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To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.2010.01853.x Byline: KENNETH J. MEIER (1), LAURENCE J. O'TOOLE (2) Abstract: Networks and managing in the network have been central concerns of public management scholars for years (Provan and Milward 1991; O'Toole 1997; Agranoff and McGuire 2003; Herranz 2008). The literature has investigated the extent of networks (Hall and O'Toole 2004), the appropriate way to measure networks and networking behaviour (McGuire 2002; Meier and O'Toole 2005), and the role that networking plays in improving organizational performance (O'Toole and Meier 2003). Although there are qualifications in the literature to the rosy scenario that managing in the network is always a good thing (O'Toole and Meier 2004), and although the benefits of managerial networking show diminishing returns (Hicklin et al. 2008), there has not been much investigation of the factors that enhance or detract from networking's impact on performance. This study examines the interactive relationship between management capacity and managerial networking using a panel of several hundred public organizations over an 8-year period. The empirical results show that managerial capacity does interact with networking and enhances the positive impact of networking over an array of performance indicators. At the same time, building managerial capacity is a central management choice, and that decision has ramifications for organizations that are not always positive. The paper concludes with the managerial implications of the strategic choice to build management capacity. Author Affiliation: (1)Kenneth J. Meier is in the Department of Political Science, Texas A&M University, and Cardiff University School of Business. (2)Laurence J. O'Toole, Jr is in the Department of Public Administration and Policy, School of Public and International Affairs, University of Georgia. Article History: Date received 19 August 2008. Date accepted 13 July 2009.

Several studies are conducted to explain the correlation present between the network alarms, strategic management and the service performance of an organization. The public services are shown to be positively affected by the various strategy processes that are based on the rational planning.

To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.2009.01773.x Byline: KENNETH J. MEIER (1), LAURENCE J. O'TOOLE (2) Abstract: Do negative budgetary shocks reduce performance in public organizations? If so, by how much and in terms of which criteria? Are public managers able to make internal management choices to limit or eliminate the effects of such shocks? These questions are investigated in a set of hundreds of organizations over an 8-year period. For the most part, budgetary shocks of 10 per cent or more have only limited or no negative impacts on performance in the short term. The most salient policy objective and production for more disadvantaged clientele are especially insulated from shocks. Decisions about internal resource allocation and personnel management can be shown to protect core production while sacrificing more peripheral activities and capital investment. Questions that remain to be investigated include whether short-term protection comes at the expense of some longer-term losses, and-ironically-whether effective management under such circumstances weakens over time the political case for adequate budgets. Author Affiliation: (1)Kenneth J. Meier is in the Department of Political Science, Texas A&M University and the Cardiff School of Business, Cardiff University (2)Laurence J. O'Toole, Jr is in the Department of Public Administration and Policy, The University of Georgia. Article History: Date received 22 February 2007. Date accepted 15 July 2007.

Employee turnover is a neglected topic in public administration (Selden and Moynihan 2000, 74). One of the leading public personnel texts devotes only a single brief mention to turnover in [...]

In recent years, the research literature on public management has begun to focus on the link between management and public organizational performance (for instance, Boyne and Walker 2005; Ingraham and [...]

To purchase or authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.2007.00667.x Byline: RICHARD M. WALKER (1), LAURENCE J. O'TOOLE (2), KENNETH J. MEIER (3) Abstract: Increased complexity in the world of public management has resulted in the growth of networks of actors who, operating interdependently, co-produce public services. Much of the prior networking literature conflates structure (the network) with behaviour (networking). Based on this concern we analyse the managerial networking practices of over 1,000 officers in English local government. We find extensive networking activity amongst three groups of officers and show that corporate officers, chief officers and service managers develop logical patterns of interaction among network nodes and initiation that reflect their level of management. We conclude that where you are in the organizational hierarchy matters for networking behaviour and discuss the implications of these findings for future research. Author Affiliation: (1)Richard M. Walker is a Professor in Public Management and Policy at the Centre of Urban Planning and Environmental Management, University of Hong Kong and School of City and Regional Planning, Cardiff University. (2)Laurence J. O'Toole, Jr. is the Margaret Hughes and Robert T. Golembiewski Professor of Public Administration and Head of the Department of Public Administration and Policy at the University of Georgia. (3)Kenneth J. Meier is the Charles H. Gregory Chair in Liberal Arts and Professor of Political Science at Texas A&M University and Professor of Public Management in the Cardiff School of Business, Cardiff University. Article History: Date received 27 May 2005. Date accepted 12 December 2005.

Systematic evidence has accumulated in recent years that public management makes a difference in a variety of ways when programs are implemented (for recent coverage, see Ingraham and Lynn 2004; [...]

Scholars of public organizations have begun to emphasize emotional labor in studies of gender in the workplace, finding that the skills women bring to organizations are often overlooked and undercompensated even though they play a vital role in the organization. Emotional labor is an individual's effort to present emotions in a way that is desired by the organization. The authors hypothesize that employers with greater emotional labor expectations of their employees will have more effective interactions with clients, better internal relationships, and superior program performance. This article tests the effects of emotional labor in a bureaucratic workforce over time. Multiple regression results show that organizations with more women at the street level have higher overall organizational performance. Additionally, emotional labor contributes to organizational productivity over and above its role in employee turnover and client satisfaction.

The literature on political control of bureaucracy reveals that bureaucracies are highly responsive to political forces. This paper argues that the political control literature misses evidence from other academic literature that bears directly on this phenomenon. Specifically, researchers need to consider the values of the bureaucracy in any effort to assess the degree of political control. An empirical test is presented using a data set from public education. Results show bureaucratic values to be far more influential in explaining bureaucratic outputs and outcomes than political factors. These findings suggest that a reinterpretation of previous empirical research is urgently in order.

Do men and women manage differently? Do their efforts have different impacts on public program performance? Building from a formal treatment of public management and performance, this study investigates how the interaction of gender and management strategies influences organizational performance. Focusing on several hundred public organizations and their top managers over a three-year period, the analysis maps the gender question onto Mark Moore's distinction among managing upward toward political principals, downward toward organizational agents, and outward toward the networked environment. Findings indicate that women and men as top managers have different performance impacts, and these impacts vary by managerial function as well.

Increasing workforce diversity poses some of the most challenging questions for the management of public services (Riccucci 2002). Governments around the world have legislated to ensure that public organizations are [...]

The dependent variable in all the articles presented in this symposium issue of JPART was organizational performance in public agencies. Management variables included organizational strategy, resources, leadership, goals, workforce diversity, [...]

The theory of representative bureaucracy concerns whether bureaucracy mirrors the origins and values of the population and, if so, whether such representation makes any difference. This article extends Hindera's examination of active bureaucratic representation within the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to determine the effect of introducing new goals (disability discrimination) and priorities (sexual harassment) on the EEOC's representational patterns. Using data from the late 1980s and late 1990s, we find the extent of active representation of African Americans declined. Although the EEOC is now pursuing more cases of sex discrimination, no evidence of active representation exists for women in EEOC district offices.

Most literature on public-sector networks focuses on how to build and manage systems and ignores the political problems that networks can create for organizations. This article argues that individual network nodes can work to bias the organization's actions in ways that benefit the organization's more advantaged clientele. The argument is supported by an analysis of performance data from 500 organizations over a five-year period. A classic theoretical point is supported in a systematic empirical investigation. While networks can greatly benefit the organization, they have a dark side that managers and scholars need to consider more seriously.

In the United States, intergovernmental programs have become more the rule than the exception. Most 'national' public initiatives are implemented with active involvement by states and localities, and a large [...]

Why is contracting used more frequently under some circumstances than others? What is its impact on spending for core mission and on service quality? These questions are explored with data from more than 1,000 Texas school districts. The evidence for a recent three-year period shows that contracting is negatively related to spending on school districts' central task and is not positively associated with district performance. Why, then, do districts contract? While several variables are associated with the degree of contracting, the most interesting is the relative size of a district's bureaucratic staff. Furthermore, the relationship between contracting and bureaucracy is reciprocal: Each is associated with subsequent growth in the other. The dynamic suggests an updated version of Parkinson's law. These findings indicate the need for researchers to probe the causes and consequences of contracting more thoroughly to help public managers assess this important option.

Camilla Stivers. 2002. Gender Images in Public Administration: Legitimacy and the Administrative State, second edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. 184 pp. The distinction in Western liberal thought between public and [...]

In Luther Gulick's classic essay 'Notes on the Theory of Organization,' he argued that span of control structures relationships between leaders and subordinates in organizations. Commenting on the state of knowledge about span of control, Gulick lamented the lack of systematic research on what he viewed as three key determinants of span of control: diversification of function, time, and space. This study adopts Gulick's approach to studying span of control by examining the effects of diversity of function, time, and space in structuring relationships among personnel in a sample of 678 texas public school districts. We then investigate Joan Woodward's link between span of control and organizational performance. Our results reveal that although Gulick was correct in asserting that diversity of function, time, and space play a role in determining how spans of control are structured, these variables have different meanings that depend on the level of organizational hierarchy analyzed.

Ideas swing wildly in and out of fashion--take, for instance, the notion of stability in administration. For decades conventional wisdom simply assumed that stability contributes to public administrative performance. Such [...]

This study demonstrates a quantitative approach to assessing gender discrimination in public salaries at the individual level. Using data from more than 1,000 school districts in Texas over a period of four years, the results show that gender differences in superintendents' salaries are subtle rather than systematic. Female superintendents who replace male superintendents receive lower compensation. Local district wealth also interacts with gender to affect salaries., Nearly 40 years have gone by since the passage of the Equal Pay Act, the first modern statute directed at protecting workers against wage discrimination. The Equal Pay Act of [...]

Studies of representative bureaucracy highlight both passive and active forms of representation. Passive representation refers to similarities in demographic characteristics between bureaucrats and client populations. Active representation refers to situations in which bureaucracies work to further the needs of a particular group of people. In this study, we examine the role employee discretion plays in linking passive and active forms of representation in a sample of six hundred school districts in Texas. Specifically, we argue that active representation is enhanced in organizations that vest greater discretion in their employees. Our study reveals that minority student performance improves under organizational structures that promote, rather than limit, minority teacher discretion., Bureaucracies are political institutions that are capable of representing the interests of citizens just as legislatures or executives do (Mosher 1969; Rourke 1984). Some bureaucracies are designed to be active [...]

Principal-agent models, derived from such disparate disciplines as law, finance, accounting, and economics, have become the basis for an extensive set of studies relating bureaucracy to elected officials (see Mitnick [...]

Objectives. This study examines the effectiveness of state and federal taxes in reducing the consumption of cigarettes, estimates the impact of government health warnings, and shows how warnings and taxes interact. Methods. By means of a pooled time-series analysis from 1955 through 1994 with the 50 states as units of analysis, the impact of excise taxes on cigarette consumption for several different models and econometric techniques is assessed. Results. From 1955 through 1994, increases in state taxes were effective in reducing cigarette use. Federal tax increases, however, appear to have been more effective. This difference is partly the result of the 'bootlegging' of cigarettes across state lines and the size of the increases in the federal tax. Cigarette consumption also declined when health warning labels were added. Conclusions. Increases of taxes on cigarettes are associated with declines in the consumption of tobacco. Because of inflation, increased health concerns, and the declining percentage of smokers, however, large reductions in consumption require large tax increases. (Am J Public Health. 1997:87: 1126-1130)

In 'Democracy and Bureaucracy' Meier argues that the bureaucracy problem in the United States is, in reality, a governance problem. Framed in this way, he argues the key problem are failures of electoral institutions rather than failures of bureaucracy. As a result, public administration needs to broaden its focus and include the study of electoral institutions as well as the study of bureaucracy. Effective governance is possible only if students of public administration return to their reformist roots and address both bureaucratic and electoral institutions. As a starting point in such a debate, Meier proposes a series of reforms for U.S. political institutions., It hasn't been my aim to tell people what to think...I have tried, rather, to tell them how to think -- specifically, of course, about public administration. The United States [...]

How can academic research be made more relevant to practitioners? The authors argue that the dominant quantitative technique in public administration, regression, and recent improvements in that technique, focus on the average cases rather than the high-performing cases. This focus may serve academics well but it serves practitioners poorly. They introduce a new quantitative technique that better fits public administration's need for prescription. Their approach, substantively weighted least squares, stresses how high-performance agencies differ from the average agency. The technique in combination with more traditional methods can address both how things are as well as how they might be., Public administration, in the words of Herbert Simon (1969), is a science of the artificial. Unlike natural sciences, it is concerned not so much with how things are as how [...]

Precise rules and regulations of a particular policy prescription yield clear and positive results. The policy must identify clear goals, and indicate coherent rules for administrative responsibility and policy implementation. These should be assigned to committed agencies. A time series analysis of the US family planning policies indicates that only Title X, the categorical grant program, achieves maximum intended success due to its coherent rules. Title X has the maximum positive effect on birth and abortion rates, prenatal care and infant mortality.

Will reducing bureaucracy improve education? According to Kevin B. Smith and Kenneth J. Meier, few ideas have swept the nation with such fervor as the proposal that if school systems would adopt public choice reforms student performance would improve. The authors reflect on Chubb and Moe's thesis calling for an elimination of bureaucracy and its harmful restraints. However, Smith and Meier use a precise measure of bureaucracy and find that bureaucracy is not related to three different measures of student performance. Their position is that bureaucracies develop because school systems need administrators and administrative capacity to function effectively. Reducing bureaucracy will impose administrative tasks on street-level personnel (teachers) and will likely impair their performance rather than improve it., In a provocative analysis, Chubb and Moe (1990, 1988) argue that private schools perform better than public schools. They reason that efforts by democratic institutions and the complex environments of [...]

An analysis of federal drug law enforcement agencies reveals that bureaucracies formulated and executed by presidents are ineffective in implementing public policies, disproving Terry Moe's theory that presidential bureaucracies are more effective than Congressional agencies. Policy effectiveness depends on a thorough understanding of the working of the bureaucracy, and policy makers should look beyond simple theories of institutional design for effective policy-making.

Objectives. This study examines whether state family planning expenditures and abortion funding for Medicaid-eligible women might reduce the number of low-birthweight babies, babies with late or no prenatal care, and premature births, as well as the rates of infant and neonatal mortality. Methods. Using a pooled time-series analysis from 1982 to 1988 the 50 states as units of analysis, this study assessed the impact of family planning expenditures and abortion funding on several public health outcomes while controlling for other important variables and statistical problems inherent in pooled time-series studies. Results. States that funded abortions had a significantly higher rate of abortions and significantly lower rates of teen pregnancy, low-birthweight babies, premature births, and births with late or no prenatal care. States that had higher expenditures for family planning had significantly fewer abortions, low-birthweight babies, births with late or no prenatal care, infant deaths, and neonatal deaths. Conclusions. Funding abortions for Medicaid-eligible women and increasing the level of expenditures for family planning are associated with major differences in infant and maternal health in the United States. (Am J Public Health. 1994;84:1468-1472), Family planning, birth control and abortion may all have public health consequences. Thus, how and how much they are funded can also have an effect on public health. The US government does not fund abortions, except in cases of rape or incest. However, state governments can and do fund them. A study of abortion rates, funding for abortion and family planning services, and measures of public health such as teenage pregnancies, premature births, low-birth-weight infants and infant mortality, examined data for the 50 states from 1982 to 1988. Results indicate that funding for family planning reduces the abortion rate; government funding of abortions increases the abortion rate. Family planning funding is related to lower infant mortality, fewer low-birth-weight infants and less delayed prenatal care. It does not seem to affect prematurity or rates of teenagers giving birth, but funding of abortions does affect these two factors. For example, each additional dollar spent on family planning services means about .16 fewer infant deaths, per 1,000 live births. States that fund abortions have much lower teenage birthrates.

Objectives. This paper reexamines the work of Meier and Licari in a previous issue of the Journal. Methods. The impact of excise taxes on cigarette consumption and sales was measured via standard regression analysis. Results. The 1983 federal tax increase is shown to have an anomalous effect on the regression results. When those data are excluded, there is no significant difference between state and federal tax increases. Further investigation suggests that firms raised cigarette prices substantially in the years surrounding the 1983 federal tax increase, which accounts for the relatively large decrease in consumption during this period. Conclusions. Federal excise taxes per se do not appear to be more effective than state excise taxes in terms of reducing cigarette consumption. The reaction of cigarette firms to government policies appears to be an important determinant of the success of antismoking initiatives. (Am J Public Health. 1998;88:1118-1119)

This manuscript provides the first systematic test of a formal theory of managing government programs in a network context (see O'Toole and Meier 1999). Using data from several hundred school districts in Texas, we create a measure of network management that reflects the time school superintendents interact with several sets of significant actors in the environment. We find that network management is not only related to overall organizational performance, it has positive impacts even in the presence of a lagged dependent variable. Further, management appears to interact with other organizational resources in a nonlinear manner to further augment organizational performance. Although public school networks are not as complicated or as populated as those of many other public organizations, the findings suggest how management might matter in these other networks., Public managers often operate in settings that involve public and other institutional actors networked in patterns of interdependence. Considerable attention has been focused on networks, as scholars in a number [...]

What makes a public agency perform at a high level? Some agencies are doing extremely well in their environment and it may be because they are lucky enough to have access to plentiful resources, excellent management, and a supportive public. Unfortunately, cases such as these provide tittle prescriptive evidence for public managers looking to improve their own agency's performance. We apply a new quantitative technique (SWAT) to educational outcome data for 534 school districts in Texas and identify those districts doing extremely well given their fixed and often limited inputs. This approach is useful because the truly superior agencies are those that do more with less, and public managers who lead their organizations to high performance levels despite limited resources provide potential solutions to others., Charles Goodsell (1983) compares American bureaucracy to a good used car: it is reliable, relatively inexpensive to operate, and generally gives good service. Bureaucracy, in Goodsell's estimation, is the equivalent [...]

A major problem in assessing bureaucratic performance is the difficulty in judging the final social outcomes stemming from the work of public agencies. As a result, public agencies are frequently evaluated based on the outputs they produce. Agency outputs (such as, criminal cases solved, inspections) are easier to measure than the actual contributions agencies make to social outcomes (such as, preventing workplace discrimination, protecting the environment). When agency performance is evaluated in terms of numerical outputs, bureaucrats have an incentive to maximize outputs, regardless of whether maximizing outputs is the preferred strategy for achieving desired social outcomes (a form of goal displacement). This incentive to maximize outputs may lead to organizational cheating, in which public agencies purposely manipulate output levels to portray their work in the best light possible.(*) This study examines the problems of goal displacement and organizational cheating in Texas public schools. Specifically, we examine the degree to which school districts cheat to manipulate student pass rates on standardized exams. School districts 'cheat' by liberally exempting certain students from these exams in hopes of raising overall district pass rates. Scarce institutional resources and extreme task demands are associated with cheating. From a management perspective, this study demonstrates the problems in implementing performance standards. From an academic perspective, it provides the first theory about when and why organizations cheat., Policy making at all levels of government has become much more complex over the past three decades. Governments are responsible for maintaining economic stability, combating racial discrimination, providing a safety [...]

Public administration research has fallen notably behind research in related fields in terms of methodological sophistication. This hinders the development of empirical investigations into substantive questions of interest to practitioners and academics. The widespread practice of importing methodological tools from closely related but theoretically divergent fields leads to poor research designs for questions of measurement and estimation unique to public administration. We argue that the discipline needs to invest heavily in developing its own methodological path and recommend the use of time series, likelihood, Bayesian, SWAT, and GLM approaches. In addition, authors of public administration scholarship need to avoid the deeply flawed and clearly damaging social science paradigm for theory confirmation: the null hypothesis significance test. We also note that public administration as a distinct discipline needs to pay considerably more attention to developing its own inventory of data sets., Public administration, in Dwight Waldo's terms, has become a profession. With that achievement, an examination of the methodological infrastructure of the profession is merited. Every profession rests on an infrastructure [...]

Management theory suggests that management matters in public organizations--its impact is conditional on structure and often nonlinear in form. This article distills much of the theoretical work on management in public organizations into a formal, testable model. Management is presented as more crucial in networks than in more structured hierarchies. Management influences organization performance by 1) creating structure for the organization and thus system stability, 2) buffering the organization from environmental influences, and 3) exploiting opportunities in the environment. Decisions about which of these actions to take are at the core of strategic management. This article is the first step in a full model of managerial action in public organizations., How does public management matter for the performance of public programs? Considerable literature suggests myriad ways that the actions of managers seem to shape the outputs and outcomes of public [...]

The most common view of political institutions and their control over bureaucracy is the principal-agent model. That model assumes that politicians and bureaucrats disagree over goals and the means to obtain those goals. It also assumes that bureaucrats have access to valuable information that politicians do not have. Agricultural credit is a policy area that does not fit these assumptions. In it we find a version of bottom-line oversight, whereby the agency has clear goals and political institutions (in this case Congress) act only when serious problems occur. This 'Smoke detector'form of oversight is confirmed with a time series analysis of agricultural credit outputs., A central issue in public administration is the conflict between democracy and the bureaucratic demands of governance (Redford, 1969). The predominant view in the literature is that bureaucracy is best [...]

Program evaluation is a well developed field of scholarship with its own journals and an academic history of more than three decades. Using a common systems approach and defining evaluation [...]