Search results

In 2019, civil servants in Hong Kong publicly protested against their government as part of the anti-extradition bill movement. This study aims to understand how civil servants formed their support to the movement despite a deep-rooted bureaucratic culture. The authors argue that moral values (e.g. impartiality and integrity) and aspirations to liberal democracy are powerful motivations that override bureaucratic values (e.g. political neutrality and political loyalty) in the context of social movement.

Based on a protest on-site survey (n = 277), this study analyzes the relationship between civil servants’ value orientations and their political demands and actions.

Regression analyses show that civil servants’ consideration of moral values relates positively to support to investigative demands, while a more liberal orientation predicts greater support to consequential demands and action intentions. A moderation effect is found in which greater consideration of moral values attenuates the negative effect of bureaucratic values on the support to both types of demands. In addition, the two types of values interact with each other to influence support to consequential demands, which, in turn, predicts willingness to further political actions.

This study seizes a valuable opportunity to examine the political participation of civil servants in Hong Kong. As Hong Kong and the civil service system face tightening authoritarian controls, the findings shed light on the dynamics of moral values, bureaucratic values and liberal orientation in motivating resistance among civil servants.

Over 100 years ago, the bureaucratic compact and five professions were established: city/county management, city planning, civil engineering, landscape architecture, and architecture. In exchange for merit employment and independence from politics, these professions offered expertise and related values. To understand those values and changes in the compact from the 1900s to today, codes of ethics from the five professions were examined. Anticipated changes were a movement from traditional public values to business values including New Public Management. However, findings show traditional values persisting over time (e.g. public interest), but not many New Public Management values (e.g. innovation). Modern values do appear and expand professionalsʼ responsibilities into environmental protection, sustainability, and human rights, which influence what these professions offer as they seek to uphold their end of the bureaucratic compact.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of three work‐value orientations — cosmopolitan, local and bureaucratic, on teachers' activities in the high‐school system. The research supported the notion that the bureaucratic orientation is not in conflict with the two other orientations and hence its effect on teachers' activities is not opposite to that of the local cosmopolitan orientation. Two hundred and sixty‐two high‐school teachers participated in the study. They answered mailed questionnaires which sought biographical data, measures of the three work value orientations and measures of five groups of school activities. Results indicated that teachers' activities are affected by their work‐value orientations. The bureaucratic orientation was not found to be in conflict with the two other orientations, but rather complementary to the local one in its effect on teachers' activity. The teachers who rated high in all three orientations were also the most involved in all five groups of school activities.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the occurrence of value conflicts between information security and other organizational values among white-collar workers. Further, analyzes are conducted of the relationship between white-collar workers’ perceptions of the culture of their organizations and value conflicts involving information security.

Descriptive analyses and regression analyses were conducted on survey data gathered among two samples of white-collar workers in Sweden.

Value conflicts regarding information security occur regularly among white-collar workers in the private and public sectors and within different business sectors. Variations in their occurrence can be understood partly as a function of employees’ work situations and the sensitivity of the information handled in the organization. Regarding how perceived organizational culture affects the occurrence of value conflicts, multivariate regression analysis reveals that employees who perceive their organizations as having externally oriented, flexible cultures experience value conflicts more often.

The relatively low share of explained variance in the explanatory models indicates the need to identify alternative explanations of the occurrence of value conflicts regarding information security.

Information security managers need to recognize that value conflicts occur regularly among white-collar workers in different business sectors, more often among workers in organizations that handle sensitive information, and most often among white-collar workers who perceive the cultures of their organizations as being externally oriented and flexible.

The study addresses a gap in the information security literature by contributing to the understanding of value conflicts between information security and other organizational values. This study has mapped the occurrence of value conflicts regarding information security among white-collar professionals and shows that the occurrence of value conflicts is associated with work situation, information sensitivity and perceived organizational culture.

A process of organisational change has accompanied managerial reforms in the public sector and is oriented towards the development of a post‐bureaucratic organisational culture. However, there remains a limited empirical understanding of culture in public organisations. Contributes to an understanding of organisational culture in the public sector through survey research that analyses culture by reference to the competing values of internal/external orientation and control/flexibility. Focuses on six organisations in the Queensland public sector which have been encouraged to depart from traditional bureaucratic values and to adopt a greater emphasis on change, flexibility, entrepreneurialism, outcomes, efficiency and productivity. Suggests, however, that public sector organisations continue to emphasise the values of a bureaucratic or hierarchical organisational culture.

In recent years, public management research has been focused at the public value paradigm. However, many discussions on this topic are motivated at least as much by theory as by evidence. We do not yet have a comprehensive empirical understanding of what happens when the public value paradigm is translated into practice within organizations. An important theoretical question is how to match the public value approach and measurement to specific contexts. Understanding barriers to effective implementation and identifying what might be done to overcome obstacles are interesting issues for advancing theory and practice.

By deploying and testing the same approach and method of measuring public value in two local governments, this article aims to shed light on barriers to implementing the public value paradigm in practice.

The study’s findings show little evidence to support claims for a paradigmatic shift towards the public value paradigm in the Italian case.

Managerial implications of public value measurement are also taken into consideration.

We know little about what conditions drive individual governments towards the adoption of a public value approach and measurement. Undoubtedly, this issue has huge practical relevance when introducing public value discourses in bureaucratic governmental settings.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and test theory-driven hypothesis on trade costs’ effect of logistics performance (LP) and bureaucratic efficiency, primarily from SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) perspective.

The paper develops hypothesis based on the review of the literature and theory linking LP, trade costs and institutions. The authors test the hypothesis using secondary data sources: World Bank-UNESCAP trade costs database, World Bank Logistics Performance Index (LPI) and Political Risk Service's Political Risk Rating. Fixed-effect approach is used to test the hypothesis.

The influential role of bureaucratic quality on relationship between LPI and South Asian trade costs (inter-SAARC and intra-SAARC) is evident. The results also point out that bureaucratic quality also conditions the effect of different dimensions of LPI on South Asian trade costs. Further, it is found that bureaucratic inefficiency mitigates the effects of LPI on South Asia's trade costs with its proximate trading partners APEC (Asia–Pacific Economic Cooperation) and ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asia Nations).

The analysis is conducted using short span of data. With the availability of long span of data, the understanding of the relationship studies in this paper will improve.

The results suggests policymakers to improve bureaucratic efficiency for utilizing the full potential effect of LPI in deceasing trade costs. The study inspires businesses to act and advocate in favor of reforms in governance system.

This paper is among the first, which investigates the possibility that the relationship between LPI and trade costs depends on the bureaucratic efficiency. It provides a more detailed description of the LPI-trade costs relationship.

The rational organization has long been an important tool in public administration (Weber, 1968; Simon, 1964; Alkadry, 2003). It is often identified with positive characteristics such as objectivity, expertise, efficiency, fairness and formalization. However, these same positive characteristics can contribute to a “darker side” of rational organizations. Hummel (1994) articulates this as a “bureaucratic experience” resulting from the interaction between administrators and bureaucracy, while others articulate it as the “organization man” experience. In this article, a conceptual model of the relationship between organizational rationalization and administrator experiences is developed. This model is tested using a survey of front-line administrators and a structural equation model of the relationships between these two concepts. The article concludes with a discussion of alternatives to technical rationality.

This volume explores an expansive array of organizational imaginaries, or understandings of organizational possibilities, with a focus on how collectivist-democratic organizations offer alternatives to conventional for-profit managerial enterprises. These include worker and consumer cooperatives and other enterprises that, to varying degrees, (1) emphasize social values over profit; (2) are owned not by shareholders but by workers, consumers, or other stakeholders; (3) employ democratic forms of managing their operations; and (4) have social ties to the organization based on moral and emotional commitments. The contributors to this volume examine how these enterprises generate solidarity among members, network with other organizations and communities, contend with market pressures, and enhance their larger organizational ecosystems. In this introductory paper, the authors put forward an inclusive organizational typology whose continuums account for four key sources of variation – values, ownership, management, and social relations – and argue that enterprises fall between these two poles of the collectivist-democratic organization and the for-profit managerial enterprise. Drawing from this volume’s empirical studies, the authors situate these market actors within fields of competition and contestation shaped not just by state action and legal frameworks, but also by the presence or absence of social movements, labor unions, and meta-organizations. This typology challenges conventional conceptualizations of for-profit managerial enterprises as ideals or norms, reconnects past models of organizing among marginalized communities with contemporary and future possibilities, and offers activists and entrepreneurs a sense of the wide range of possibilities for building enterprises that differ from dominant models.

Bureaucracy is usually associated with the negative consequences of large organisations such as “red tapeism”, unexplained delays, and general frustration. Max Weber assumed that the bureaucratic structure would always be the most effective approach. This study focused on how heads of libraries and practising librarians in selected libraries in Kwara State, Nigeria view bureaucracy within libraries using information obtained by means of a questionnaire and personal observation. It describes their views on the topic. The article concludes by calling on heads of libraries to begin to think more positively, at least with a view to creating a working environment that will de‐emphasise the strict compliance with bureaucratic values, particularly in Nigerian academic libraries.