Work motivation and social communication among public managers

This article tests hypotheses about the effects of two types of work motivation (i.e. intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation) and four types of social communication on three important work dispositions (i.e. job involvement, red tape, and perceived organizational effectiveness) among 790 managers employed in public agencies in the states of Illinois and Georgia. The results show that intrinsic motivation is significantly associated with public managers' job involvement, perceptions of red tape, and organizational effectiveness. Also, certain types of organizational communication and mentoring socialization are closely related to the outcomes. The results of cross-interaction effects between motivation and communications on outcome variables support the SDT prediction that when public managers are more involved with different types of social communication behaviors, the relationship between extrinsic motivation and three outcome variables becomes more pronounced. That is, communication in public agencies provides more autonomy and discretion for extrinsically motivated public managers, thus leading to more positive organizational dispositions.     

Robotic Process Automation in purchasing and supply management: A multiple case study on potentials,barriers, and implementation

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has received growing attention within the digital transformation as this cutting-edge technology automates human behavior and promises high potentials. However, the adoption in purchasing and supply management (PSM) is still in its infancy and has hardly been explored, particularly in the public sector. Based on a multiple case study including 19 organizations of the public and private sector, this paper narrows that gap and presents comprehensive insights into potentials, barriers, suitable processes, and best practices and components for RPA implementation. The findings indicate that adoption depends on the organizations’ digital procurement readiness and maturity. Application areas of RPA enlarge with increasing experience and range from transactional and operative tasks within the procure-to-pay process to more strategic use cases in sourcing and supply relationship management. Potentials mainly comprise employee reliefs, cost savings, and increased operational efficiency and quality. We uncover multiple technical, organizational, and environmental barriers related to IT infrastructure and human resources, internal communication, financial resources, top management support, organizational structures, supplier-related issues, and government regulations. Furthermore, our study indicates several differences between the private and public sectors for RPA implementation. We outline implications for the emerging research on RPA and pivotal directions for organizational practice.     

Employee involvement in American corporations

At the direction of the U.S. Senate subcommittee on Governmental Affairs, the general Accounting Office (GAO) conducted a survey of employee involvement practices within American companies. The population consisted of top management within Fortune's 500 largest manufacturing and 500 largest service companies. An analysis of the data examined three broad areas relating to employee involvement: (1) the existing organizational programs and processes such as personnel practices, information sharing, and training; (2) the degree of corporate participation in specific employee involvement programs including the reasons for undertaking employee involvement programs, and the perceived barriers to the implementation of employee involvement programs; and (3) the perceived effect of employee involvement on organizational operation as measured by changes in indicators of performance and activities within the internal business environment.     

Organizational change cynicism: The role of employee involvement

Organizational change efforts can bring about a range of outcomes: some intended, such as organizational survival and profitability, and some unintended, such as heightened levels of organizational change cynicism (OCC) among employees. This article focuses on processes for managing OCC: we examine the role of information sharing and involvement in decision making as ways to lessen employee reports of OCC. While both of these strategies have the potential to be effective, they rest on a significant assumption—namely, that employees will enthusiastically embrace any opportunities to become involved. In this research, we investigate this assumption through an analysis of the relationship between an employee's willingness to become involved (”active orientation”) on employee reports of their OCC. We find, using data from 1,214 public‐sector employees, that an active orientation toward involvement plays a significant role as a moderator in reducing employee reports of OCC. The findings suggest that HR practitioners concerned about OCC should encourage their line managers to adopt a participatory style of management (information sharing, involvement in decision making), especially in those workplaces where employees are more likely to embrace the opportunities for involvement. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Exploring social media usage in the public sector: Public employees' perceptions of ICT's usefulness in delivering value added

The present paper explores the effectiveness of the implementation and use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the public sector, with a specific focus on the role of social media in improving both public decision-making processes and the quality of public services. We sought to deepen knowledge on this issue by disseminating structured questionnaires to Italian public servants, questioning them about the potentialities and criticalities of social media use in the public sector. Logistic regression analysis was used to analyse the data.The paper has two main goals. First, we aim to explore public servants' evaluation of social media's impact on public decision-making processes. Second, we are interested in understanding the main socio-demographic variables affecting public servants' perceptions about the importance of social media in these processes. This paper enriches the literature on public sector use of ICT and advances topical discussion on organizational change and decision-making processes in public administrations. In so doing, the paper reveals interesting practical and policy implications by highlighting the key aspects affecting social media's effectiveness and usefulness in the decision-making process and its impact on the public services delivered to the citizenry.     

Patient Involvement in Patient Safety: Current experiences,insights from the wider literature,promising opportunities?

Abstract

Patient involvement in patient safety is emerging as an area of growing policy, practice, and academic interest. In this article, we review the existing literature on patient involvement and patient safety and seek to highlight some of the key areas of challenge in this emergent field by relating it to themes identified in the wider, more mature, literature on patient and public involvement in health care in general. Insights from the wider literature illuminate key issues for involvement in patient safety and suggest promising ways of circumventing these challenges and achieving involvement in patient safety in a way that maximizes impact while avoiding unintended consequences.     

组织文化:会计师事务所质量控制的新视角

会计师事务所文化是联结会计师事务所人力资本和各项质量控制制度的一种机制,该机制的有效发挥将最终体现为会计师事务所整体执业质量的提高。基于新审计准则关于“会计师事务所应当建立以质量为导向的内部文化“的规定,本文探讨了会计师事务所组织文化对会计师事务所质量控制制度的建立、实施的影响及相互作用机理,并提出了培育质量导向的会计师事务所文化的若干建议。     

Implementing Change in Public Organizations: The relationship between leadership and affective commitment to change in a public sector context

We propose and test a theoretical framework concerning the relationship between transformational leadership behaviour and affective commitment to change in a public sector context. We apply change management theory to explain how direct supervisors contribute to processes of organizational change, thereby increasing affective commitment to change among employees. While the change leadership literature emphasizes the role of executive managers during change, we conclude that the transformational leadership behaviour of direct supervisors is an important contribution to the successful implementation of change. Furthermore, the results show how the specific context of public organizations determines the transformational leadership behaviour of direct supervisors.     

Explicit reforms,implicit theories and public service improvement

A framework for the explication of the theoretical basis of public management reforms is developed. The framework is applied to the Best Value regime in UK local government. The implicit assumptions of policy makers are that the Best Value regime will generate service improvements through changes in organizational structures, processes, culture and strategy content. Empirical evidence on the relationship between these variables and organizational performance is critically reviewed, and policy makers' implicit ‘theories in use’ are made explicit in the form of a simple additive model of public service improvement. In practice the actual pattern of change is likely to be mediative, reciprocal and contingent on local organizational circumstances. However, theorizing public management reforms in this way is valuable because it provides a basis for evaluating the logic of programme design, predicting effectiveness and generating testable models of the relationship between public policies, organizational changes and public service improvement.     

Absorptive Capacity in a Non-Market Environment

Abstract

Improved performance by public sector organizations is a political imperative in numerous countries. There are particular challenges in turnaround of poorly performing organizations. Theoretical explanations of the performance trajectories of public organizations, and especially the causes of failure, highlight the importance of knowledge processes, often from an organizational learning perspective. Absorptive capacity provides an alternative way of theorizing the relationships between organizational performance and knowledge processes, derived from the resource-based view of the firm and the broader concept of dynamic capabilities. The article reviews the conceptual, theoretical, and methodological implications of applying absorptive capacity to the performance of public organizations. It concludes that the approach has value and presents a number of propositions to be tested through empirical study, alongside some more general challenges for researchers who wish to study the concept further. The high political salience of public organizations' performance, and the costs of failure, mandates a major research effort on these issues.     

Policy instruments for sustainability‐oriented organizational learning

The concept of sustainable development implies the need for organizational learning in business corporations to find innovative solutions. In this context, the paper analyzes the requirements and options for environmental policy to induce sustainability‐related learning processes in corporations. It discusses the impacts of different policy instruments on these processes. Initially, the particular challenges of organizational learning for sustainability are being sketched out. Drawing on organizational learning studies, a subsequent section of the paper addresses fundamental elements and drivers for organizational learning processes on different levels in business corporations. The particular nodes where public policy can influence corporate learning processes are the central focus of these considerations. On this basis, we examine existing policy instruments frequently used in environmental policy with regard to their potential to foster learning processes towards sustainability. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Understanding the dynamics of learning across social worlds: A case study from implementing IS in the Ethiopian public health care system

This paper adopts a novel learning perspective on information systems development. Building on the works of Anselm Strauss we conceptualize development processes as “negotiated orders” where members from different “social worlds” encounter and negotiate differences and tensions. We argue that processes of inquiry and action are interwoven, and this is what facilitates and stimulates learning. Based on a case study where different versions of open source software were customized, further developed and implemented in the Ethiopian public health care system, this paper explores the interplay between participation, politics and learning in IS implementation and use. We consider learning to be an integral part of the social practice, and it occurs mainly through encounters and negotiations between actors from different social worlds who might have competing interests and values. The paper also analyzed how the software in question functioned as a boundary object, not just in the traditional sense by facilitating cooperation among these actors. An even more significant role of the boundary object was in bringing the existing differences to the foreground and thus stimulating negotiations and learning. As such, this paper contributes to three discourses: organizational learning, boundary objects and health information systems in developing countries in particular and more specifically to IS implementation in settings with scarce resources, heterogeneous stakeholders, and diverse interests.     

Strategic Planning and Implementation Success in Public Service Organizations: Evidence from Canada

In this article, we examine the role that formal strategic planning plays in determining the success of strategy implementation in a set of more than 150 public service organizations from Canada. We also analyse the mediating effects of managerial involvement in strategic planning and the moderating effects of stakeholder uncertainty on the planning-implementation relationship. A structured online questionnaire was used to collect the data. Our findings suggest that formal strategic planning has a strong positive relationship with implementation, which, though mediated by managerial involvement, becomes even more salient in the face of stakeholder uncertainty. Several implications of these findings are discussed.     

Managing implementation processes

Abstract

In order to improve financial decision making in local governments in Germany, accrual output-based budgeting is being introduced. As the dynamics of implementation processes are often neglected, we research the shift from established rules and procedures to the application of accrual accounting, especially how public managers deal with new financial management systems and how their expectations are fulfilled. Based on a dynamic capability approach, six case studies in German municipalities are conducted. In a comparative analysis we focus on the dynamics of implementation processes. The findings emphasize that the application of accrual accounting is dependent on strategic orientations of top managers, involvement of middle managers and the capability to develop new structural routines in managing change.     

Not every public sector is a field: evidence from the recent overhaul of the English NHS

ABSTRACT

A structural interpretation of institutionalism has become dominant in public management research. Yet, studies tend to assume an institutional-level phenomenon without specifying how an organizational field was identified or whether structural characteristics can indeed be found in the organizational population studied. This lacuna is illustrated by exploring the structural interpretation of the field construct in the case of the recent overhaul of English primary care. Findings demonstrate the need for a more robust application of institutionalism in empirical research. Possible research problems for public management and a future research agenda based on a more relational approach to fields are discussed.     

Managing Challenging Organizational Change: Introducing active labour market policies in Italian public employment agencies

Abstract

Managing organizational change in the public sector is extremely challenging when adverse conditions hamper the introduction of novel organizational practices. This study builds on the case of the implementation of active labour market policies in in Italy, in an attempt to help explain the process of managing organizational change in the public sector. The case study shows how, despite contrary conditions that originate from the political context, the interplay between designed policy interventions, initial conditions, and features of the policy process can result in effective change of employment service practices.     

基于JDCS模型的项目变更管理浅议

工作需求—控制—支持(The job demand-control-support,JDCS)模型是工作压力研究领域一个影响广泛的组织压力模型。项目变更管理是执行项目变更,管理工作压力的过程。基于JDCS模型的三个工作心理因素,阐述项目变更管理的成功三因素:工作需求之领导间协同一致;工作控制之计划和行动的协调与执行一致;社会支持之全员参与。     

Strategic Inter-Organizational Cooperation in Complex Environments

Abstract

Strategic management research is increasingly concerned with understanding processes of network governance in which mechanisms for building partnerships among a number of public agencies and non-governmental organizations are more important than ever. Drawing examples from Canada, the paper analyses the nature of inter-jurisdictional and inter-organizational collaboration in complex and dynamic environments, and their implications for the strategic pursuit of organizational goals. The premise of the discussion is that public managers often pursue organizational goals in the context of external environmental systems characterized by complexity and constant change. From this perspective, public agencies must often seek to maintain relatively stable alliances while anticipating and adapting to environmental change in the pursuit of their organization's goals. The two cases in the paper illustrate three critical elements of collaborative network governance: first, the vertical and horizontal inter-jurisdictional dimensions of joint policy action; second the multiplicity of lenses of interpretation among agents, including the perceptions and values of non-governmental stakeholders and the strategic outreach of public agencies to these groups; and third, it traces the various stages of evolving networks, highlighting the changes and adaptations characterizing the processes involved in joint policy actions.     

Modeling and initiating knowledge management program using FQFD: a case study involving a healthcare institute

Knowledge is the most important asset for an organization to create value and sustainable competitive advantage. This study deconstructs a knowledge management (KM) model for utilizing nursing knowledge assets in terms of KM processes and KM enablers. Knowledge management processes are the activities or initiatives an organization puts in place to enable and facilitate the creation, sharing and use of knowledge for organizational benefit. This study examines, analyzes and prioritizes the KM enablers to facilitate knowledge processes and foster the successful development of organizational knowledge. In doing so, this study applies fuzzy quality function deployment (QFD) to deploy the necessary enabler items in detail for KM implementation. Based on the analytical results of fuzzy QFD (FQFD) for the case-study hospital, the priority order of the KM enablers is measurement, leadership, technology and culture. The results of FQFD also show that reinforcing KM enablers is necessary to promote elements in the KM process for the case hospital during KM program implementation.     

Evaluating the extent of inter-organizational learning and change in local authorities through the english beacon council scheme

During the 1990s the contract has become a key feature in the restructuring of the UK public sector. Currently available literature demonstrates awareness that the implementation of contracting must entail new forms of management control and organizational structure which involve new patterns of intra-and extra-organizational relationships. However there is little consideration of the nature of the relationships that are developing between contractors and clients nor the factors that, influence those behavioural processes. This paper reports on research funded by ESRC into contractual relationships in ten local authorities in England. Analysis was undertaken to identify the nature of the contracts and the factors which both clients and contractors felt had led them to develop a particular type of relationship. Finally implications for practice under ‘best value’ are considered.