Keeping a watchful eye in times of turmoil? How repeated structural reform leads to more attention to political signals

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Wynen, Jan; Kleizen, Bjorn; Verhoest, Koen; Laegreid, Per; Rolland, Vidar
• 署名单位: University of Antwerp; University of Antwerp; University of Bergen
• 刊物名称: PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0033-3298
• DOI: 10.1111/padm.12653
• 发表日期: 2020
• 页码: 570-590
• 关键词: threat-rigidity; organizational-change; bureaucratic autonomy; public organizations; regulatory agencies; management autonomy; perceptions; POLICY; work; CHALLENGES

摘要

An important rationale for the creation of semi-autonomous agencies is to create some distance between politics and administration. As such, agencies are expected to shield policy implementation from the daily concerns of political life. However, political actors and politically controlled ministries still influence agencies in various intended and unintended ways. This article focuses on intensive long-term series of structural reforms and how they may undermine the original design philosophy underpinning agencification. We utilize a dataset combining staff surveys and a structural reform database to perform multilevel analyses of employees nested in organizations. We find that the frequency with which agencies have experienced structural reform affects the weight that employees attach to signals from political and ministerial principals. Frequent structural reform may lead to heightened perceptions of the importance of political signals. Hence, frequent structural reforms may increase the risk of political influence on agencies that were designed to operate impartially.