Principal‐agent models of corruption control that emphasize rules, incentives, and sanctions as prime antecedents of corruption often stop short when evaluating how these general principles translate ...into concrete Human Resource Management (HRM) policies. Following a call to develop research about how day‐to‐day public management operations change incentives to be corrupt, we use data of 5.22 million USD audited to 545 local Mexican governments over 3 years to test the correlation between the misappropriation of public funds and specific HRM functions. Our results suggest that HRM is a critical, underseen factor in understanding the risk of corruption. In line with previous findings, we show that having merit‐based recruitment can prevent corruption. However, we also find that having performance and departmental evaluations and a less unequal structure of remunerations may also help local governments effectively avoid the misappropriation of public money.
This study analyzes how adverse working conditions shape frontline workers' behavioral and cognitive coping mechanisms. It builds on the idea of frontline work as a precarious profession and explores ...how workers deal with associated challenges. Specifically, evidence is provided for factors associated with alienative commitment among frontline workers. We do so against the background of the 2020–2021 Mexican and Brazilian pandemic response by health workers, social workers, and police officers. Findings from our qualitative analysis show that they feel abandoned, vulnerable, and left to deal with the risks of the pandemic by themselves. In response, they tend to cognitively disconnect from their work and prioritize their own job survival. We contribute to the literature by showing how institutional factors over which street‐level bureaucrats have little control, such as resource scarcity, lack of job security and managerial support, and low trust by citizen‐clients, are fertile conditions for these coping patterns.
Providing aid in times of increasing humanitarian need, limited budgets, and mounting security risks is challenging. This paper explores in what organisational circumstances evaluators judge, ...positively and negatively, the performance of international non‐governmental organisations (INGOs) in response to disasters triggered by natural hazards. It assesses whether and how, as perceived by expert evaluators, CARE and Oxfam successfully met multiple institutional requirements concerning beneficiary needs and organisational demands. It utilises the Competing Values Framework to analyse evaluator statements about project performance and organisational control and flexibility issues, using seven CARE and four Oxfam evaluation reports from 2005–11. The reports are compared using fuzzy‐set Qualitative Comparative Analysis. The resulting configurations show that positive evaluations of an INGO's internal and external flexibility relate to satisfying beneficiary needs and organisational demands, whereas negative evaluations of external flexibility pertain to not meeting beneficiary needs and negative statements about internal control concerning not fulfilling organisational demands.
Este artículo analiza el desempeño del gobierno de Enrique Peña Nieto en materia de combate a la corrupción. Me enfoco en entender los orígenes del Sistema Nacional Anticorrupción (SNA), cómo está ...formado, y en identificar los retos y posibilidades de éxito de cara al futuro. Con base en la revisión de la evidencia reunida, propongo que, en materia de anticorrupción, el desempeño del gobierno de Peña Nieto fue reactivo, incompleto y limitado. Los esfuerzos respondieron principalmente a la necesidad de aplacar el descontento social, mientras que los recursos se mantuvieron precarios y nunca se formuló una política anticorrupción eficaz. Más aún, no hubo voluntad política para consolidar y mejorar la estrategia en ciernes, ni una coalición que asegurara su continuidad. Estos defectos explican por qué el SNA no ha podido consolidarse, hasta ahora, como una estrategia anticorrupción de largo plazo.
This paper analyses the performance of Enrique Peña Nieto’s government with regard to the fight against corruption. It focuses on understanding the origins of the National Anti-Corruption System (SNA), how it is structured, and identifying the challenges and possibilities of success in the future. Based on a review of the evidence, it proposes that with regard to corruption the performance of the Peña Nieto government was reactive, incomplete, and limited. The efforts made responded principally to the need to placate social discontent, while remaining under-resourced and lacking in an effective anti-corruption policy. Furthermore, there was no political will to consolidate and improve the emerging strategy, or a coalition to ensure its continuity. These defects explain why the SNA has failed to consolidate itself, to date, as a long-term anti-corruption strategy.
Cet article examine les résultats qu’a obtenus le gouvernement d’Enrique Peña Nieto dans sa lutte contre la corruption. On s’interroge sur les origines du Système national anticorruption (SNA), sa structure, les défis auxquels il doit faire face et ses possibilités de succès dans l’avenir. L’évidence disponible permet de dire que les mesures de ce gouvernement ont été réactives et insuffisantes. Limités par le manque de ressources et par l’incapacité à formuler une politique efficace contre la corruption, les efforts déployés ont essayé surtout d’apaiser le mécontentement social. En outre, il n’y a pas eu une volonté politique de consolider et d’améliorer la stratégie naissante, ni de former une coalition pour lui assurer la continuité. Toutes ces défaillances ont empêché le SNA de consolider une politique de long terme contre la corruption.
From theories on middle managers’ entrepreneurship in private organizations, it is known that the structural network position of middle managers influences their innovative work behavior. Our study ...investigates if in a governmental setting, the intra-organizational networking behavior of public managers has a similar positive influence on innovative work behavior. As networking mechanisms may depend on the particular context and organizational norms, we also investigate the influence of networking motivations. According to social network research in private enterprises, social network links can be used to advance individual careers. According to public management and Public Service Motivation theories, public managers have a collective orientation aimed at producing public goods. Therefore, we investigate if, next to intra-organizational networking, an individual career motive or a collective motivation for networking explains innovative work behavior. In a case study on public managers of a municipality in Mexico City, we find a strong influence of networking on innovative work behavior. We also find support for additional influences of individual career motives, but no evidence for collective motivations.
Points for practitioners
Intra-organizational networking of public managers leads to increased innovative behavior in a governmental setting. In addition, when aiming at increasing innovative behavior, individual career motives seem to have stronger positive effects than collective motivations (such as teamwork-related motivations).
A technocratic pathway to public management reform stresses the need for committing sizeable resources to reform implementation. Building on an institutional framework, we argue that there are ...alternative pathways to compliant implementation for government agencies with limited resources. Our comparative study of 55 Mexican government agencies that were the object of the 2003 Civil Service Reform Act reveals the co‐occurrence of both technocratic and institutional pathways to compliant implementation. The common denominator across pathways in organizations with limited resources was the absence of strong oppositional norms (patronage) and the presence of robust interpersonal trust. We conclude that the role played by available resources in compliant reform implementation is far from straightforward, and depends on different combinations of public organizations' endogenous characteristics.
Abstract
In the context of limited state capacity and a politicized public administration, democratic backsliding tends to exploit preexisting deficiencies in the functioning of the public sector. ...Whereas staffing managerial positions with regime supporters is well‐documented, less attention has been paid to the structuring and staffing of street‐level bureaucracies under a spoils system. In this article, we use document analysis and in‐depth interviews to analyze the case of Mexico's “Servants of the Nation” —a group of more than 19,000 former party members and sympathizers hired by the government to perform street‐level tasks— as an example of “parabureaucracy”: an auxiliary street‐level organization designed to perform a wide variety of tasks directly related to the executive's political agenda. We argue that parabureaucracies are designed to sideline formal administrative command structures for the benefit of the government in power but may also serve as a means to bypass stifled and dysfunctional traditional bureaucracies.
Proponents of new public management (NPM) expect public organizations to become more flexible and adaptive after administrative reforms, effectively showing convergence with patterns of ...organizational change in the private sector. This "convergence argument" is tested with a sample of 61 public and 61 private organizations in the Netherlands. We analyze whether public organizations, after 20 years of NPM reform, have changed their organizational structures and internal policies in relation to competitive, regulatory, and autonomy pressures, similarly to private organizations. Statistical analyses show that competition increases the incidence of change both in public and private organizations. High managerial autonomy and exposure to regulatory pressures relate to increased incidence of change in public organizations, but not in private ones. The results support the idea that NPM reform has made public organizations more similar to private organizations but that some concrete differences persist between private and public management in the Netherlands.
Aun sabemos poco de los antecedentes psicoorganizacionales relacionados con la prevencion de actos de corrupcion en el gobierno. Este estudio empirico examina el impacto distintivo de dos emociones ...de valencia negativa, miedo y enojo, como catalizadores o inhibidores de la denuncia (whistleblowing) entre empleados publicos. Por medio de un estudio experimental con funcionarios de un gobierno local en Mexico, mostramos que las personas que experimentan enojo son significativamente mas propensas a denunciar actos de corrupcion, en especial cuando se les expone a estimulos de alta intensidad. Por otro lado, el miedo intenso puede inhibir de manera poderosa la denuncia de irregularidades. Estos hallazgos proporcionan evidencia relevante del efecto de los estimulos emocionales en la denuncia de irregularidades en el contexto de una organizacion gubernamental. Con base en estos resultados, sugerimos que la gestion de las emociones podria ser una herramienta efectiva para mejorar los niveles de integridad en las burocracias publicas. Palabras clave: corrupcion, denuncia, whistleblowing, emociones, administracion publica, experimentos. We still know little about the psycho-organizational antecedents related to the prevention of acts of corruption in government. This empirical study examines the distinctive impact of two emotions with negative valence, fear and anger, as catalysts or inhibitors of whistleblowing among public employees. Through an experimental study with local government officials in Mexico, we show that people who experience anger are significantly more likely to report acts of corruption, especially when exposed to high-intensity stimuli. On the other hand, intense fear can powerfully inhibit whistleblowing. These findings provide relevant evidence of the impact of emotional cues on whistleblowing in the context of a government organization. Based on these results, we suggest that emotion management could be an effective tool to improve integrity levels in public bureaucracies. Keywords: corruption, report, whistleblowing, emotions, public administration, experiments.
Aún sabemos poco de los antecedentes psicoorganizacionales relacionados con la prevención de actos de corrupción en el gobierno. Este estudio empírico examina el impacto distintivo de dos emociones ...de valencia negativa, miedo y enojo, como catalizadores o inhibidores de la denuncia (whistleblowing) entre empleados públicos. Por medio de un estudio experimental con funcionarios de un gobierno local en México, mostramos que las personas que experimentan enojo son significativamente más propensas a denunciar actos de corrupción, en especial cuando se les expone a estímulos de alta intensidad. Por otro lado, el miedo intenso puede inhibir de manera poderosa la denuncia de irregularidades. Estos hallazgos proporcionan evidencia relevante del efecto de los estímulos emocionales en la denuncia de irregularidades en el contexto de una organización gubernamental. Con base en estos resultados, sugerimos que la gestión de las emociones podría ser una herramienta efectiva para mejorar los niveles de integridad en las burocracias públicas.
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