External control and red tape: the mediating effects of client and organizational feedback

Bozeman’s (1993, 2000) external control model of red tape posits that organizations with higher degrees of external control will have higher levels of red tape. According to the model, this is compounded by entropy affecting the communication of rules and their results, limited discretion over rules and procedures, and non-ownership of rules. However, the model predicts that red tape will be mediated by communication from clients and within the organization. Bozeman’s model is often cited in the literature, but it has not been subjected to empirical verification. This study tests the model using data from a multiple informant survey of 136 upper tier English local governments conducted in 2004 and several secondary sources. Statistical results show that external control does indeed lead to higher levels of red tape. We then test a number of organizational feedback mediators and find that client feedback does little to mediate the effects of red tape; the major factor is trust between politicians and officers. We discuss these findings and propose some changes to the model.postprin

Exploring the diffusion of innovation among high and low innovative localities: A test of the Berry and Berry model

Berry and Berry (1999, 2007) argue that diffusion of policy innovations is driven by learning, competition, public pressure or mandates from higher levels of authority. We undertake a first time analysis of thiswhole framework and present three sub-studies of innovation. First, we examine the drivers of total innovation. Second, we assess whether the factors influencing the most innovative localities are similar to or different from the factors impacting the low localities. Finally, we disaggregate total innovation into three different innovation types. Our findings, undertaken on a panel of English local governments over four years, reveal that amajority of the diffusion drivers from innovation and diffusion theory are indeed positively significant for total innovation. However, local authorities that adopt higher and lower levels of innovation than predicted do things differently while the framework has limited applicability to types of management innovation. We concluded that the Berry and Berry model is best suited to the analysis of total innovation, but not as well suited to the analysis of different types of innovation. We also outline a research agenda that might better explain the diffusion of public policy and public management innovation types than is captured by current literature. © 2011 Taylor & Francis.link_to_subscribed_fulltex

Combinative effects of innovation types and organizational Performance: A longitudinal study of service organizations

Innovation research suggests that innovation types have different attributes, determinants, and effects. This study focuses on consequences of adoption of three types of innovation (service, technological process, and administrative process) in service organizations. Its main thesis is that the impact of innovation on organizational performance depends on compositions of innovation types over time. We examine this proposition by analysing innovative activity in a panel of 428 public service organizations in the UK over four years. Our findings suggest that focus on adopting a specific type of innovation every year is detrimental, consistency in adopting the same composition of innovation types over the years has no effect, and divergence from the industry norm in adopting innovation types could possibly be beneficial to organizational performance. We discuss the implications of these findings for theory and research on innovation types. © Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2009.link_to_subscribed_fulltex

Limits on Innovation? Munificence, complexity and non-linearity in the technical environment

Seminar III - Innovation in public service industries: opportunities for cross-sectoral learning? (Edinburgh

When does red tape hurt performance? Evidence from different policy arenas

Conference Theme: Policy Analysis and Public Management in an Age of Scarcity: The Challenges of Assessing Effectiveness and EfficiencyPanel paperRed tape is a longstanding concern in the field of public administration and one of the native concepts of public management. However, it has only recently been subjected to systematic empirical evaluation. Empirical research has been hampered by conceptual uncertainties. One difficulty is that red tape has been defined too narrowly: 'rules, regulations, and procedures that remain in force and entail a compliance burden but do not advance the legitimate purposes the rules were intended to serve' (Bozeman 2000, 12). Such a definition has at least two problems: it does not take into account the 'tipping point' when good rules turn into bad ones, and it does not allow that red tape may vary between client groups and other organizational stakeholders (as well as across countries, organizations, levels within those organizations, and specific policy arenas etc.) However, researchers are increasingly discovering that red tape is a subject-dependent concept which is often referred to as 'stakeholder red tape'. The notion of stakeholder red tape is used to capture variations in the extent to which rules can damage organizational effectiveness from the vantage point of various stakeholder groups (Bozeman 2000). If red tape does vary by stakeholder group, and empirical evidence increasingly suggests that it does (Bozeman and Feeney 2010; Brewer and Walker2010a), then the point at which good rules turn bad is probably not uniform across actors and agencies. The central research question we pose is at what point does red tape becomes harmful to organizational performance overall and in different policy or programme areas. The units of analysis are the service or programme areas of English local government, including benefits and revenues, corporate services, culture and leisure, education, housing, land-use planning, social services and waste management. The data for the study are taken from three different sources: perceptual data on red tape and performance from a survey of English local government officers, archival data on performance comes from central government departments, and external controls are taken from the Census

Market Orientation and Public Service Performance: New Public Management Gone Mad?

The backbone of theory of the market-based approach New Public Management is that market orientation improves public service performance. In this article, market orientation is operationalized through the dominant theoretical framework in the business literature: competitor orientation, customer orientation, and interfunctional coordination. Market orientation is examined from the vantage point of three stakeholder groups in English local government: citizens, public servants, and the central government's agent, the Audit Commission. Findings show that market orientation works best for enhancing citizen satisfaction with local services, but its impacts on the performance judgments of local managers or the Audit Commission are negligible. The conclusion discusses important implications of these findings for research, policy, and practice. © 2011 The American Society for Public Administration.link_to_subscribed_fulltex