Research Jan Boon

Abstract

The rise of social media, fake news and government distrust have led to an increasingly hostile environment for many public sector organizations (PSOs), leaving them struggling with their reputation. In an effort to explain negative reputations, reputation scholars generally assume that more bureaucratic organizations are more likely to evoke negative reputations. However, empirical evidence for this claim is non-existent, while a growing body of research is also re-establishing the value of bureaucratic organizational forms. Furthermore, the reverse relation – that is: the effect of negative reputations on bureaucraticness – has also received scant theoretical and empirical attention. Yet insights from organizational psychology suggest that external threats (such as negative reputations) may provoke bureaucratic tendencies. If confirmed, this means that negative reputations may become a self-fulfilling prophecy that determines the internal structure of PSOs. Examining this claim has important societal implications for understanding how to respond to current distrust and critiques towards PSOs, as well as how to design better reputed PSOs. Through a multi-method design, the aim of this project is threefold: first, examining the causal effect of bureaucraticness on the reputation of PSOs; second, examining the causal effect of negative reputations on bureaucraticness; and third, analysing the causal mechanisms underlying these effects.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Wynen Jan
• Co-promoter: Boon Jan

Research team(s)

• Management

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

In response to today's hectic and complex society, waves of reforms have been implemented in OECD countries to modernize the public sector. This reform appetite has caused many public organizations to be involved in near-endless cycles of reforms. Recent findings indicate that the ambiguity and uncertainty that intense reforms bring about may drastically increase employee work stress. Structural reforms therefore may paradoxically undermine the very performance and adaptability of public sector organizations they seek to improve, a process that has been labelled repetitive reform injury. The question then becomes: how can government reap the benefits of reforms (flexibility, adaptability,…) without negatively affecting employee work stress? Given the continued interest in, and necessity of, reforming public organizations, it is crucial to deepen our understanding on how to avoid repetitive reform injury. This project addresses this question by theorizing and testing the influence of the full-range of leadership behaviors (transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire leadership) on employee work stress in settings of varying reform intensity. The project contributes not only theoretically, but also answers to recent calls for the application of more innovative and rigorous methods.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Wynen Jan
• Co-promoter: Boon Jan
• Fellow: Van Doninck Dries

Research team(s)

• Management

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The domain of urban planning is filled with conflicts between citizens and policy-makers on how to organize the environment and the public values that should guide decision-making. Conflict is typically perceived as something negative to avoid through professional and effective process management. Recent studies, however, demonstrate that trying to avoid policy conflicts often does not work. Conflict does not disappear just because policy-makers steer clear from it. Avoiding conflict is not only difficult in practical terms, but also questionable from a normative viewpoint. While conflict undoubtedly has potentially destructive qualities (e.g. generating distrust), it may also be managed constructively to trigger creativity, engagement and transparency. Despite the abundance of real-world examples of conflict gone wrong, however, very little is known about how to get conflict right. The funding would allow the applicant to have recent interview data transcribed from an evaluation study of the Future Alliance ('Toekomstverbond' in Dutch) transcribed. The Future Alliance case concerns the de-escalation of the dramatic Oosterweel conflict in Antwerp, a context well studied within our Politics & Public Governance (PPG) research group. Being able to analyze these data on the de-escalation of the Oosterweel conflict in an academically sound way would move forward the academic scholarship on how policy conflicts can be managed effectively when it comes to de-escalation (in terms of institutional design, leadership etc.), while also contributing to insights on how to de-escalate policy conflicts while continuing to reap the benefits of constructive conflicts. The following research questions are addressed: (1) How can we understand, and what can we learn from, the role of constructive conflict in the de-escalation of the Oosterweel conflict through the Future Alliance framework? (2) What role did the institutional design of the Future Alliance (inter alia through the working communities) play in dealing with conflict effectively? In addressing these questions, the applicant will move forward the academic and practitioner understanding on policy conflicts, by making sense of the theoretical mechanism at play in in the de-escalation of policy conflict, a topic that has received less theoretical development than conflict escalation. The proposal presented here is aimed at acquiring the resources necessary to hire job-students that will assist in transcribing 64 hours of recorder interview material collected during an evaluation study earlier this year. The resulting dataset will provide rich data to be used for theoretical development and academic output. One contribution to a special issue in a top Public Administration journal is already in the pipeline, based on the data that will result from this proposal. This funding would also jumpstart the search for additional funding to continue my research interest in conflict management.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Boon Jan

Research team(s)

• Politics & Public Governance

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This proposal studies the temporal dynamics between the reputation of public organizations and the structural reforms they experience. Public organizations perform important services in society. When performance of these organizations is perceived to be problematic, political and administrative actors are often urged to initiate structural reforms (e.g., reshuffling tasks between organizations, merging or changing the legal status of organizations). Therefore, reforms have symbolic value as signals to society that problems concerning public sector performance are being perceived and acted upon. However, no studies have examined on a large sample how the perceived performance of public organizations (i.e., their reputation) affects these organizations' chances for being reformed. Neither do we know how structural reforms in turn impact organizations' future reputations. This proposal addresses these gaps. The dynamics between reputation and reforms through time are studied on a diverse set of 60 Flemish public organizations. Specific attention goes to the moderating role of reputation management strategies of these organizations and to several organizational and environmental conditions. The proposal will benefit from the most recent developments in machine learning techniques to automatically collect data on the multiple facets of the reputation and reputation management of public organizations. Advanced statistical models allow to analyze the complex relations through time.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Verhoest Koen
• Co-promoter: Daelemans Walter
• Fellow: Boon Jan

Research team(s)

• Politics & Public Governance

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Over the years the European Union (EU) has developed from its humble origins as the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) to a full-fledged supranational legal order. Likewise, the EU's administration has gradually evolved into a multifaceted and encompassing constellation of public organizations, ranging from the Commission and its Directorate Generals (DG's) to a host of independent institutions and agencies. Even in recent years, during which Member State public organizations were often subject to terminations and budget-cuts due to the financial crisis, it seems that the EU's administration has instead expanded to cope with a multitude of policy issues. It thus appears that processes leading to the establishment or reform of public organizations operate in a fundamentally different way on the EU-level than they do on the national level. Given the political and societal salience of EU integration in recent years, understanding when and why EU-level organizations are created, reformed or terminated is of paramount importance. It is therefore surprising that only limited and fragmented initiatives to study the EU bureaucracy's development have been undertaken up until now. By establishing a database that tracks the structural change events encountered by EU-level executive organizations and afterwards linking this with other already available data, we aim to distill the factors that cause not only the creation of new EU organizations, but also the structural reforms that they undergo in their lifetimes and that increase their risk of termination. This database will map the EU's bureaucracy comprehensively, and will include the DG's and agencies under the Commission, agencies established by the Council beyond the Commission's hierarchy, and other independent executive bodies such as the European Central Bank and the European External Action Service. This database will be an asset not only to pursue personal ongoing research but also to use in major research project applications for FWO and EU- Horizon 2020 program, as well as for cooperation with UA partners (e.g. the research groups ACIM and 'Government and Law', the ACTORE consortium) as well with established foreign partners. The research proposal presented here is aimed at acquiring the resources necessary to hire job-students that will assist in the data gathering process required to further complete this database.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Boon Jan

Research team(s)

• Politics & Public Governance
• Public Administration & Management

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

In these times of global financial and fiscal crisis, governments all over the world are looking for ways to reduce the budgetary burden of public organizations and to foster their economical and cost-conscious behaviour. The budgetary policies of the EU are also a major factor in this. One crucial element is the reduction of overhead costs within public organizations, as this allows budgetary savings and the reallocation of relative more budgetary means to the primary activities of public organizations. Overhead costs refer to the resources that organizations invest in supporting functions which enable the execution of their primary processes. The share of resources spent on organizational overhead (i.e. spent on non-program expenses) is generally considered to be a good inverse measurement of economical behaviour of organizations. Hence, for governments and society at large, it is crucial to know what causes large organizational overhead, and hence, a lack of economical behaviour. Moreover, since the 1980s governments around the world have adopted New Public Management (NPM) reforms, aiming to render public organizations more business-like, and make them more economical and cost-conscious as part of a better performance (i.e. economy, efficiency and effectiveness). According to NPM-doctrines, public bureaucracies needed to become 'lean and mean', by among others (1) disaggregating them in smaller, single-purpose agencies at some distance from government and shielding them off from political influence , (2) by giving them large degrees of managerial autonomy and (3) simultaneously subjecting them to result control by the minister through performance contracts and incentives. These changes in the control and regulatory environment of public organizations was believed to enhance economical behaviour, and hence reduce share of overhead costs. Likewise, more private sector oriented management would cut overhead costs. However, until now empirical research remains inconclusive about the extent performance, including economical behaviour, has indeed improved by agencification and other NPM-reforms. Also governments are increasingly sceptical about the extent to which NPM reduced overhead expenses for government as a whole, as NPM reforms, like agencification, seemed to have created proliferation and fragmentation of overhead functions. By using a dataset on all 70 departments and agencies under the remit of the Flemish government, this project enables to compare the share of overhead between organizations which have been subjected to a different extent to managerial autonomy and result control by the minister, as well as to other NPM reforms. Moreover, the project studies and theorizes the effect of these reforms on organizational overhead. The project deals with the caveats which we identify in the current state of the art of governmental efficiency studies and public sector performance studies, by: (1) defining a robust theoretical framing of hypotheses, based on neo-institutional economics and alternative theories; (2) integrating external (i.e. control and regulatory environment, task-specific and political environment) and internal determinants (i.e. management, encompassing structure, tools, values and strategies) in one theoretical model and studying their interaction effects; (3) explaining public sector overhead across sectors; (4) having attention for the political environment of public organizations and its effects; (5) avoiding the use of potentially biased perceptual data or ill-comparable archival data regarding relevant variabels, through the use of a non-obtrusive dataset, (6) by studying causality through three alternative methods (statistical analysis methods, econometric estimation of parametric frontiers and comparative configurational methods (CCM)), resulting in methodological triangulation.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Verhoest Koen
• Co-promoter: De Borger Bruno
• Fellow: Boon Jan

Research team(s)

• Public Administration & Management
• Politics & Public Governance

Project type(s)

• Research Project