Private Action for Public Good?: The Public Role of Voluntary Sector Organizations

Voluntary sector organizations claim to be private institutions acting for the public good. However, if the concept of public is disengaged from the state and connected instead to citizenship, VSOs can be shown to have both private and public origins, as well as private and public impacts. As citizens, VSOs are public organizations serving the public good through their purported representation of the people and civic leadership. The legitimacy of their assumption of these public roles remains a continuing challenge.     

Public or Private? Public Corporations,Companies and the Decline of the Middle Ground

In the era of New Public Management in the Anglo-Saxon countries, governments have become infatuated with things private and disparaging of things public. This dramatic attitudinal shift has been reflected in the importation of private sector business method into so much of what government does, and in the championing of privatization in its various forms as a way of reducing the size and importance of public sectors. The change represents a retreat from the more traditional acceptance that a valuable social purpose was served by middle ground structures and activities located in the outer parts of these public sectors, i.e., between the highly politicised cores of government systems and the highly commercialised institutions of private enterprise. In particular, this article argues that the form of the public (or government, statutory or crown) corporation epitomised such social value, and that the state-owned company which is now so often replacing it represents an abandoning of social value.     

5 Public Administration and Organization Studies

Abstract

The study of public organizations has withered over time in mainstream organization studies research, as scholars in the field have migrated to business schools. This is so even though government organizations are an important part of the universe of organizations—the largest organizations in the world are agencies of the U.S. government. At the same time, the study of public administration, once in the mainstream of organization studies, has moved into a ghetto, separate and unequal. Centered in business schools, mainstream organization research became isomorphic to its environment—coming to focus on performance issues, which are what firms care about. Since separation, the dominant current in public administration has become isomorphic with its environment. In this case, however, this meant the field moved backward from the central reformist concern of its founders with improving government performance, and developed instead a focus on managing constraints (i.e., avoiding bad things, such as corruption or misuse of power, from occurring) in a public organization environment. Insufficient concern about performance among public administration scholars is particularly unfortunate because over the past 15 years, there has occurred a significant growth of interest among practitioners in improving government performance. The origins and consequences of these developments are discussed, and a research agenda for organization studies research that takes the public sector seriously is proposed.     

Looking for Public Administration Theories?

Since the sixties, a number of Western countries have conducted a lot of NPM type reforms in order to improve their public administration (PA). However, more than forty years of NPM type reforms raise questions about whether these reforms consist in an improvement of PA or if alternative theories could find their place in the field of PA reforms. In order to answer these questions, the five main public administration theories (New Public Administration, New Public Management, Public Value Management, New Public Service and New Public Governance) have been selected, and based on an original analysis of their incipits, some guidelines are proposed for practitioners and students in PA.     

Strategic Management in the Public Sector: Reflections on It’s Applicability to Iranian Public Organizations

Strategic management is a managerial story of private sector that has been transferred to the public sector. Many authors have challenged its applicability in public organizations. This paper discusses some important barriers to implementation of strategic management in the public sector empirically. After presenting a conceptual model, we examine several important factors that influence the failure or shortcomings of public sector strategic management. The last section of paper offers implications for theory and practice.     

Risk Management in Public–Private Partnership Contracts

Public–private partnerships (PPPs) allow private companies to build, own and operate public projects such as schools and hospitals on behalf of the public sector. PPP contracts commonly require the private agent to take responsibilities for the performance of the asset over a long term, at least for a significant part of its useful life, so that efficiencies arising from long-term investment and asset management can be realized. However, the evidence is finely balanced on the effectiveness of such initiatives in obtaining the intended goals. This brings to the fore the challenge of designing and implementing innovative partnership plans to manage public services more effectively. More emphasis needs to be placed on strategies for the transfer of risk for the successful conclusion of PPP contracts.

Public Health Institutions,Clinical Research and Protection System of Patients’ Rights: An Impact Evaluation of Public Policy

Public health institutions are involved in human experimentations, which is a specific phase of pharmaceutical industry’s production process. These medical centers collect clinical evidence about experimental treatments and, at the same time, they have to guarantee patients’ safety through appropriate Institutional Review Boards. Taking human experimentation into account, this work aims at estimating a public policy designed to reduce transaction costs that are related to the protection system of patients’ rights, with both a normative and positive approach. On the one hand, considering a sample of European countries as counterfactual, an empirical analysis is performed in order to estimate the impact of a national law aimed at harmonizing the procedure to obtain opinions on clinical trials. On the other hand, an alternative law, which might be able to favor the exchange between pharmaceutical companies and patients, is proposed.     

Do Teleworkers Possess Higher Levels of Public Service Motivation?

A survey conducted on U.S. federal government employees was analyzed, and the results indicate that federal workers who telecommuted frequently (i.e., those teleworking 4 to 5 days a week) reported higher levels of PSM than federal workers who did not telecommute frequently. The results also revealed that frequent teleworkers reported higher levels of PSM than employees teleworking less than 1 day a week and employees teleworking 1 day a week. However, frequent teleworkers were not found to report higher levels of PSM than employees teleworking 2 to 3 days a week.     

Can Public Management Contribute to Governance in Developing Countries?

Governance ensures a wide range of desirable values including efficiency, productivity, participation, transparency, and accountability. The wide scope and overambitious demands of governance make it difficult to conceptualize and operationalize. Despite huge investments in time and resources, developing countries seldom succeed in establishing good governance. Based on the experience of Hong Kong, this article argues that many of the desired values of governance can be attained through effective design and the implementation of public management reforms. Public management cannot serve as an alternative for governance, but reforms in this area can help update and adjust institutional structures, processes, and practices in developing countries; they help to ensure the benefits of the desired values of governance without undertaking enormous risks. However, the size of a country and the nature of its political system will influence the degree of success in establishing governance.     

Voter’s Perceptions on Candidate Choice for Director of Public Educational Institutions

Public Organization Review - This study aimed to verify whether the voters’ perceptions (trust, expertise, attractiveness, image and perceived quality) from the academic community influence...     

Does the Public Sector Lead the Wage Evolution in the French Economy?

Has the wage policy of the State in the French public sector (government services and State owned enterprises) had a leading effect on wages in the private sector up until the early 1980s? This paper firstly aims at verifying the existence and analysing the causes of this leading effect. The second aim is to estimate the scope of the changes which took place from the early 1980s. It shows that the wage policy of the State did influence disinflation in the 1980s and early 1990s. Indeed, it not only slowed down the growth of wages in the public sector but, by this means, it also influenced indireclty the growth of wages in the private sector.     

Democracy and Private Property: Governance of a Three-Party Public–Private Partnership

This paper contributes to the study of efficient governance of public–private partnerships (PPPs) through an inductive comparative case study of three riding schools in Sweden. Each school is a three-party PPP between a private firm, a democratic nonprofit association, and a municipality. The results indicate that efficient PPPs mixing private, collective, and communal interests can be established through an adaptive governance strategy. The private firm can shield the democratic association from market influence through adapting to market conditions; the municipality can create a governance strategy; and the democratic association can focus on providing riding services and fostering democratic governance.

Do Compensation Consultants Drive Up CEO Pay? Evidence from UK Public Firms

Do compensation consultants drive up CEO pay for the benefit of managers, or do they design pay packages to benefit firm owners? Using a large sample of UK firms from the FTSE All‐Share Index over the 2003–2011 period, we show a positive correlation between the presence of compensation consultants and CEO pay. Importantly, isolating this effect is somewhat dependent on the endogenous selection of consultants and the statistical modelling strategy deployed. We find evidence that compensation consultants improve CEO compensation design when their expertise is of greater importance (e.g. during the post‐financial crisis period, or for firms that have particularly weak compensation policies). In addition, our findings show that compensation consultants increase CEO pay–performance sensitivity. The balance of evidence supports optimal contracting theory more than managerial power theory, but the authors caution the limits to this verification. We are careful to note that the more compelling evidence for the positive effect of pay consultants on CEOs is based on advanced methods (such as propensity score matching and difference‐in‐differences), and that more standard approaches (such as OLS and fixed effects) are unlikely to reveal the same level of causality of consultants on CEO pay.     

Metabolism of Public Research Organizations: How Do Laboratories Consume State Subsidies?

Public Organization Review - The goal of this study is to suggest a new approach, called metabolism of research organizations, which analyzes how labs consume public funding to manage...     

Japan’s Innovation of Public Organizations in the Research and Development Field

The Japanese government implemented drastic restructuring of the central government in 2001. As a part of this reform, the incorporated administrative agency (IAA) system was newly introduced in view of carrying out certain public functions in a more flexible, business-like and autonomous way. Research and development activities in the public sector are now mostly conducted by the incorporated administrative agencies. In this article, the purpose of this reorganization is firstly described followed by the outline of this system and current accomplishments. In concluding, the Japanese undertaking of a new public organization is analyzed in comparison with the European and “Anglo-Saxon” countries.

Why Do People from Southern Italy Seek Jobs in the Public Sector?

This paper analyses the choice open to a worker seeking a job in the public and private sectors of the labour market. The private sector is identified by a steeper wage profile and by lower job security than the public sector. The reservation wage for the two sectors is calculated in the first part of the paper. The results reveal that the reservation wage for the public sector is higher than that for the private sector. The effect of career prospects, job riskiness and labour demand on optimal time allocation between the search in the two sectors is then analysed. Finally, an empirical analysis is made in order to study Italian workers’ search strategies. It highlights relevant geographical differences which can be interpreted through the theoretical results obtained in the paper.     

Politics−Bureaucracy Relationship in Bangladesh: Consequences for the Public Service Commission

The paper attempts to analyze the consequences of political pressure placed on the Public Service Commission (PSC) of Bangladesh. Through extensive literature review and empirical research, the authors conclude that the independence, efficiency and effectiveness of the PSC largely depend on the politics–administration relationship. Furthermore, this relationship is affected by regime types and it regulates the optimum functioning or malfunctioning of the institution.

Is it the Brazilian Way? Extending the Comparison of Public and Private Organizations

This study investigates the differences in select organizational characteristics, managerial practices and work attitudes among 670 public and private sector workers in Brazil. The results indicate that in some aspects there is a moderation effect by type of organization. For example,when public employees score high on autonomy and task significance, perceive organizational practices as favourable, and keep membership in the same organization, they tend to be more satisfied than private sector workers. Overall, the findings highlight the need for more international comparisons to gain a better understanding of the public-private distinction.     

Public Multichannel Management – an Integrated Framework of Off- and Online Multichannel Government Services

Government institutions have introduced multichannel environments over time following trends and technological innovations. These public multichannel environments often neglect specific channel characteristics and potentials and thus miss the opportunity to make full use of a strategic channel integration and combination with a focus on customer value creation. This study offers a systematic approach to establish an integrated public multichannel system not only taking into account user preferences, habits and their environment, but also the respective channel issuer and the characteristics of channels and public interfaces. Against this background, the study presents a systematic approach to expand services and channels according to their capacities, and provides academics and practitioners with a framework on public multichannel strategies.     

Residential Mortgages and Public Policy: What to do with Fannie and Freddie?

The current debate on U.S. housing policy focuses on the role of the government in supporting the mortgage market. Existing organizations (Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac) are in conservatorship status, and Congress is considering alternative structures and guarantees including the Johnson‐Crapo bill, to provide catastrophic insurance in support of the coverage from private companies. The resolution of this issue is complicated by the various activities involved in the issue—investment securities, public policy, macroeconomics, accounting, and insurance. This article reviews the impact of these activities on U.S. housing, with a discussion of the feasibility of creating a catastrophic insurance program similar to that of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The federal government has successfully operated catastrophic insurance programs in support of private sector initiatives, and this experience—while certainly not perfect—may be a reasonable approach to the current Fannie/Freddie dilemma.