Management and Bureaucratic Effectiveness : Evidence from the Ghanaian Civil Service

Rasul, Imran ; Rogger, Daniel ; Williams, Martin J.

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: CIVIL SERVICE;    PUBLIC SECTOR MANAGEMENT;    PUBLIC SECTOR PERFORMANCE;    HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT;    LABOR MARKET;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-8595
RP-ID  :  WPS8595

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

A burgeoning area of social scienceresearch examines how state capabilities and bureaucraticeffectiveness shape economic development. This paper studieshow the management practices of civil service bureaucratscorrelate to the delivery of public projects, using noveldata from the Ghanaian Civil Service. This paper combineshand-coded progress reports on 3,600 projects with amanagement survey in the government ministries anddepartments responsible for these projects. The analysisfinds that management matters: practices related to autonomyare positively associated with project completion, yetpractices related to incentives/monitoring of bureaucratsare negatively associated with project completion. Thenegative impact of incentives/monitoring practices is partlyexplained by bureaucrats having to multi-task, interactionswith their intrinsic motivation, their engagement ininfluence activities, and project characteristics such asthe clarity of targets and deliverable outputs. The paperdiscusses the interplay between management practices andcorruption, alternative methods by which to measuremanagement practices in organizations, and the externalvalidity of the results. The findings suggest that the focusof many civil service reform programs on introducingstronger incentives and monitoring may backfire in someorganizations, and that even countries with low levels ofstate capability may benefit by providing public servantswith greater autonomy in some spheres.