Understanding National Administrative Styles and Their Impact Upon Administrative Reform: A Neo-Institutional Model and Analysis

Abstract

Students of organizational behaviour have always been concerned with understanding the manner in which complex organizations -including systems of public administration -tend to have distinctive organizational cultures and the impact these cultures have upon their activities and outputs, including their prospects for reform. Recently, neoinstitutional accounts of social and political life have provided a new entry point to the analysis of administrative cultures and administrative reform. For neo-institutionalists, the institutional structure of an organization is seen as creating a distinct pattern of constraints and incentives for state and societal actors which define and structure actor's interests and channel their behaviour. The interaction of these behaviour and structure generates a particular administrative logic and process, or "style". However, since institutional structures vary, a neo-institutional perspective suggests that there will be many different kinds of relatively long-lasting administrative style -each pattern being defined by the particular set of formal and informal institutions, rules, norms, traditions, and values of which it is comprised -and many different factors affecting the construction and deconstruction of each pattern. Following this neo-institutional logic, this paper examines several relatively recent efforts to identify and classify administrative styles. On the basis of these assessments, a multi-level, "nested," model of national administrative styles is developed and applied to the question of observances of patterns of convergence and divergence in administrative reforms in many jurisdictions over the past several decades.

Puzzling about problems: the ambiguous search for an evidence-based strategy for handling influx of health technology

“…A policy style can be regarded as a particular approach, logic or process that is institutionalised, though it need not be the ''standard operating procedure'' present at the scene (in contrast to the way this concept is commonly used; see e.g. Richardson et al 1982;Howlett 2002). Hence, there can be different policy styles present at the same time since similar problematic situations can be puzzled in different ways in the same setting.…”

Policy Analysis and Governance: Analytical and Policy Styles in Canada

“…The hegemony of the ''craft'' model of training and pedagogy points attention away from analytical culture and towards contextual, structural, factors in understanding variances in analytical styles (Wise 2002;Considine and Lewis, 2003). Distinct governance contexts for policy making have been identified at different levels of analysis (Howlett 2002c). Here these structural factors and their implications for policy analysis are identified.…”

Policy work at the sub‐national level: Analytical styles of Canadian and Czech directors and managers

“…These theory‐based conceptualizations of policy work point to four elementary styles: the rational‐technical style utilizing problem solutions derived from the rigorous application of scientific knowledge and analysis; the advisory‐interactive style putting policy bureaucrats into the position of consultants, advisors and mediators of client interests vis‐à‐vis other stakeholders; the process expertise style which allows steering the policy process towards a preferred outcome by using politically‐oriented skills (negotiations, bargaining) in problem solving; and issue activism and participation leaving room for active bureaucratic involvement (advocacy) in addressing the normative aspects of the policy problems of the day. Each style suggests that administrative agents will work in different ways (Howlett ; Howlett ). …”