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Ethical and Procedural Professionalization in the Peace Corps
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Author: Meghan Kallman, Brown U.
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Based in the neoinstitutional literature, this article asks how the institutional logic of professionalization travels through an organizational structure and becomes instantiated in observable phenomena. Using the US Peace Corps as a case study, I document the diffusion of the institutional logic of professionalization. I also interrogate it, and contribute to the literature by distinguishing between professionalization as an ethos, and professionalization a managerialistic style. In the literature, referring to a worker as a “professional” occasionally refers to someone with a sense of an occupational calling; the term is also often used to refer to the rigor of the occupational technique. However, and especially in a domain of technical uncertainty, the institutional literature would suggest that what workers really master is not technique, but rather display. Display—what I call procedural professionalization—is effectively the opposite of the internal commitment, what I refer to as ethical professionalization. Further, I document the effects of working in a decoupled organization for socially committed or altruistic workers, which is theoretically important because it reduces the plausibility of the logic of professionalization.
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Search Terms: institutional logic | professionalization | social change
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Paper is No Longer Available Online: Please contact the author(s).
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How do we measure Public Confidence in Policing? Analysis of large scale survey data
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Author: Kevin Morrell, U. of Warwick
Author: Basit Javid, WMP
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Public confidence is crucially important in policing. The public are a source of information, and their having confidence in their police forces makes it more likely they can help the police address both minor and major crimes. As most of the public do not come into contact with the police, a general measure of confidence can reflect how well a force is run. However, there is uncertainty as to how confidence should be measured. To contribute to understanding we analyse survey data from 8,503 members of the public, within the jurisdiction of a UK police force serving approximately 3 million people. We identify interrelations across a single-item measure of confidence, and a number of items designed to tap cognate constructs (such as perceptions of police visibility, trust in the police and reliability). Using exploratory factor analysis analysis we propose a multidimensional measure, reflecting different latent factors. We corroborate this with confirmatory factory analysis.
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Search Terms: police | governance | public
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Paper is No Longer Available Online: Please contact the author(s).
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The Plan and the Pork. Factors Influencing Agency Implementation of the National Fire Plan
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Author: Stuart Kasdin, George Washington U.
Author: Sarah Anderson, U. of California, Santa Barbara
Author: Heather Hodges, Reed College
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What are the structural influences on public agency management? In this paper, we examine how the environment advances or undermines agency managerial effectiveness. We examine the implementation of the federal government’s National Fire Plan (NFP), focusing on the project selection choices over time by agency field offices. We assess the interplay of agency goals, communities’ priorities, and political interventions to understand what determines the allocation of program resources devoted to low priority projects. Because the federal government established explicit priority targets in the NFP, we can assess when federal spending, appropriated for the plan, nonetheless, deviated from these priorities as it was implemented at the local level. Using data from all hazardous fuels treatments to mitigate wildland fire risk, undertaken by the Forest Service between 2001 and 2011, we evaluate how the characteristics of multiple elected principals overseeing the agency and changing political conditions that affected the NFP implementation. This paper does several things that previous papers have not. Unlike the existing literature examining pork and distributive spending, our paper is the first to use an objective measure of spending, agreed upon by the federal agencies (and communities) that distinguishes when spending is a priority according to whether it is occurring in pre-designated locations of greatest need. In addition, because the NFP’s project goals do not change over the examination period, we are able to assess how different political environments shape agency choices and program implementation.
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Search Terms: public organizations | natural environment | resource dependence
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Paper is No Longer Available Online: Please contact the author(s).
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Formalization and Organizational Red Tape Revisited: Rule Design, Implementation, and Enforcement (WITHDRAWN)
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Author: Wesley Kaufmann, Groningen U. (RuG)
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Our understanding of red tape has been limited by a lack of conceptual clarity, unclear connections between formalization and red tape research agendas, and persistent measurement issues. The aim of this paper is to address these three fundamental limitations. First, I introduce a perceptual conceptualization of organizational red tape that takes into account an individual’s subjectively held feelings towards ineffective rules. Drawing from the literatures on formalization and rule effectiveness in domains such as organization studies, management accounting, and social psychology, I then put forward propositions as to how the design, implementation, and enforcement of written rules affect organizational red tape perceptions. Finally, I outline an empirical research agenda that can serve as a steppingstone for future red tape studies.
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Search Terms: formalization | red tape
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Paper is No Longer Available Online: Please contact the author(s).
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