In a JPART article on a theory of the public-private distinction in management, Meier and O’Toole (2011) suggested that the impact of management might differ in public versus private organizations. They have formulated several theoretically and practically important propositions in the article, while many of them are yet to be tested. One of those hypotheses is that public organizations will have a relatively greater focus on internal management vis-à-vis external management. This argument is very interesting, because as Meier and O’Toole duly noted it is counterintuitive since many would presume that public organizations are more open to the environment. Meier and O’Toole defend their position with pointing out, “to the extent that formalizing theoretical argument generates counterintuitive hypotheses, it demonstrates the benefit of such reasoning (296).”
Given the importance of the points raised above in the field of public management, we empirically test the aforementioned Meier and O’Toole’s hypothesis on the relationship between publicness and managerial focus. We developed a dataset that may enable us to examine the relationship between publicness and the relative focus on internal management vis-à-vis external management. The majority of this data was collected through the Korean Public Service Organizations Survey (KPSOS), a NOS (National Organizations Study)-type informant survey conducted in 2016. The sample for KPSOS consists of the largest 200-300 organizations in each functional category of public service organizations such as universities, general hospitals, and quasi-governmental agencies in South Korea. For example, the 2016 KPSOS sample consists of around 200 universities and 250 quasi-governmental agencies, and 2 individual informants for each organization, which will be the sample of this study. We have also supplemented the 2016 KPSOS dataset by mining several archival sources about Korean universities and quasi-governmental agencies.
The construct of publicness in this study will be measured by three dimensions, that is, ownership (governmental vs. non-governmental), funding (the proportion of financial resources from governments), and social control (the level of government regulation). The dependent variables will be managerial focus on internal and external management, which will be measured by the distribution of top manager’s working time for each managerial activity. To control for the effects of important variables other than publicness on these variables, we are going to include multiple measures of organizational and individual characteristics in our model.
In this study, we will conduct the following analyses: separate- and joint-effects of publicness dimensions on managerial focus and interacting effects between publicness dimensions on managerial focus, and other non-linear effects between independent variables and managerial focus. Then we will report the results and discuss the theoretical and practical implications.
Management and organizational performance in comparative perspective (PMRA-sponsored panel
