mutual incomprehension. The misunderstanding stems in part from incompatible concepts about the nature of government and the nature of people. By combining a legal perspective on the nature of government with a managerial perspective on the nature of people, this article produces law-based management principles that are relevant in any common law country. Officials’ actions could be improved by observing three simple rules of thumb: every action needs legal authority; every decision needs relevant facts; and every person may make a case. These principles are not law, but they are derived from court judgments: they are judge-made lore. A central aspect of judge-made lore is the importance and implications of the use of public authority.","PeriodicalId":29947,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Public Management and Governance","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2020-11-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79330552","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Over the latter half of the twentieth century, legal changes obliged public organizations in the United States to alter and standardize their procedures to provide due process and promote equal protection. Integration of administration into the constitutional order produced two remarkable changes. First, the everyday work of administration uses forms and vocabularies resembling those of law and the court system. Second, adoption of legally mandated due process protections catalyzed a broader values reorientation, yielding practices that promote social equity and public participation. However, as administrative practice became more law-like, partisans and organized interests made new use of legal tactics to bend administrative decision-making toward their own ends. Common patterns of unequal outcomes in the American legal system thus arise, in similar forms, in administrative settings. Law’s problems have thereby become governance problems. This article elucidates these past and current patterns by reading law and society literature alongside that of public administration and public management. In doing so, it shows that these two fields have long developed in parallel and have much to contribute to each other. This article underscores the importance of mutual learning and understanding between the fields of law and society and public administration and management.
{"title":"Public Management’s Problems are Legal Problems: How Law Contributes to Inequity in Contemporary Governance","authors":"Ben Merriman","doi":"10.1093/ppmgov/gvaa020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ppmgov/gvaa020","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Over the latter half of the twentieth century, legal changes obliged public organizations in the United States to alter and standardize their procedures to provide due process and promote equal protection. Integration of administration into the constitutional order produced two remarkable changes. First, the everyday work of administration uses forms and vocabularies resembling those of law and the court system. Second, adoption of legally mandated due process protections catalyzed a broader values reorientation, yielding practices that promote social equity and public participation. However, as administrative practice became more law-like, partisans and organized interests made new use of legal tactics to bend administrative decision-making toward their own ends. Common patterns of unequal outcomes in the American legal system thus arise, in similar forms, in administrative settings. Law’s problems have thereby become governance problems. This article elucidates these past and current patterns by reading law and society literature alongside that of public administration and public management. In doing so, it shows that these two fields have long developed in parallel and have much to contribute to each other. This article underscores the importance of mutual learning and understanding between the fields of law and society and public administration and management.","PeriodicalId":29947,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Public Management and Governance","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2020-10-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81609981","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-10-12DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-92381-9
A. Ladner, N. Soguel, Yves Emery, S. Weerts, Stéphane Nahrath
{"title":"Swiss Public Administration","authors":"A. Ladner, N. Soguel, Yves Emery, S. Weerts, Stéphane Nahrath","doi":"10.1007/978-3-319-92381-9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92381-9","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":29947,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Public Management and Governance","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2020-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80026985","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Performance Management (PM) systems are intended to inform managerial decision-making, driving performance improvements through managerial reforms. Despite the prevalence of these systems, they were implemented with little evidence of the assumed relationship between PM and organizational performance. Since 2010, a literature on this relationship has developed, but it is heterogeneous and inconclusive. This review develops a theoretical framework of heterogeneous PM effects adapted from Kroll (2015, Public Performance & Management Review, 39, 7–32) and assesses it for consistency with empirical evidence from three cases of educational accountability reforms. This framework assumes that effects of PM systems are driven by the effectiveness of an organization’s managerial response, which is determined by adopting one of three strategies: prospecting, reacting, or gaming. The cases demonstrate that organizational strategy, as inferred from managerial response, predicts performance under accountability. This raises questions about how to predict managerial response, suggesting that managerial autonomy plays an important role.
绩效管理(PM)系统旨在为管理决策提供信息，通过管理改革推动绩效改进。尽管这些系统很流行，但它们在实施时很少有证据表明项目管理与组织绩效之间存在假定的关系。自2010年以来，关于这种关系的文献有所发展，但它是异质的和不确定的。本文采用Kroll (2015, Public Performance & Management review, 39, 7-32)的理论框架构建了异质性项目管理效应，并对其与三个教育问责制改革案例的经验证据进行了一致性评估。该框架假设项目管理系统的效果是由组织管理响应的有效性驱动的，这是由采用以下三种策略之一决定的:勘探、反应或博弈。这些案例表明，从管理反应中推断出的组织战略预测了问责制下的绩效。这就提出了如何预测管理反应的问题，这表明管理自主权起着重要作用。
{"title":"Understanding Heterogeneous Effects of Performance Management: An Application of Kroll’s Contingency Approach to Educational Accountability","authors":"Philip Gigliotti","doi":"10.1093/ppmgov/gvaa019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ppmgov/gvaa019","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Performance Management (PM) systems are intended to inform managerial decision-making, driving performance improvements through managerial reforms. Despite the prevalence of these systems, they were implemented with little evidence of the assumed relationship between PM and organizational performance. Since 2010, a literature on this relationship has developed, but it is heterogeneous and inconclusive. This review develops a theoretical framework of heterogeneous PM effects adapted from Kroll (2015, Public Performance & Management Review, 39, 7–32) and assesses it for consistency with empirical evidence from three cases of educational accountability reforms. This framework assumes that effects of PM systems are driven by the effectiveness of an organization’s managerial response, which is determined by adopting one of three strategies: prospecting, reacting, or gaming. The cases demonstrate that organizational strategy, as inferred from managerial response, predicts performance under accountability. This raises questions about how to predict managerial response, suggesting that managerial autonomy plays an important role.","PeriodicalId":29947,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Public Management and Governance","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2020-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88475807","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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