This study contributes to the growing literature on differences in attitudes between public and private sector employees, particularly with respect to their receptivity or resistance to public management reforms. We begin by asking the question: to what degree does perceived self-interest play a role in accounting for attitudes toward public management reforms such as downsizing, privatization, and public spending? Using attitudinal data from Sweden, a social welfare state with a large public bureaucracy, a tension is observed both among public employees in different levels of government and between public and private sector employees. In the context of public management reforms, national government employees emerge as more right-leaning politically and more supportive of public management reforms than those working in local government. The analysis finds, particularly among national government employees, that while interest as measured here is strongly related to attitudes toward reform, status as a public employee and status as a public bureaucrat are not as significant as other components of interest in accounting for attitudes toward public management reform.
Professionals within street-level organizations are essential for the delivery of public services to citizens. However, among a number of difficult dilemmas, they have to deal with an extensive workload. The police can be seen as a good example of this; they are expected to solve most crimes, including the so-called mass crimes and the more spectacular cases that make it into media headlines, and often on a continually decreasing budget. A key regulating mechanism for investigation departments in the Swedish police is the so-called balance. The balance can be described as a basket in which they put the cases that there is a desire and potential to work on but not in the immediate term. The purpose of this article is to analyse the balance as a way of rationing the workload within the Swedish police. Working with the balance consists of two processes: limiting and buffering the workload. Limiting is the practice of reducing the work in a situation. Buffering is the process of putting some work on hold to deal with later, of which the article identifies five kinds; functional, problematic, quasi, progressive, and symbolic buffering. The exploration of ‘the balance’ contributes to our understanding of how street level organizations attempt to defend their professional jurisdictions, their well-being, and their ability to complete their duties.
The two main purposes of this article are: 1) To propose a conceptual model for governance at the interface of science and technology with knowledgeintensive innovative entrepreneurship and 2) To develop propositions and propose a future research agenda on evolutionary governance routines. Our proposed conceptualization of governance depends upon an understanding of how different ways of developing rules and norms to interact and make decisions collectively are created and maintained, including two sub-processes. One process is to develop advanced knowledge and the second process is where entrepreneurs transform that knowledge developed as the public good and privatize it through value creation. We propose that a main task for this type of entrepreneur is to manage their engagement in the overall governance in such a way as to be perceived by others as continuing to contribute to the collective action problem. The article provides definitions and propositions in relation to the conceptualization, as well as interesting trajectories for future research.
Purpose – This study aims at developing a measure that can be used to evaluate organizational capacity to perform across local government jurisdictions, using operational managers' own assessments. Design/methodology/approach – The “management matters” literature that links organizational capacity to service performance is far from reaching any consensus on how to operationalize organizational capacity. In this study, over 400 operational managers were asked, at two different time points and in thirty different local government departments, about what opportunities they have to fulfill their responsibilities and about their perceptions of service performance. The data are factor analyzed, and the proportion of higher level variance of the resulting capacity measure is explored. Findings – Organizational capacity to perform represents a consistent measure that covers essential aspects of the managerial assignment and is empirically distinct, yet positively related to the managers' perceptions of service performance. Results further show that up to 12 percent of the variance in organizational capacity to perform can be attributed to the organization in which managers work. Practical implications – A service-neutral measure of organizational capacity to perform should be useful to strategic managers in organizations as guidance for resource allocation, and for the design of solid organizational structures and support systems for operational managers. Originality/value – Recent public management research indicates that rationalistic management models are often inadequately grounded in the day-to-day practices of operative managerial work. The construct of organizational capacity to perform presented in this study could be a valuable instrument that can bridge this strategic-operational disconnect and provide an insider perspective of the organizational prerequisites that underpin any public service achievement.
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