Changing Public Service Organizations: Current Perspectives and Future Prospects

As governments and public service organizations across the globe engage in strategies of institutional and organizational change, it is timely to examine current developments and a future research agenda for public governance and management. The paper commences with reflections on the state of the field, based on an analysis of papers published in the British Journal of Management over the last decade. While there was some variation apparent across the set, the ‘typical’ article was found to be influenced by the discipline of organizational behaviour, set within the health‐care sector, using case‐study methods within field‐based studies, and investigating shifts in roles and relationships and the management of change. It has also in the past been UK‐centric, though the journal editorial policy and our own article call for a stronger international and comparative focus in the future. The second section of the article summarizes the articles and themes contained in this collection of papers on public service organizations. The third section explores a possible research agenda for the future, arguing for the significance of public sector research for the understanding of management more generally, and for examining the interface between private and public organizations (an increasingly common phenomenon). We suggest the need to set public services research in policy and political contexts, and suggest this may reveal organizational processes of wide interest. We call for a wider set of disciplines to engage in public management research, and to engage in moving the agenda from the study of efficiency to effectiveness as defined by a variety of stakeholders. We address the issue of how far public management researchers should become directly engaged with the world of policy and suggest that whether researchers engage in Mode 1 or Mode 2 research, their work would benefit from a stronger theoretical base.     

Changing Leadership and Gender in Public Sector Organizations

The aim of this paper is to examine the ways in which leadership at middle management level in the public realm is gendered. This is attempted largely through a consideration of academic literature, supported by some empirical findings from a research investigation into higher education and social work in Sweden and England and a review of literature that reveals varying types of leadership characterized as masculinist. Taking the position that context shapes social relationships and subject positions, and provides opportunities as well as constraints, we consider leadership in the public sector under the sway of new public management, framed by neo‐liberalism and the valorization of competition, self‐interested instrumentality, uncertainty and risk, operationalized in public sector organizations through performative regimes. It is argued that while some women and men are willing participants in the new regimes, others are antagonistic or ambivalent, finding themselves mired in neo‐bureaucratic processes of surveillance and control, often stuck in occupational cul‐de‐sacs. It is contended that neo‐liberalism and new public management are associated with masculinist forms of rationality that elevate individual winners and losers and divert attention from collective issues of gender. Rather than focus on gendered styles of leadership it is suggested that it is more important to look at their gendered performance and effects.     

New Public Management: Promote the Public Sector Modernization Through Service Quality. Current Experiences and Future Challenges

This study investigates service quality in the Greek Inland Revenue department. We examine differences in perceptions and expectations of service quality among tax-officers and tax-payers and identify the importance that service quality dimensions have for the above groups. One hundred eighty-one tax-officers and two hundred tax-payers completed a self-reported questionnaire. The analysis demonstrates citizen’s dissatisfaction of service quality. This is consistent with people’s impression of the efficacy of the public service and the low level of service-quality delivered. In terms of the five dimensions of service quality, reliability was rated as the most important dimension and tangibility as the less important one. Understanding citizen’s expectations of service quality will enable tax officers to identify practices in order to accomplish customer commitment and avoid future discontent.     

Modeling Public Management: Current and Future Research

Although a significant amount of research has been carried out in the public management field, recent research has failed to investigate all aspects of public management. In 1999, O’Toole and Meier proposed a formal model to encapsulate all aspects of public management. Since then, more than 20 peer-reviewed articles have adopted the O’Toole–Meier model for their analysis. This study investigates the validity and reliability of the model by reviewing those journal articles that adopted the O’Toole–Meier model. After the review, the study suggests future research questions that could further develop our current understanding of public management.     

Managerial Networking and Stakeholder Support in Public Service Organizations

Resource dependence theory suggests that to function successfully, organizations must obtain certain resources controlled by actors in their environment. To do this effectively, managers often develop networking relationships with key stakeholder groups in order to make critical resources available. Managers in public service organizations, in particular, are frequently under great pressure to network with relevant actors from stakeholder groups in order to build support for service (co)production and legitimacy for strategic and operational decisions. To identify networking strategies which are conducive to stakeholder support, we explore the networking behaviour of over 1,000 English local government managers. Fuzzy cluster analysis identifies four distinctive, though inter-related types of managerial networking: technical, reputational, political, and tokenistic. The cluster membership functions from this analysis are used to examine the relationship between types of networking and stakeholder support in depth. The results of hierarchical regression analysis suggest that technically-orientated networking is the most conducive to stakeholder support, with tokenistic networking the least conducive.     

Working Across Boundaries: Current and Future Perspectives on Global Virtual Teams

Global Virtual Teams (GVTs) are a commonplace in contemporary organizations, and an already established topic of research in international management. While we have a good understanding of advantages and challenges associated with this ubiquitous form of work groups, this special issue aims to contribute to theory development by focusing on key drivers that influence the success of GVTs, along with ways for mitigating their challenges. We briefly review current knowledge on GVTs and propose a structuring framework that can help with both organizing what we know about GVTs, and with guiding the conversation on where the research on this topic might focus next. We then introduce four special issue articles that illustrate avenues for generating new empirical evidence towards uncovering key characteristics and dynamics underlying GVTs complexities, providing useful insights for both theory development and managerial practice.     

Exploring Types of Public Sector Organizations: Past Exercises and Current Issues

Classification is important generally as an aid to better understanding of complex phenomena. In the context of public sector understanding and reform, it should have added importance as a guide to policy makers and reformers. There have been some notable efforts to classify public sector organizations, mostly built on interactions between analysts and the reformers themselves. One such mid-20th century exercise postulated a division of public sector organizations into three categories: departments, local governments, and the rest embracing a mass of quasi-autonomous agencies. The developments of the later 20th century, often associated with changing views about the role of the state, have increased the complexity of this third category and have imposed new pressures on our understandings, with the result that there is now a renewed interest in classification issues.     

The Termination of Public Organizations: Theoretical Perspectives to Revitalize a Promising Research Area

While many studies deal with comparative public sector reform, the fundamental question of whether and to what extent states are actually able to abolish parts of their administrative structure remains untackled. Despite some efforts to solve this puzzle, the topic remains underestimated. This article identifies the main conceptual and theoretical problems associated with existent research on the termination of public organizations. Furthermore, the article systemizes various causal factors of termination into two broad dimensions: “organizational stickiness” and “political incentives.” Taken together, these constitute a typology, which is able to guide future empirical investigation of the termination of public organizations.

New Public Management,Service Provision and Non-Governmental Organizations in Bangladesh

New public management (NPM) is now a universal phenomenon dominating the reform agenda of all countries. Bangladesh is no exception. Following the dismal performance of the state-led development the old paradigm of public sector has come under scrutiny. There is now a call for a minimal government. The scale of operations and the role of the government have to be drastically reduced to focus on core functions. In doing so, this will pave the way for the private sector and the civil society organizations to undertake developmental responsibilities in their areas of expertise. This article is an attempt to analyze the significant role played by Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) in rural development service provisions. It argues that the government has to share the developmental responsibilities with NGOs, which have proved their potential in reaching the target population and that an effective partnership is a sine qua non for the meaningful rural development in Bangladesh.     

Developing Absorptive Capacity Theory for Public Service Organizations: Emerging UK Empirical Evidence

A strong public policy focus on high performance means that utilizing management knowledge effectively is at a premium for UK public service organizations. This study empirically examined two English public agencies to explore the inter‐sectoral transfer of a strategic management model originally developed in the private sector – absorptive capacity – which is one way of conceptualizing an organizational competence in such knowledge mobilization. Two theoretical contributions are made. First, a new absorptive capacity framework for public service organizations is developed which recognizes the participation of public agency project teams during an innovation process proceeding over time with phases of co‐creation, testing, metamorphosis and diffusion. Second, our novel framework modifies an early influential model of absorptive capacity. Counter to this model, we argue that realized absorptive capacity requires agency from skilled and embedded actors to turn ‘curbing routines’ into ‘enabling routines’ in all four stages. Project (middle) managers have flexibility in their roles to seize episodic moments of opportunity to innovate and achieve service delivery goals, and to build absorptive capacity capability. Absorptive capacity capability develops organically over time. Future research directions are discussed.     

资源本位理论:演进与衍生

对资源本位理论的起源、演进与未来研究方向进行了探讨.从资源本位理论的奠基性文献讨论入手,对其演进脉络和本质问题进行梳理与提炼,并进一步探讨了该理论未来的研究议题、方向及研究方法.     

The Future of Labour Relations in the Public Service

Abstract. During the last decade, labour relations in the public service have been subject to pressures for change, less direct, given their protected character, than in the private sector, but not less strong. The main factors of change are (only) in part common to those operating in private sector labour relations: economic constraints and budgetary restrictions, coupled with a general reaction toward the ‘public’ in general have put pressure on employment whose costs represent the major part of public expenditures; the need for greater productivity and efficiency has been increasing in order to reduce labour costs and (possibly) meet the growing demand for (social) services; technological innovations (office automation. computerization and the like) are spreading; the impact of the international competition has begun to be felt not only indirectly via constraints on the state budgets but directly in those sectors of public services which can be somehow ‘transportable’ across borders and hence exposed to foreign initiatives (public works, TLC, to some extent health services. All these factors are emphasized by the European unification process which has already introduced limits in the monetary and financial autonomy of the member states.     

Transforming Public Organizations into Learning Organizations: A Conceptual Model

The concepts of organizational learning and learning organizations have gained popularity in recent organization theory literature as complementary subjects. So far majority of studies on these issues focused on the relationship between organizational learning and its ultimate consequences such as increased innovative capacity, increased productivity, and higher competitive advantage of organizations. Nevertheless, many researchers examined the processes of organizational learning from the standpoint of private enterprises, paying little attention to the dynamics of organizational learning in public sector. This paper is aimed to fill this gap by introducing and discussing the basic constituents of a novel conceptual model which demonstrates the relevant steps in transforming of public organizations into learning organizations.     

Replication of Routines in Organizations: Existing Literature and New Perspectives

Replication of existing routines in new contexts is an important value‐creating strategy for organizations. This paper synthesizes the state of research on replication and organizes the literature around two broad themes: forward knowledge flows (i.e. from a replicator to a replicatee) and reverse knowledge flows. The authors show that the theoretical assumptions of existing research leave important questions around the replication of routines unaddressed. More specifically, they identify research gaps in regard to micro‐level processes of replication. Little is understood about the performance of routines in practice and, related to that, the processes through which routines change during replication. Drawing on recent theorizing on organizational routines, in particular the relationship between the ostensive and performative aspects, helps the authors to unpack the micro‐level processes of forward and reverse knowledge flows. This paper opens two new trajectories for research on replication: (1) a focus on the actions of individual actors in the enactment of organizational routines provides new possibilities for understanding how replication is an inherently political process; (2) conceptualizing change as endogenous within the performance of routines offers a route to a more nuanced understanding of change and deviation in the process of replication. The paper closes with a summary of major theoretical arguments, questions for further research and implications for practitioners.     

Promoting Public Trust in Public Organizations: Explaining the Role of Public Accountability

This paper is aimed at explaining the role of public accountability in promoting public trust in public organizations. Initially a conceptual model was developed. Then, the model was tested empirically in Iran. The result shows that public accountability influences the public trust by improving citizens’ satisfaction. In other words, legal, ethical, financial, functional, and utmost political accountability affect public trust through influencing citizens’ satisfaction. This study also confirms that changes in social trust, citizens’ trust in government, and media will moderate trust in public organizations.

组织学习──现状与展望

组织学习是当前管理学术界和企业界关注的热点问题。基于对大量文献的分析,本文对组织学习的基本概念,组织学习的机理,组织学习的障碍,以及促进组织学习的方法和工具等,进行了系统分析和综述。对该领域研究的现状和不足进行了评析,最后提出了我国今后在组织学习方面需要研究的重要课题。     

Organizations in Public Management: Guest Editors' Introduction

This brief introduction sets the scene for the symposium. It identifies three factors which prompted its preparation, and then outlines the six contributions to it.     

Public Administration and Policy: Capacity Building for High Performing Public Organizations in Vietnam

Public Organization Review -     

Diversity Management and Fairness in Public Organizations

Diversity management was initially adopted in the pursuit of fairness and equality and the promotion of an inclusive workforce by public organizations. However, previous studies regarding diversity management have focused on job performance or job satisfaction. Thus, in this article, we attempt to examine whether diversity management advances organizational fairness in public organizations. By examining data from the 2013 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS), we find that diversity management is positively related to the perception of organizational fairness in the federal workplace. In addition, we also find that female and minority employees perceive diversity management in terms of fairness differently.