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How public management matters: strategy, networking, and local service performance

Researchers

Richard M Walker, George A Boyne, Kenneth J Meier, Laurence O'Toole and Rhys Andrews

Aims

Within the academic community the impact of management on organizational performance has become the issue that defines the field of public management. It is now recognised that management shapes performance when conducted from multiple levels, directed internally at operations, targeted at various parts of the environment, and executed with particular skill or adroitness. However, the rapidity with which public service improvement strategies have been put in place means that knowledge has not kept pace with practice. To address these critical theory, policy and practice issues we draw together a team of international research leaders in the field, build upon existing research (funded by the ESRC and the Advanced Institute for Management Research (AIM)), and seek to develop one of the best public management research datasets in the world.

The aim of the project is to provide robust evidence on the ways that management improves the performance of public organizations. High level objectives include:

The primary management activities examined are strategy and networking. These strategy processes (or strategy making) and strategy content (or the outcome of strategy making) are related to one and other and have been shown to have performance consequences. Considerable evidence has also been developed to show that managerial networking contributes positively to public service performance. In this project these two functions of management will be integrated, thereby developing new theory and evidence.

Research Methods

The research objectives will be achieved by undertaking detailed analysis of an extensive dataset
collected on the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister funded Long-term impact of the Best Value
regime project. This provides four years of data, with a maximum response rate of over 300 authorities, using a multiple informant survey. In addition to new analysis of this data, the dataset will be extended to improve the measures and their suitability for complex statistical analysis. The project will produce an eight year longitudinal dataset that will allow the impact of management practices on the performance of local public services to be clearly established. Qualitative case studies will also be conducted to provide examples of good practice form high performing organizations.

questionnaires

Data on perceptions of strategy, networking and performance will be drawn from electronic surveys of managers in English local authorities carried out in 2007 and 2009. Questionnaires were delivered as an Excel file attached to an email to senior and middle managers.

Senior Managers 07
Service Managers 07
HPMM Survey 2007: Summary Report
Senior managers 09 - to Management Matters - authsurvey09
Service managers 09 - to Management Matters - servsurvey 09

events

 

Organizational Strategy, Structure, and Process: A Reflection on the Research Perspective of Miles and Snow

3-5 December 2008
Hosted by Cardiff University and the Economic and Social Research Council

Conference themes
Thirty years ago Raymond Miles and Charles Snow published Organizational Strategy, Structure, and Process. Their book made a seminal contribution to the management literature and has stimulated several streams of research.  This two-day conference will celebrate the 30th anniversary of the publication of the book by reflecting on the contribution made by Miles and Snow, and highlight the contribution made by subsequent researchers.  Papers are theoretical (extending the Miles-Snow perspective), review of the impact of their work, deal with methodological issues (discussions of advanced methods for studying organizational strategy and structure), and empirical (tests of aspects of their framework).

Papers

Andrews, Rhys (Cardiff University), George A. Boyne (Cardiff University), Kenneth J. Meier (Texas A&M University), Laurence J. O’Toole Jr. (University of Georgia), and Richard M. Walker (University of Hong Kong)
Strategic Fit and Performance: A Test of the Miles and Snow Model

Baldauf, Artur, (University of Bern) William L. Cron (Texas Christian University) and Samuel Grossenbacher (AXA Winterthur).
Exploring Executives’ Cognitions of Firm Resources: Do they Differ for Firms Following Distinct Strategies?

Bryson, John M, (University of Minnesota) Kimberly B. Boal (Univerity of Texas, Austin) and Hal G. Rainey (University of Georgia).
Public Sector Organizational Ambidexterity: Implications for Strategic Leadership

Citrin, Alka Varma (Georgia Institute of Technology)
When Does the Mere Presence of the Marketing Department Matter? A Study of Market Information Use and Firm Strategy

DeSarbo, Wayne (Penn State University), Anthony Di Benedetto (Temple University) and Michael Song (University of Missouri)
Evaluating SBU Heterogeneity: Comparing the Miles and Snow Strategic Framework Against Alternative Quantitative Modeling Approaches

Kitchener, Martin (Cardiff University), and Joseph Mullan (University of California, San Francisco)

What is Public Service Strategy and does it Matter?

Fjeldstad, Oystein D. (Norwegian School of Management), Raymond E. Miles (University of California, Berkely), and Charles C. Snow (Penn State University)
How firms Use Networks and Communities to Innovate and Commercialize

G. Tomas M. Hult (Michigan State University)
A Study of Knowledge-Based Supply Chain Fit with Strategic Type and its Relationship with Competitive Priorities

Nutt, Paul C. (Ohio State University)
Selecting Strategy for Public and Third-Sector Organizations

Slater, Stanley F. (Colorado State University) and Eric M. Olson (University of Colorado at Colorado Springs)
Miles & Snow, and Marketing

Wensley, Robin (University of Warwick)

Anticipation, Intention and Action in Strategy



How Public Management Matters: Comparisons of Public and Private Management

Workshop meeting 4th and 5th November 2008
Department of Public Administration and Policy
University of Georgia, Athens

This workshop met to consider a question of growing importance in the academic and policy world: is management different in the public and private sectors, and what are the implications for organizational performance?  Six papers were presented.

 

Public Management and Private Sector Management: Theoretical Expectations

Kenneth J. Meier
Texas A&M University and Cardiff University

Laurence J. O’Toole Jr.:
University of Georgia

Dimensions of Publicness and Performance: A Review of the Evidence

Rhys Andrews
Cardiff University

George A. Boyne
Cardiff University

Richard M. Walker
University of Hong Kong and Cardiff University

Bureaucracy, Democracy, and Markets: How Professionalism, Accountability, and Competition affect Managerial Behavior

Alisa Hicklin
Oklahoma University

Research Design and Sampling for Public-Private Comparisons

Hal G. Rainey
University of Georgia

Experimental Methods in Public Management Research: A Demonstration Parsing Public/Private Differences

Gene A. Brewer Sr.
University of Georgia

Gene A. Brewer Jr.
University of Georgia

The Subprime Mortgage Market: Implications for Publicness in Policy Environments

Stephanie Moutlon
Indiana University

Barry Bozeman
Georgia University


publications and other outputs

Working papers
Recent publications
Previous research


WORKING PAPERS
Networking behaviour of local government officers

The emergence of networked service delivery arrangements within the public sector means that managers need to develop productive collaborative relationships across organisational boundaries. In this article we draw on a survey of 328 English councils to explore the networking behaviour of 1082 local government officers. Our evidence suggests that officers develop patterns of networking and contact initiation that reflect their managerial level and service responsibilities. Future policy development would benefit from careful and nuanced attention to the externally oriented, brokering and collaborative roles occupied by contemporary local officers, and to the kinds of associated skills required because of these responsibilities.

Andrews R, Boyne GA, Walker RM. Differences between archival and perceptual measures of organizational environments: A test of the Boyd, Dess and Rasheed model

Existing studies suggest that perceptions of the environment diverge from measures of the environment drawn from archival sources. It is therefore important to explore the potential determinants of differences between alternative measures of organizational environments. We apply Boyd, Dess and Rasheed’s (1993) model of the determinants of measurement difference to archival and perceptual measures of the environmental munificence, complexity and uncertainty faced by 96 organizations. The results show that decentralization and a differentiated defender strategy reduce the gap between archival and perceptual measures of complexity and uncertainty. However, these findings do not hold for differences between archival and perceptual measures of munificence. We conclude that the Boyd et al. model may be most applicable to understanding measurement differences in complex and dynamic rather than munificent organizational environments.


Andrews R, Boyne GA, O'Toole LJ, Walker RM. Exploring strategic fit: An empirical test of the Miles and Snow model.

The notion that organizations should seek to align their strategy with their structure, process and environment is at the heart of contingency theories. However, to date, few studies have provided a comprehensive examination of the argument that different strategic choices are associated with distinctive combinations of internal and external characteristics. In this paper we explore the issue of “strategic fit” by applying Miles and Snow's (1978) seminal model of strategic management with an appropriate set of statistical tests to a panel of over seventy organizations during a three-year period. Using seemingly unrelated regressions to control for the possibility that organizations may adopt a mix of strategies we find that: a prospecting strategy is associated with decentralization and incremental processes; a low cost defending strategy is associated with rational planning, while differentiated defending is associated with an absence of logical incremental processes; both forms of defending are positively related to environmental uncertainty; and a reactor strategy is associated with centralized decision-making.

G.A. Boyne, R. Andrews and R.M. Walker ‘Administrative or Survey Data for Measuring Organizational Performance: What’s the Difference?’

Debate about the best way to measure performance in studies of management in public organizations is longstanding. We address this topic through a review of the evidence from 93 studies that use administrative and/or survey measures of organizational performance. We find that administrative data typically reflect the performance judgements of government (at the central, regional and local level) and regulators, while survey data is based on the perceptions of citizens, service users and public sector managers. We undertake a critical review of the twelve articles that use both administrative and survey measures of organizational performance. This reveals limited differences in the impact of management variables on the two types of performance measures. However, in those studies using survey measures, management variables are more likely to have a positive link with the performance judgements of service consumers than the judgements of managers themselves. This implies that public managers may underestimate their impact on citizens’ perceptions of organizational performance.


Andrews, R., G.A. Boyne, K.J. Meier, L.J. O’Toole and R.M. Walker ‘Vertical Strategic Alignment and Performance’
We report the results of a study examining the effects of vertical strategic alignment (that is, the degree to which strategic priorities are consistent across different organizational levels) on public service performance. Longitudinal multivariate analysis is undertaken on a panel of public organizations over four years. We find that alignment on a prospecting strategy leads to better performance, but that no such effect is observed for a defending strategy. We also find that high levels of prospecting alignment produce stronger positive performance effects in centralized organizations and when environmental uncertainty is high. The implications of these findings for research and practice are considered in the conclusion.


Andrews, R., G.A. Boyne, K.J. Meier, L.J. O’Toole and R.M. Walker ‘Environmental and Organizational Determinants of Networking’

According to recent organizational theories, external networking by managers is likely to reflect the external and internal characteristics of organizations. In particular, contingency theories assume that uncertain environments and innovative strategies lead to more external networking, while structural hole theories suggest that it is more likely in organizations with decentralized, informal, and specialized structures. We test these expectations by analyzing environmental and organizational determinants of variations in external networking among English local governments in 2007. The empirical results show that “loose” organizational structures and diverse stakeholder demands have a positive statistical association with networking, but that defensive and reactive strategies, along with unpredictable stakeholder demands, are negatively associated.

 

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RECENT PUBLICATIONS

G.A. Boyne, R. Andrews and R.M. Walker ‘Dimensions of Publicness and Organizational Performance: A Review of the Evidence’, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory.

Debates about the merits of publicness have dominated the public administration landscape since the foundation of the modern state. The extent of organizational publicness (ownership, funding and control) has waxed and waned: it rose following the postwar settlement and fell under the policies of New Right government and the popularity of the notions of New Public Management. We argue that publicness effects are likely to diminish in the face of organizational and contextual characteristics, and that what matters for performance is management and organization. To this end we examine the evidence base by undertaking a review of academic studies of publicness and organizational performance. The results suggest that publicness makes a difference to efficiency and equity, but the magnitude and direction of this effect varies with the characteristics of the empirical studies. Our findings clearly point towards the need for research that includes all dimensions of publicness, a variety of performance measures, and the moderating effects of management, organization and external constraints.


Andrews, R., G.A. Boyne, J. Moon and R.M. Walker (2010) ‘Assessing Organizational Performance: Exploring Differences Between Internal and External Measures’, International Public Management Journal, 13, 2, 1-25.

Differences in judgements of public service performance across stakeholder groups have often been noted, but have rarely been tested. We measure the extent of these differences between and within internal and external stakeholders. The evidence shows that internal groups usually overestimate the performance of their organizations. We then develop and test a model of inter-organizational variations in the extent of this overestimation. The statistical results show that performance overestimation is more likely in small organizations with geographically dispersed clients, and in organizations that adopt fashionable management practices that are associated with higher institutional legitimacy.


Andrews, R., G.A. Boyne, K.J. Meier, L.J. O’Toole and R.M. Walker ‘Wake Up Call: Strategic Management, Network Alarms and Performance’, Public Administration Review.

Growing empirical evidence suggests that service performance is shaped by the strategies adopted by public organizations and the networking behaviour of public managers. Accordingly, we link these themes in an integrated study by exploring the relationship between strategy, networking and local service performance in a sample of English local governments. The statistical results show that strategy formulation based upon rational planning has long-run positive effects on public services as does a strategy of prospecting, but defending is harmful to performance in the short and long-run. We also find that managers’ interactions with network nodes matter, some more than others and in different ways. The findings fit a pattern in which elected members, in the face of poor performance, ring out alarm calls; managers in other authorities are contacted in apparent efforts to remedy poor performance; user group representatives provide information to managers in the search for higher levels of performance; and networking with central government officials is related to lower performance.


Meier, K.J., L.J. O’Toole, G.A. Boyne, R.M. Walker and R. Andrews (2010) ‘Alignment and Results: Testing the Interaction Effects of Strategy, Structure and Environment from Miles and Snow’, Administration & Society.

Theory and evidence has grown on the role of strategy in public organizations. The basic argument, reflecting a long tradition in public administration, is that organizational outcomes are contingent. As such strategic management frameworks are predicated upon the notion that organizational performance is a function of managerial strategy, organizational characteristics, and the environment. Miles and Snow (1978) provide one of the most comprehensive generic models of strategy . They suggest that strategy’s impact on organizational success will be greatest when external and internal factors are in alignment – when, for instance, managerial prospectors in decentralized organizations operate in a turbulent environment. Although many studies have included one or more of these sets of variables, to date no study has remained true to Miles and Snow’s contention that optimal performance is a complex interaction of these factors. This study examines three of the Miles and Snow factors – strategy, structure, and the environment – with an appropriate set of statistical tests in several hundred public organizations over a six-year period. The results suggest that at least for this set of organizations, the contingency relationships proposed by Miles and Snow do not hold.

Andrews, R., G.A. Boyne, K.J. Meier, L.J. O’Toole and R.M. Walker (2009) ‘EU Accession and Public Service Performance’, Policy & Politics, 37, 1, 19-37.

Since the expansion of the EU in 2004 it has been widely assumed that the quality of UK public services has suffered due to high levels of worker migration from Eastern Europe. This paper explores the effects of immigration on the service achievements of English local authorities between 2006 and 2007, and citizen satisfaction in 2006. The statistical results suggest that high levels of worker migration from EU A8 countries are associated with lower service performance, but that this negative relationship may be moderated by prior experience of dealing with European immigrants. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

O'Toole LJ, Walker RM , Meier KJ, Boyne GA (2007) Networking in comparative context - Public managers in the USA and the UK, Public Management Review, 9, 3, pp. 401-420.

Networking has become a key theme in the research literature, reflecting a shift from government to governance. Though scholarship on this topic has grown apace, little evidence has been produced on the ways in which managerial networking manifests itself across national settings. Given this state of affairs, we explore whether managerial networking is a broad and common pattern in contemporary governance systems or contingent on setting. Analysis was undertaken from a sample of over 600 US public managers and 300 UK local officials. The results confirm that managerial networking is extensive and support the view that networking is a key management competence. While general networking behaviours are evident in the data presented, there was also variation, suggesting that managers are able to exercise choice and construct their networked environment to reflect local requirements.


Walker RM, O'Toole LJ, Meier KJ (2007) It's where you are that matters: The networking behaviour of English local government officers, Public Administration, 85, 3, pp. 739-756.

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.


Meier KJ, O'Toole LJ, Boyne GA, Walker RM (2007) Strategic management and the performance of public organizations: Testing venerable ideas against recent theories, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 17, 3, pp. 357-377.

Miles and Snow, among others, argue that strategy content is an important influence on organizational performance. Their typology, applied recently to public organizations in the United Kingdom, divides strategic actors into four general types: prospectors, defenders, analyzers, and reactors. This article begins by integrating work on strategy content or strategic management into the O'Toole-Meier formal theory of public management. This study shows that strategy content is a subset of generally accepted management functions in public organizations. The article then proceeds to test the strategic management concepts in a large, multiyear sample of public organizations. The results show that strategy can be separated out from other elements of management for a distinguishable assessment of its impact on organizational performance. Unlike the predictions of Miles and Snow and the empirical findings of Boyne and Walker, however, we find that the defender strategy Is the most effective for the primary mission of the organization and that the prospector and reactor strategies work best in regard to the goals of the more politically powerful elements of the organization's environment.
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PREVIOUS RESEARCH

Andrews R, Boyne GA, Walker RM (2006) Strategy content and organizational performance: An empirical analysis, Public Administration Review, 66, 1, pp. 52-63.

This study presents the first empirical test of the proposition that strategy content is a key determinant of organizational performance in the public sector. Strategy content comprises two dimensions: strategic stance (the extent to which an organization is a prospector defender, or reactor) and strategic actions (the relative emphasis on changes in markets, services, revenues, external relationships, and internal characteristics). Data were drawn from a multiple-informant survey of 119 English local authorities. Measures of strategy content are included in a multivariate model of interauthority variations in performance. The statistical results show that strategy content matters. Organizational performance is positively associated with a prospector stance and negatively with a reactor stance. Furthermore, local authorities that seek new markets for their services are more likely to perform well. These results suggest that measures of strategy content must be included in valid theoretical and empirical models of organizational performance in the public sector.


Andrews R, Boyne GA, Meier KJ, O'Toole LJ, Walker RM (2005) Representative bureaucracy, organizational strategy, and public service performance: An empirical analysis of English local government, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 15, 4, 489-504.

The theory of representative bureaucracy suggests that organizations perform better if their workforces reflect the characteristics of their constituent populations. The management literature implies that the impact of representative bureaucracy is contingent on organizational strategy. Our empirical evidence on English local government is inconsistent with the basic theory of representative bureaucracy but supports a moderating effect of organizational strategy. Representative bureaucracy is negatively associated with citizens' perceptions of local authority performance. However, organizations pursuing a prospector strategy are able to mitigate this negative relationship.


Boyne GA, Walker RM (2004) Strategy content and public service organizations, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 14, 2, pp. 231-252,

Existing classifications of organizational strategy have limited relevance to public agencies. They confuse strategy processes and strategy content, consist of simplistic taxonomies, and do not take sufficient account of the constraints faced by public organizations. in this article we attempt to remedy these problems by developing a strategy content matrix that comprises two dimensions: strategic stance (the extent to which an organization is a prospector, defender, or reactor) and strategic actions (the relative emphasis on changes in markets, services, revenues, external relationships, and internal characteristics). This matrix is used to generate hypotheses on the strategies that are likely to be pursued by public organizations.

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Contact:

Name: Rhys Andrews
Telephone: 029 2087 5056
Email: andrewsr4@cf.ac.uk

Funding

ESRC - award no. RES-062-23-0039

Reports and Publications

The project builds on a growing stream of work on strategy, networking and performance carried out by the team. Outputs from previous studies can be found at: