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To cite this article: Jan Wynen, Koen Verhoest & Sara Demuzere (2016) Quality Management
in Public-Sector Organizations: Evidence from Six EU Countries, International Journal of Public
Administration, 39:2, 122-134, DOI: 10.1080/01900692.2014.1003268
ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
Although there is considerable evidence for the hypothesis that an efficient use of management Quality management
techniques is the key to a good public service delivery, a lot of studies come to the conclusion techniques; managerial
that there is only partial, reluctant implementation or even a general lack of the use of such autonomy; fractional
response model
techniques by public managers. This paper examines the determinants for the use of quality
management techniques in public sector organizations from six EU countries. It turns out that
especially more organizational autonomy and result control appear to be of importance while,
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CONTACT Jan Wynen jan.wynen@soc.kuleuven.be Faculty of Social Sciences, Public Governance Institute, KU Leuven, Parkstraat 45, 3000 Leuven,
Belgium.
2016 Taylor & Francis
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION 123
delivery implicates the permanent refinement of all they have some expectation of continuity over time,
organizational processes. The meaning of the concept and (6) they have some resources on their own.
of quality management simultaneously evolved with the Companies and corporations with a commercial focus
definition of quality: from taking actions to fulfill either which have to closely observe the laws regulating pri-
previously established specifications or customers vate companies or which are registered under company
expectations to taking actions with the aim of embed- law as a company and governmental foundations,
ding awareness of quality in all organizational pro- trusts, and charities are excluded from our understand-
cesses. Currently, we are in the phase of total quality ing of agencies. The organizations in our sample range
management (TQM), the management approach in from departmental agencies without their own legal
which the permanent improvement of the quality of identity to public law agencies and private law agencies,
products and services through ongoing refinements which do have their own legal identity. These agencies
within the entire organization is the central point. differ to the extent they have been granted managerial
Quality management is seen as the sustained effort for autonomy.
a high-quality service delivery. At present, there are a The remainder of this article is organized as follows:
wide variety of techniques organizations can choose The next section describes the data, while the theore-
from to assess the quality of their service delivery. By tical model is developed in the third and fourth sec-
means of these techniques, the organization can be tions, in which some descriptives as well as results from
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analyzed/evaluated on several characteristics (e.g., lea- previous literature are discussed. The empirical findings
dership style, partnerships, strategy, and planning). are discussed in the fifth section, which is followed by
Based upon this analysis, action plans might then be some concluding remarks.
generated to ameliorate the organizational aspects on
which the organization did not score well and by this
end in a better service delivery. Data
The goal of this article does not exist in studying the Data used for the analysis have been provided by the
effect of using quality management techniques on per- Comparative Public Organization Data Base for
formance but rather examines why organizations use Research and Analysis or COBRA network. The
quality management techniques. More precisely, using COBRA network aims to encourage and enable com-
cross-country data, this article empirically explores the parative research into public-sector organizations (for
factors that affect the use of these techniques in public- more information see http://soc.kuleuven.be/io/cost/
sector organizations. index.htm). It developed a common questionnaire in
We examine the use of quality management techni- order to survey senior managers of public-sector orga-
ques for a specific type of public-sector organization, nizations. The top-level management (chief executive
which we call the state agency. Agencies are variously officers [CEOs]) of these organizations was asked to fill
described internationally as nondepartmental public in a web-based questionnaire containing several types
bodies, hybrids, quangos, fringe bodies, nonmajoritar- of questions (e.g., on the use of management techniques
ian institutions, quasi-autonomous public organiza- and managerial autonomy). The data were treated
tions, and distributed public governance (see, e.g., anonymously. The countries included in the subse-
Christensen & Laegreid, 2006; Roness, 2007; quent analysis are Belgium, Italy, Portugal, Germany,
Wettenhall, 2005). How an agency is defined and The Netherlands, and Austria. The overall response rate
what it does varies considerably across national and for the Belgian survey was 55%, for Italy 70%, for
organizational cultures, legal systems, and political sys- Portugal 45%, for The Netherlands 38%, for Germany
tems (Smullen, 2004). Following Pollitt, Talbot, 60%, and for Austria 39%. Missing data on the out-
Caulfield, and Smullen (2004) and Talbot (2004), we come, explanatory, and/or control variables leave us
focus on those public agencies with the following fea- with a sample size of 298 state agencies (29 Belgium
tures: (1) they are public law bodies, (2) they are struc- agencies, 30 Italian, 73 Portuguese, 58 Dutch, 46
turally disaggregated from other organizations or from German, and 62 Austrian agencies). These organiza-
units within core ministries, (3) they have some capa- tions proved to be representative for the total popula-
city for autonomous decision-making with regard to tions in each state, with a broad distribution across type
management policy, (4) they are formally under at of agency, primary tasks, ministries, and policy fields.1
least some control of ministers and ministries, (5) The included countries represent two distinct
1
The representativeness of the data was tested using Chi-square goodness-of-fit tests. The number of agencies per type in the
sample was compared with the number of agencies per type in the population.
124 J. WYNEN ET AL.
administrative traditions (e.g., Painter & Peters, 2010); Measuring the use of quality management
Belgium, Italy, and Portugal have a Napoleonic admin- techniques
istrative tradition while Germany, Austria, and The
As there is a whole range of management techniques
Netherlands have a Continental tradition.2
organizations might use to work on the quality of
The employment of self-report measures has how-
their service delivery, only a selected number of qual-
ever been debated intensively in literature (e.g., Enticott
ity management techniques were included in the sur-
& Walker, 2008; Moyser & Wagstaffe, 1987; Walker &
vey. More precisely, top managers were asked for the
Enticott, 2004) since this can lead to common method
extent to which they used two well-known quality
bias. Although such bias can distort results, there still
management techniques in the public sector, namely
exist many misconceptions about common method bias
the use of quality standards and quality management
in self-report measures. Conway and Lance (2010) dis-
systems. For each of those two management techni-
cuss these misconceptions at length in their article
ques, respondents had to indicate to what extent these
What reviewers should expect from authors regarding
techniques are used within their organization, with 0
common method bias in organizational research. They
= not being used; 1 = being use to some extent; and 2
stress that relationships between self-reported variables
= being used to a large extent. An explanatory factor
are not necessarily and routinely upwardly biased.
analysis (using a polychoric correlation matrix, in
Moreover, other reports are not superior to self-reports;
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2
Administrative tradition may be defined as a historically based set of values, structures and relationships with other institutions
that defines the nature of appropriate public administration with society (Peters, 2008, p. 118). According to Yesilkagit (2010),
administrative traditions refer to both formal governance structures which encode the past and inherited set of ideas and beliefs.
In both meanings, these traditions define what is appropriate in public administration for a country and thereby constrain the
available options for administrative policies, creating path-dependency mechanisms (Yesilkagit, 2010). Administrative traditions
create legacy effects on contemporary patterns of public administration, in particular in the face of pressure for change (Painter &
Peters, 2010).
3
Cronbachs alpha for the index equals 0.73.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION 125
Organisation
Internal
Senior management Factors
- Size
- Budget
- Age
Internal use of quality - Income
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management techniques
Source
- Primary
Task
- Legal
Status
4
Size is available as a continuous variable in the data but is however heavily skewed. We have tried several transformations (e.g., log-
transformation), yet these only improved the situation slightly. As such, we decided to construct a categorical variable based on
the distribution of the data.
126 J. WYNEN ET AL.
later in case of multivariate regressions, although in citizens, which is typically seen as hampering manage-
bivariate relations a positive correlation was found). rial instruments (Bach & Jann, 2010; Bogumil &
We include a categorical variable (age) measured in Ebinger, 2008; Bouckaert & van Dooren, 2003;
years since creation with current legal status (survey Reichard, 2004).
year minus year of setup). Agencies are designated as Distance from government (type) is coded 1 if the
young when they exist no longer than 10 years. agency has its own legal identity, separate from the
Medium age refers to agencies which exist for a max- state, vested in public law or private law, and is set to
imum of 25 and a minimum of 11 years. Old agencies 0 otherwise.
need to have existed more than 25 years.5 The lowest
category is used as a benchmark. Income source
Public-sector organizations can get their financial
Measurability of primary task resources predominantly from the government budget,
Task characteristics and the related technical environ- or predominantly from self-generated income, through
ment affect organizational practice, and hence the use the sale of services or by receiving retributions or fees
of quality management techniques. Tasks can differ for the delivery of these services. In case of the latter,
according to their measurability (Van Dooren, 2005; public-sector organizations will want to maximize this
Wilson, 1989), their policy/political environment self-generated income. For such an organization, it is
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(Bourdeaux & Chikoto, 2008; Dull, 2009) as well as extremely important to monitor the quantity and qual-
their salience (Pollitt et al., 2004). Within broader per- ity of services produced and delivered, and the effi-
formance-related literature, the extent of availability, ciency of their operation, as these elements will
and thus measurability, of performance information immediately impact upon their financial viability.
has been found to be positively associated with perfor- Moreover, for such organizations, it is crucial to con-
mance management (Ammons & Rivenbark, 2008; vince users from the quality of their services, hence
Bourdeaux & Chikoto, 2008; de Lancer Julnes & making quality management even more crucial. Such
Holzer, 2001; Moynihan & Ingraham, 2004; Moynihan organizations need to be able to react swiftly upon
& Landuyt, 2009). Quality management techniques can declining demand for their services, or deteriorating
thus be expected to be used more in organizations with reputation, or user satisfaction. External pressure from
more measurable tasks and tasks which face pressures markets and citizens is seen as driver for managerial
stemming from market forces or political salience. reform activities (Bogumil & Ebinger, 2008) and per-
A dummy (primtask) is included in order to examine formance management instruments (Moynihan &
the effects of primary task. This dummy is set to 1 when Ingraham, 2004). These elements make it very impor-
the primary task is tangible in kind (general public tant for senior management to use performance man-
services and business and industrial services) and to 0 agement techniques internally within the public
otherwise (in case of policy development, regulation, agencies to monitor and steer performance.
and exercising public authority as primary task). Therefore, a dummy (incsour) concerning income
source is added. This variable reflects the main source
Legal distance of income of the organization. It indicates whether or
Agencies which are structurally disaggregated from not the organization is predominantly self-financing or
government and which have their own legal identity financially dependent from the government instead.
are more susceptible to demands of their customers and This dummy equals 1 if the income source is predomi-
stakeholder and more visible for media and society, nantly or fully nongovernmental and 0 otherwise (i.e.,
increasing the need for legitimacy. Such organizations predominantly governmental funded).
need to secure their existence by building strong lin-
kages with and support from these external actors. Budget
Hence, pressures to adopt and use modern manage- A large budget might refer to an enhanced capacity of
ment techniques which help them to deliver services of the organization to implement quality management
a high quality and in an efficient way are comparatively techniques. Previous research often pointed to insuffi-
strong. Units directly under ministerial responsibilities cient resources as an explanation for implementation
are more politicized and less in direct contact with failure, i.e., having performance information without
5
Age is available as a continuous variable in the data but is however heavily skewed. We have tried several transformations (e.g., log-
transformation), yet these only improved the situation slightly. As such, we decided to construct a categorical variable based on
the distribution of the data.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION 127
using it (Van Dooren, 2005). Empirically, financial can gain the trust of the oversight government by
resources have been shown to have mixed effects on providing them with guarantees as well as clear infor-
the use of performance management techniques. mation, which makes monitoring of their organization
Several studies find positive effects referring to the by the oversight authorities possible.
provision of adequate resources (Askim, Johnsen, & We focus here on managerial autonomy, which
Christophersen, 2008; de Lancer Julnes & Holzer, refers to making decisions about the choice and use of
2001; Grizzle & Pettijohn, 2002; Moynihan & financial, personnel, and other resources at the strategic
Landuyt, 2009). However, Van Dooren (2005) finds or operational level (Verhoest, Peters, Bouckaert, &
no significant relation between financial resources and Verschuere, 2004). In line with several researchers
the degree of performance measurement adoption and (Laegreid et al., 2006; Moynihan, 2005; Moynihan &
implementation. Likewise, in their study of 226 agen- Pandey, 2010), we will expect managerial autonomy
cies from three countries, Verhoest et al. (2010) did not also to lead to a higher use of quality management
find any independent effect of a larger budget on the techniques.
use of performance management techniques in the Two types of managerial autonomy are taken into
multivariate regression analysis, although in the bivari- accountpersonnel management autonomy (PA) and
ate analyses, correlations showed to be positive. financial management autonomy (FA). Personnel man-
The variable budget (budget) is included as a vari- agement autonomy relates to the autonomy of an
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able with three categories.6 The lowest category is used agency to take decisions concerning policies regarding
as a benchmark. salary level, rules, and procedures regarding promotion
and evaluation of staff, in general (so beyond individual
decisions) without interference from ministries (see
External factors Appendix, Table A1, for the precise wording of these
Senior managers of public agencies are involved in an questions). For each of the three items, organizations
external principalagent relation between them as agent can either have no autonomy (score 0) or full auton-
and their portfolio minister and parent department as omy (score 1). A dummy score is calculated, based on
principals, which want the agencies to implement spe- the aggregation of the three items; whereby score 1
cific policies in a well-performing way. To date, how- indicates full autonomy on all three items.
ever, only very limited attention has been paid to the Financial managerial autonomy is measured in a
link between this relationship and the internal use of similar way. An index is constructed, based on the
management techniques. Consequently, external factors aggregation of the scores on three items: the extent to
such as managerial autonomy and result control will be which the organization is able to shift personnel and
included in the subsequent analyses. running cost budgets, to set tariffs for services and
products, and to shift personnel-running cost and
investment budgets (cf., Table A1 in the Appendix).
Managerial autonomy
However, unlike the indicators for personnel manage-
A critical element in this principalagent relation is
ment autonomy, organizations can either have no
that the agent gets sufficient autonomy in order to be
autonomy (score 0), needing prior approval from par-
able to implement the principals demands in an effi-
ent ministries (score 1) or without prior approval from
cient, flexible, and specialized way. Generally, one
above (score 2). Each variable is recoded to a dummy
could say that the more autonomous the organization,
(dummies are set to 0 if score equals 0 or 1 and set to 1
the more senior managers can be considered as residual
otherwise) and then aggregated. After which this sum is
claimants of their organization. This makes it more
again transformed to a dummy, whereby score 1 indi-
important for senior managers to have their organiza-
cates full autonomy on all three items.
tion performing well. Therefore, it is useful (and
rational) for the senior managers to limit information
asymmetry and goal conflicts within the organization. Result control by portfolio minister
By using management techniques (monitoring, bond- Recent studies have demonstrated (Christensen &
ing, incentives) internally, senior managers can stay Laegreid, 2007b; Laegreid, Roness, & Rubecksen,
informed of the activities in lower organizational units 2008) that an increase of managerial autonomy has
and assess the results (control those units). Also, they been accompanied with an expansion of regulation
6
Budget size is available as a continuous variable in the data but is however heavily skewed. We have tried several transformations
(e.g., log-transformation), yet these only improved the situation slightly. As such, we decided to construct a categorical variable
based on the distribution of the data.
128 J. WYNEN ET AL.
and control: public-sector organizations received more Although scarcely studied, the independent influ-
autonomy from the oversight authorities, but at the ence of external result control of agencies by their
same time they were also controlled more from, on minister and parent department is considered to have
the one hand, the traditional ex ante authorities and a positive influence on the use of structured manage-
from newer ex post audits and assessment measures on ment techniques within agencies (see Verhoest et al.,
the other hand. In many countries, this result control 2010).
system manifest itself in the form of a result-oriented The measurement of result control is based on (i)
contract-like agreement between the minister and the the accountability of the agency CEO for agency per-
public agency, which clearly stipulates the expected formance (results) to the government and (ii) the
results, as well as the way agencies need to report, extent to which the organization faces sanctions or
and what sanctions are applied when objectives are rewards for its performance. Again a dummy variable
not met. The price a public agency has to pay for its is constructed which measures the extent to which the
increased managerial autonomy is to accept such a organization is subject to a high level of result control
result control system, in order to ensure the minister by government or not. A high level of result control in
and parent departments that the agency uses its discre- this case equals a hard form of performance contract-
tion to pursue the achievement of the objectives of its ing, in which under- or over-performance leads to not
principal (Christensen & Lgreid, 2004). only the accountability of the agency CEO, but also to
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It is important to stress that external result control is sanctions or rewards (see Verhoest, 2005; Verhoest
an external factor, while using quality management tech- et al., 2010). A score 0 refers to no result control or
niques is an organization-internal process. The use of soft result control (meaning CEO is accountable for
quality management techniques can however help in the results, but without sanctions or rewards being
fulfilling the external requirements. The internal use of given).
quality management techniques can be induced by the
external result control by actors outside the organization
Empirical findings
as a way to carry out central regulation or control of
activities within agencies toward a desirable standard or Overall, we use 298 observations in the following
goal (Laegreid et al., 2006). However, the use of quality regression analyses. Descriptive statistics of the vari-
management techniques can also be an intentional ables used are given in Table 1. Of course, there is a
choice by the organization itself. Following normative relationship between the degree of (both personnel and
isomorphism, agencies may pick and choose based on financial) management autonomy and the legal type of
enhancing their legitimacy in their environment agency. Organizations further away from the parent
(Laegreid et al., 2007). Moreover, a neo-institutional ministry typically enjoy more managerial autonomy.
explanation is also possible, and the use of management Nonetheless, the degree of de facto managerial auton-
practices can also exist because of technical reasons, to omy can differ substantially from the degree of formal
promote better performance, but only for those organi- autonomy (Maggetti, 2007), hence making it interesting
zations where the management practice is more likely to to include both types of autonomy. The highest var-
promote improved performance (Laegreid et al., 2007). iance inflation factor equals 2.42, meaning that there is
In the article, we regard the use of quality management no multicollinearity in the sense that it is causing tech-
techniques as a willful choice from agencies. nical problems in the estimations.
Some agencies, however, did not use quality man- The results show that both high result control and
agement techniques, i.e., some observations are left high personnel management autonomy lead to an
censored. This restriction is taken into account by increased use of quality management techniques.
employing Tobit models (cf., e.g., Greene, 1997; Surprisingly however, the interaction term between
Gourieroux, 2000). Let the latent variable yi of our both variables is significant but negative. The negative
econometric model be N(,2) and coefficient of the interaction term indicates that the
effect of high personnel management autonomy on
yi x0 i i ; (1)
the use of quality management techniques decreases
where is the parameter vector to be estimated, xi the when it is combined with high result control (alterna-
vector of explanatory variables, and i the error term. tively, one could say that the effect of high result con-
The observed use of quality management techniques is trol on the use of quality management techniques
decreases when it is combined with high personnel two equations with the same magnitude. By using a
management autonomy). The other results are interest- Tobit model, the assumption is that there is an under-
ing as well: larger organizations (in terms of number of lying structural model for the unobserved variable y .
employees and budget) are more likely to use quality Yet we only observe y > 0 if the propensity to use
management techniques compared to smaller organiza- quality management techniques is also larger than 0.
tions. Furthermore, country differences appear to be of If the propensity is below 0, we only observe y = 0. As
importance. Yet when examining the country dummies discussed by Czarnitzki and Kraft (2004), this approach
more elaborately, we notice no significant difference may seem a little artificial. Therefore and in line with
between Belgium, Italy, and the reference group Czarnitzki and Kraft (2004), we also estimate a frac-
(Portugal). Significant differences can however be tional response model, which treats the dependent vari-
observed between the remaining (continental) coun- able as a share which is bound between 0 and 1.
tries (Austria, Germany, and The Netherlands) and Following the methodology described in Papke and
the reference category. This result is most likely a Wooldridge (1996), we assume that
reflection of the different administrative traditions in
0 0
both country groups (Latin versus Continental coun- Eyi jxi Gxi ; (3)
tries). However, within the Continental country cluster 0
internal differences can be observed, leading to the where G is a function satisfying 0<Gxi <1, ensuring
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observation that his cluster is more heteroscedastic that all predicted values of y lie between 0 and 1. As G
than the Latin one. we choose the cumulative density function of the stan-
0
One can however worry about the use of a Tobit dard normal distribution: xi . The estimation pro-
model because it is a special case of a selection model cedure is a particular quasi-likelihood method (QMLE).
(often called generalized Tobit model), in which one According to Papke and Wooldridge (1996), the QMLE
usually models two decisions. First, top-level manage- is consistent and N-asymptotically normal regardless
ment has to decide whether to use quality management of the distribution of yi conditional on xi . In Table 3,
techniques or not. Besides this propensity to use such the results of the QMLE estimation are presented. As
techniques, top-level management has to determine to suggested by Papke and Wooldridge (1996, pp.
which degree to use it by a second decision. The Tobit 622623), the standard errors are computed robust to
model incorporates both decisions by assuming that the obtain the true asymptotic variance. We conducted a
explanatory variables driving both decisions enter the general functional form diagnostic to check for possible
Table 3. QMLE Results of the Model for a Fractional Response Variable (298 Observations).
Dependent variable: Use of quality management techniques
Exogeneous variables Coefficient t-value
High personnel management autonomy 0.443* 1.96
High result control 0.675*** 3.2
High financial management autonomy 0.188 0.66
Interaction between personnel management autonomy and result control 0.817*** 2.7
Interaction between financial management autonomy and result control 0.313 0.7
Type 0.071 0.31
Primary task 0.022 0.14
Income source 0.247 1.33
Age dummies
Medium 0.006 0.03
High 0.039 0.21
Size dummies
Medium 0.369* 1.79
Large 0.426* 1.91
Budget dummies
Medium 0.095 0.37
Large 0.437* 1.71
Country dummies
Belgium 0.223 0.65
Italy 0.037 0.12
The Netherlands 0.812** 2.52
Austria 0.803*** 2.67
Germany 0.440* 1.87
Constant term 1.09*** 2.97
Quasi-log-likelihood 148.496
LR test on joint significance of country dummies 2(5) = 28.71***
LR test on joint significance of age dummies (2) = 0.06
2
unobserved heterogeneity in the model. The test exam- as quality management techniques. Moreover, because
0
ines whether quadratic and cubic terms of xi cause a of a change from control on inputs to control on results
rejection of our model specification as given in (ex post) managers might also use quality manage-
Equation (3). We compute the robust LM statistic ment techniques in order to provide the oversight
which is distributed Chi-squared with two degrees of authorities with clear information, which makes mon-
freedom. The value of the LM statistic in our case is 2.4 itoring of the organization by those oversight authori-
(p-value = 0.3) which means that our specification as ties possible.
presented in Table 3 passes the test and, thus, does not Surprisingly, however, the interaction between man-
need to be rejected. agerial autonomy and result control is negative. A too
The results are similar to those of the Tobit models: strong ex post result control thus appears to eliminate
positive effects can be observed for both personnel the positive effects of strong managerial autonomy. A
management autonomy and result control while the possible explanation could be that, in such cases, senior
interaction between both terms is again significant but managers will be considered less of a residual claimant
negative. Moreover, country differences appear again to of their organization compared to organizations with
be of importance. Once more, there appears to be no equal levels of managerial autonomy but lower levels of
difference between Italy, Belgium, and the reference ex post result control. This is especially likely since high
category, while significant differences can be observed result control refers to the implementation of sanctions.
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for Germany, Austria, The Netherlands, and Portugal. The regressions however disagree on the effect of
This result again stresses the importance of similar size on the extent to which quality management tech-
administrative traditions. However, the QMLE results niques. Consequently, we argue that the use of quality
also indicate, contrary to the Tobit model, that size, in management techniques does not depend on the size of
terms of both employment and budget, appears not to the organization.
be of importance. Finally, the empirical results show that country mat-
ters. Based on differences in significances of the coun-
try dummies, country clusters based on administrative
tradition could clearly be distinguished. No differences
Conclusion and discussion
could be observed for countries from the Latin cluster,
We present the results of an empirical study on the use while the countries from the Continental cluster all
of quality management techniques by public-sector reacted significantly different from the countries in
organizations. Our dependent variable consists of an the Latin group. The continental cluster however
index based on the use of two quality management proved to be more heteroscedastic than the Latin coun-
techniques, namely the use of quality standards and try cluster. This finding indicates that not only differ-
quality management systems. Both Tobit regressions ences between country cluster matter but also within-
and a quasi-maximum likelihood estimator for models country clusters. This is not surprising since country-
of a fractional response variable point to the same specific factors which go beyond administrative tradi-
conclusion: It turns out, that managerial autonomy tions and societal cultures are expected to affect orga-
and external result control lead public-sector organiza- nizational behavior (e.g., Christensen & Laegreid, 2001;
tions to use quality management techniques. Verhoest et al., 2010).
This is important empirical evidence concerning the In this study, there is an important limitation that
effects of managerial autonomy and external result has to be acknowledged and addressed. This limitation
control on the behavior of public-sector organizations. concerns the quantitative method we have used. The
While the impact of these factors has been discussed in multivariate regression analyses we performed enable
other connections, it has been neglected with respect to us to show significant/nonsignificant relationships
quality management techniques. Managers of autono- between variables; however, by these analyses we are
mous organizations use quality management techni- unable to highlight the explanatory mechanism behind
ques to limit problems of information asymmetry and these relationships. The underlying process might be
goal conflicts within their organization. The more peer pressure, isomorphism, rational intention, or
autonomous the organization, the more the managers another process causing an effect. In order to fully
can be considered as residual claimants of their orga- explain the effects of certain variables on the use of
nization. This makes it more important for them to quality management techniques, future in-depth case
have their organization performing well. Therefore, it study will be necessary.
is useful to avoid difficulties in the principalagent To end, some practical approaches might emerge
relationship by using governance mechanisms such from this study. Based upon our results, the
132 J. WYNEN ET AL.
COBRA network: The COBRA network developed a Christensen, T., & Lgreid, P. (2004). Regulatory agencies
joint survey instrument to study the autonomy and the challenges of balancing agency autonomy and political
control of semi-autonomous agencies. COBRA mem- control. Paper presented at the 20th Anniversary
bers of the following countries were involved in the Conference of the Structure and Organization of
Government Research Committee of the International
collection of survey data which was used for this article:
Political Science Association, Vancouver, June 1517,
Belgium (Flanders), Italy, Austria, Portugal, Germany, 2004.
and The Netherlands. We owe many thanks to these Christensen, T., & Lgreid, P. (Eds.) (2006). Autonomy and
colleagues. regulation. Coping with agencies in the modern state.
Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.
Christensen, T., & Lgreid, P. (2007a). Transcending new
public management: The transformation of public sector
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Appendix