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Governance and organisational effectiveness:

towards a theory of government performance
Laurence E. Lynn, Jr. and Robbie Waters Robichau
Journal of Public Policy / Volume 33 / Issue 02 / August 2013, pp 201 - 228

DOI: 10.1017/S0143814X13000056, Published online: 04 June 2013
Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0143814X13000056
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Laurence E. Lynn, Jr. and Robbie Waters Robichau (2013). Governance and
organisational effectiveness: towards a theory of government performance. Journal
of Public Policy, 33, pp 201-228 doi:10.1017/S0143814X13000056
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Journal of Public Policy (2013), 33:2, 201–228 & Cambridge University Press, 2013
doi:10.1017/S0143814X13000056
Governance and organisational

effectiveness: towards a theory of
government performance
LAURENCE E. LYNN, JR.
Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, The University of Texas at Austin, USA
E-mail: [email protected]
ROBBIE WATERS ROBICHAU
Institute of Public and Nonprofit Studies, Georgia Southern University and Institute of Public and
Nonprofit Studies, USA
E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract : Research on the determinants of government performance has identified

numerous factors bearing on effective governance and government’s role in it.
However, understanding of how these factors are causally inter-related is limited.
We take as our point of departure a multi-level analytic framework termed a logic
of governance (LOG), previously used to reveal patterns of causality in governance
based on hundreds of published research publications. Using a revised LOG, we
reinterpret the earlier analysis in terms of organisational effectiveness indicators,
and identify patterns of causal interaction in 300 more recent research articles. We
formulate a multi-level model of governance that postulates how public policy and
management interact to affect government outputs and outcomes. We hypothesise
that the exercise of hierarchical authority is more fundamental to performance
than has been acknowledged by governance scholars. We challenge the argument
that advanced democracies are moving towards ‘‘governance without government’’.
Key words: governance, outputs and outcomes, performance, processes,

structures
Introduction
In developed democracies, which adhere to a rule of law, public policy
processes distribute authority and resources among government and
quasi-government organisations and, through them, among their agents,
partners and collaborators in the proprietary and non-profit sectors.
These distributions reflect a wide variety of political and technical con-
siderations that vary by context. In recent decades, there has arisen in
many of these countries a ‘‘performance movement’’, often associated
201
202 LY N N A N D R O B I C H A U
with New Public Management reforms, whose goal is to promote

systematic improvements in effectiveness that can be measured or docu-
mented and attributed to specific causal influences, prominently including
public policy and management structures and processes.
Classical and modern academic literatures have always been concerned
with performance in both broad and specific senses: the growth and effi-
ciency of national and regional economies, the efficiency and effectiveness
of public policies and programmes, and democratic outcomes such as
equity, representation and participation. In recent decades, emphasis has
focused more sharply on the analysis and design of public policies, and the
measurement and evaluation of governing institutions and of government
agencies, functions, programmes and consociational arrangements such as
networks and public–private partnerships.
The subject of this paper is the determination of governmental perfor-
mance as variously defined in relevant scientific literatures. We shall claim,
on the basis of empirical evidence in those literatures and of new research
reported here, that the core influences on government performance remain
the hierarchically ordered structures – organisations, delegations of formal
authority, rules and guidelines, categorised budgets, information exchange
and reporting requirements, operational mechanisms – that enable and
constrain public administrators in their policy implementation roles.
This is not to say that other factors internal and external to governance
systems and government organisations never matter. Context matters.
Often, however, ‘‘other factors’’ are incorrectly assumed to have displaced
formal, hierarchical authority as determinants of performance and that
we are moving towards ‘‘governance without government’’ (Rhodes 1996;
Peters and Pierre 1998; Lynn 2012a). Our claim is that, to the contrary,
the most systematically influential factors remain the structures created by
public policy processes and the administrative management they require
and authorise (Benz 1993).
Our argument is organised as follows. Firstly, we discuss the general
thrust of performance-oriented theoretical reasoning in the literatures of
traditional public administration, political economy and organisation
studies. Next we review an analytic framework, termed a logic of govern-
ance (LOG), which has enabled investigators to derive useful insights
from about 900 published studies concerned, directly or indirectly, with
the determinants of government performance. Then we present findings
from our own LOG-based analysis of more recently published research
that demonstrates the influence of public policy processes and organisa-
tional effectiveness (OE) on government performance. Finally, based on
findings reported in these sections, we offer justification for the claim that
policy and administrative structures that define and distribute authority
Governance and organisational effectiveness 203
and allocate resources are the backbone, albeit not always the whole
story, of democratic governance and its performance.
Governance and performance: theoretical considerations

In contemporary public administration, political economics and organisation
studies literatures, performance has highly variable, often implicit, meanings.
Performance is implicit, for example, in the concept of ‘‘accountability’’, and
‘‘results’’, ‘‘outcomes’’, ‘‘effectiveness’’ and ‘‘consequences’’ are synonyms
for performance.
Public administration
Early American administrative reformers took up the issue of how to
organise governments to meet the needs and expectations of a rapidly
expanding array of public interests and policies. Of equal concern was
how to ensure the legitimacy, in the view of a growing, diversifying
electorate, of rapidly expanding government authority at all levels
(Bertelli and Lynn 2006).
The main challenge was to ensure democratic control over the exercise
of bureaucratic discretion. Solutions were bound in the principles of
‘‘scientific management’’, in particular, the ‘‘one best way’’ to design
administrative structures (Taylor 1911). The most famous expression of
the structural perspective, Gulick’s essay, ‘‘Notes on the Theory of
Organization’’, dealt with issues such as the formulation of principles
concerning specialisation, span of control, authority and delegation of
responsibility (Gulick 1937). Scientific efficiency was more a rhetorical
trope than a practical standard of performance assessment, however.
Gaus recognised that the responsiveness of officials to enacted policies is
not a matter of law but of the spirit (Bertelli and Lynn 2006). In this vein,
the more practical concern for the profession became the sense of
democratic responsibility and accountability demonstrated by officialdom.
Based on the body of traditional public administration literature,
Bertelli and Lynn (2001, 2006) identify four distinct and demonstrable
qualities of reliable democratic administration – judgment, balance,
rationality and accountability – which, they argue, constitute a precept of
managerial responsibility. When observed in practice, the authors argue,
the precept’s qualifies as a general norm of responsible managerial
performance as well as grounds for judicial deference when agencies are
defendants in litigation. Government performance, then, is a result of
democratic processes: systems of governance and mechanisms of delega-
tion, control and accountability together with norms of responsibility
they engender. The specific mechanisms to accomplish this goal range

from those that emphasise hierarchical delegation and accountability
(du Gay 2000; Strøm 2000; Hill and Lynn 2005; Meier and Hill 2005;
Lynn 2008) to those that emphasise the role of private initiative and civil
society institutions in defining and achieving policy goals (Salamon 1989;
Kooiman 1993, 2003; Klijn 2008). In the latter scheme, formal and
informal processes of participation and collective action engendering trust
matter more than any form of hierarchical and prescriptive performance
management.
A specifically performance-oriented literature (e.g. in the journal
Public Performance and Management Review) stakes out a middle ground.
It has as its staple largely qualitative and case-based assessments of perfor-
mance measurement and management reforms at all levels of government.
The theory informing much of this literature is pluralistic, with a view that
contextual influences on agencies encompass a broad range of stakeholders,
including policy-makers to whom agency management are putatively
responsible (Nyhan and Marlowe 1995). Rule-of-law considerations and
appropriations constraints are not given privileged attention.
Political economics
The literatures of political economics – positive political economy, public
choice and the ‘‘new economics of organization’’ – reach a similar result
via a more deductive intellectual route.
In the political economy of administration, the administrative system is
created and sustained by ‘‘a chain of delegation, in which [officials]
authorized to make political decisions [principals] conditionally designate
others to make such decisions in their name and place [agents]’’ (Strøm
2000, 266). Agents are accountable to their principals (1) if they are
obliged to act on the latter’s behalf and (2) if the latter are empowered to
reward or punish them for their performance in this capacity. The citizen’s
role is to control officials, but when we ‘‘consider the incumbents of
political office as agents of citizens, we have to acknowledge that they are
constrained and frequently common agents, whose responsibilities may
thus be manifold’’ (Strøm 2000, 268).
A synthesis of neoclassical and institutional economics based on the
concept of transaction costs has been employed by Thráinn Eggertsson
(1990) to explain choice at the top of the chain of delegation. The purpose
of the state is to create a regime of property rights that provides incentives
for actors to maximise its technical economic potential. Such a regime
includes the availability of dispute processing by a third party, which in
most cases can be supplied only by the state. The concept of hierarchy
emphasises the importance of the political chain of delegation whereby

higher-level authority purposefully creates, finances and regulates lower-
level agents or third parties who are, in principle, accountable for their
performance to authorising institutions.
In addition to accounts derived from positive political economy
(Lynn 2008), this family of principal–agent explanations includes systems
approaches, which focus on interrelationships among entities comprising
a system for transforming inputs into outputs in order to achieve some
result (Svara 1990); approaches in which bureaucratic institutions use
their substantial autonomy to supervene upon civil society in order to
accomplish organisational and collective goals (March and Olsen 1984;
Tweedie 1994; Egeberg 1998; Carpenter 2001); approaches emphasising
‘‘rule-of-law institutions and of administrative law in protecting and
enforcing rights and ensuring social justice’’ (Moe and Gilmour 1995;
Rosenbloom and O’Leary 1997); and eclectic approaches that acknow-
ledge a variety of intellectual antecedents (Boyne 2003; Meier and O’Toole
2007). Another line of reasoning emphasises the control problems that
arise within hierarchically ordered administrative systems. Control may be
imperfect or weak.
The important insight in these arguments is that public agencies acquire
interests and goals of their own that can have a significant effect on the
production and distribution of outputs and on their consequences, that is,
on performance (e.g. Heinrich 1999). Thus, the coercive power of the
state is invoked to overcome collective action problems that arise in
organising the production of public or collective goods.
In contrast to top-down approaches to control, consociational explana-
tions assert that the capacity to produce and distribute public and quasi-
public goods is to an increasing extent being organised by private, civil
society entities in the form of networks and partnerships.1 Hierarchical
government, it is argued, is increasingly being subordinated to or supplanted
by civil society institutions, either intentionally, as governments rely on them
to address problems that are unstable and non-decomposable (Berry et al.
2004), or unintentionally, as a consequence of weak government controls
1
Whereas the micro-analytics of public hierarchy typically reflect theories of purposeful
choice, the micro-analytics of consociational arrangements draw on disciplines such as
sociology, social psychology and organisation theory, which place greater emphasis on socia-
lised choice. Yet, implicit in several of these approaches are hierarchical arrangements (e.g.
Barringer and Harrison 2000). Based on her reading of the literature, Oliver (1990) identifies
six ‘‘generalizable determinants’’ of inter-organisational relationship formation: necessity,
asymmetry, reciprocity, efficiency, stability and legitimacy, many of which ‘‘are shaped by
external factors’’ (p. 259). Prominent among such factors are government legislation and
regulation.
that create accountability vacuums that are filled by civil society institutions
oriented towards ‘‘clientelistic’’ interests (Anheier 2005; Lynn 2008).
In an important series of essays, Moe argues that control comes at a
considerable cost in inefficiency. ‘‘Political rationality’’ results in public
programmes and organisations that are technically irrational. ‘‘As a result of
regime restraints and the politics they authorize, the public manager
may have to deal with inadequate resources, unreasonable or unrealistic
workload or reporting requirements, inconsistent guidance, or missions
defined so as to be virtually unachievable’’ (Lynn 2003, 21). Problems of
agency may deepen as the chain of delegation reaches into govern-
ment organisations themselves. Dunleavy (1992) applies public choice
reasoning to the behaviour of employees inside multi-level organisations.
In Dunleavy’s model, ‘‘bureaucrats’ preferences are not exogenously
fixed but are endogenously determined within the budget-setting and
bureau-shaping processes – activities directed at shaping the nature of
work and the work environment – which underlie agencies’ activity’’
(Dunleavy 1992, 254). Brehm and Gates go so far as to argue that
organisational cultures form when subordinates look to each other for
appropriate behaviours. ‘‘Subordinate performance depends’’, they
argue, based on their empirical research, ‘‘first on functional preferences,
second on solidary preferences, and lastly on the efforts of the supervisor’’
(1999, 195).
Organisation studies2
The concept of OE as applied to the public sector is based on the reality
of administrative discretion and the notion that, as Moynihan (2008)
sees it, agency managers search for ways to implement public policies within
their constrained zone of discretion that are responsive to the organisation’s
authorised public policy mandates and that further the particular goals of
the agency. In general, the literature suggests that the effectiveness of public
organisations should be evaluated using multiple criteria such as those
implied by introducing the organisation and its managers as principals
(Parhizgari and Gilbert 2004). However, consensus as to what those criteria
should be is lacking, both in public and in private sector research (Gilbert
and Parhizgari 2000).
A further problem is that most OE models in the organisations literature
exhibit shortcomings similar to public administration models discussed
earlier: inadequate specification of how factors contributing to effectiveness
2
The authors wish to thank Melissa K. Forbes for her significant contributions to this
section and to the analysis that follows.
interact (see Hall 1999, for a review).3 In their analysis of OE indicators

for both public and private sectors, Parhizgari and Gilbert (2004) attempt
to overcome this problem by proceeding from an unbounded set of
possible indicators towards the identification of particular aspects of
actual performance that resonate with managerial reality.4 Among other
things, the authors conclude that factors explaining OE in the two sectors
are not the same.
One approach to OE that holds promise for public sector applications is
that of W. Richard Scott. The underlying assumption of Scott’s approach is
that organisations develop their own notions of effectiveness, which fall into
three broad categories reflecting a traditional systems approach: structures,
processes and outcomes (Donabedian 1966; Suchman 1967; Scott 1977,
2003; Hall 1999). In public sector applications, the assumption is that
even though departments, bureaus, agencies and offices are constrained
in complex ways by expressions of the rule of law, their managers have
sufficient discretion to enable a measure of independence in shaping their
organisation’s notions of effectiveness within those constraints.
Definitions of Scott’s effectiveness indicators may be summarised as
follows:
> Structural indicators represent the production function, the organisation
of work or the organisation’s capacity to produce outputs. Structures
can be conceived as both enabling and constraining organisational
autonomy. For example, managers may be constrained by legislated
budget criteria but enabled to direct service providers to classify clients
in an ambiguous manner that conforms to budget rules without reducing
service priorities for those on whom providers place a high priority.
> Process indicators represent the quantity or quality of work, characterised
by levels and types of effort or activity. Scott notes that process indicators
are often more valid representations of organisational objectives than
outcome indicators because organisational actors have more control over
processes. When viewed as an OE indicator, compliance with higher level
policy or procedural mandates is likely to be influential down the chain of
3
For example, Quinn and Rorbaugh’s (1983) competing values model identifies 17 effec-
tiveness indicators, including concepts such as productivity, planning and goal-setting, utili-
sation of environment, evaluations by external entities, value of human resources and stability
without situating them in a structural framework. Tompkins (2005) applies the four most
common models of organisational effectiveness – the human relations, internal process,
rational goal and open systems models – to public management but without the kind of
conceptual precision that assists the empirical analysis of administrative system performance.
4
They do so by conducting a principal component analysis of responses to an employee
survey instrument administered over a six-year period in 28 private sector and 41 public sector
agencies.
delegation to the outcomes level. For example, for principals and teachers,
‘‘teaching to the test’’ may appear more productive than promoting
intellectual curiosity or emotional maturity. For this reason, however,
process indicators that reflect managerial preferences may be only
tenuously associated with the outcomes policy-makers and stakeholders
envision.
> Outcome indicators represent changes in individuals or organisations
that have been the object or target of some kind of policy design,
management strategy or service intervention. Outcome indicators are,
however, problematic in the public sector for two reasons. Firstly, such
indicators may be imposed on organisations by external stakeholders
and may, therefore, be incompletely embraced by organisational actors.
Secondly, public organisations are often unable to control all the factors
that affect outcomes.
Organisation-centred explanations for government performance also

provide an intermediate explanation in that they take public organisations
as their primary unit of analysis (Holzer and Yang 2004; Denis 2007).
Some of the explanations focus on organisational improvement within
specific hierarchical contexts. Examples include organisational develop-
ment approaches designed to improve organisational functioning, inter-
personal relationships and agency adaptability to change (Robertson
and Seneviratne 1995; Carnevale 2003) and approaches that analyse the
formation and influence of organisational cultures (Khademian 2002). An
implication of much of this literature is that hierarchical control problems
within organisations can be ameliorated by insightful management.
Another organisation-centred literature concerned with the quality of
publicly supported services is concerned less with context than with the
importance of organisational and managerial considerations (Camilleri
and Van Der Heijden 2009). Pollitt’s (2000) criteria of public service
improvement, for example, include not only budgetary savings, improved
efficiency and greater effectiveness, but also intermediate outcomes such
as improved administrative processes and increase in the overall capacity,
flexibility and resilience of the administrative system as a whole. In
Syracuse University’s Government Performance Project, to take another
example, investigators concentrated on what they term ‘‘management
capacity’’, which comprises financial, human resources, information
technology and capital management (Ingraham et al. 2003).
Contextual influences are seldom entirely absent, however. Rainey and
Steinbauer (1999) suggest that the most important factors influencing public
sector OE are relations with external authorities and stakeholders, auto-
nomy, leadership, professionalism and the motivations of participants.
Moynihan and Pandey (2005) argue that organisational culture, goal clarity,
decentralisation of decision-making authority and restrictions on managers’
authority to reorganise units are likely to increase OE. Such accounts do
not, however, specify how the various factors might interact within an
administrative system.
Performance in LOG
In their Improving Governance: A New Logic for Empirical Research,
Lynn et al. (2001) propose an approach to governance research designed to
identify interactions among variables in an administrative system. They
define public sector governance as ‘‘regimes of laws, rules, judicial decisions,
and administrative practices that constrain, prescribe, and enable the
provision of publicly supported goods and services’’ through formal and
informal relationships with agencies in the public and private sectors (Lynn
et al. 2001, 7). Governance, they say, can be conceptualised as a system of
hierarchically ordered institutions created along the chain of lawful delega-
tion whose function is to balance the need for administrative discretion with
accountability to the rule of law (Kiser and Ostrom 1982; Lynn et al. 2001).
From this conceptual point of departure, the authors have created (Lynn
et al. 2000) an analytic framework they term a logic of governance.
This framework encompasses the following series of hierarchical
interactions:
> between citizen preferences and interests expressed politically and the
purposes, structures and processes prescribed in public law;
> between prescriptive and enabling public authority and discretionary
organisational management and administration;
> between public management/administration and service delivery (direct
or contracted out);
> between service delivery and its results: organisational/agent outputs and
outcomes, that is, government performance;
> between performance and the reactions of stakeholders that it elicits,
expressed politically; and, to complete the circuit;
> between stakeholder reactions and citizen preferences expressed
politically.
The LOG serves two important purposes, according to the authors.

Firstly, it enables the findings and logic of individual research projects in a
framework that identifies potentially influential interactions beyond the
defined scope of the project. Thus, it serves as a reminder of the endogeneity
of complex governance processes. Secondly, it facilitates integration and
comparison of findings from dispersed but potentially complementary

bodies of literature. Scholars in particular disciplines, fields and subfields
may be focused on a specific stage or aspect of this logic. By searching across
these areas, they may discover that a rich set of governance relationships is
being investigated using a number of different theoretical lenses.
The LOG approach to governance research is only one of a family
of what Hill and Hupe (2009, 123) call ‘‘alternative general analytical
frameworks for the study of public administration’’. Consistent with
themes in contemporary governance scholarship, Hill and Hupe develop
their own ‘‘multiple governance framework’’, which while accommodating
the influence of state action, features a broader range of institutional,
organisational and individual interactions, implicitly deemphasising the
possible centrality of hierarchical interactions in governance.5 Apart from
its relative parsimony, an advantage of the LOG framework is that it has
been extensively used to analyse public administration and governance
literatures. LOG-based investigations have attempted to derive insightful
generalisations about governance by analysing the logic and findings of
literally hundreds of studies published in dozens of academic journals.
Articles were included in the analysis if they explicitly specified causal or
reduced form relationships between variables from two or more levels of
their analytic framework. Thus, each included study described dependent
variables as being causally associated with independent variables at either
higher or lower levels in the LOG.6
The main findings from previous LOG-based analyses are: (1) the empirical
literature relating to governance and performance is overwhelmingly hier-
archical (Hill and Lynn 2005); (2) beginning with policy-making level, each
level of governance both affects, and is affected by, choices and actions at
higher levels (Forbes and Lynn 2005; Hill and Lynn 2005; Forbes et al. 2006);
(3) in the health-care sector in particular, the accumulation of hierarchical
authority over the production of outputs and outcomes was significant but
5
Indeed, some might argue that LOG analysis is biased towards hierarchical rather than
accommodating consociational, non-hierarchical interactions. Studies that examine non-
hierarchical governance are included in LOG research, however, so long as investigators say
why such interactions occur and how they affect outcomes of interest, that is, that they address
issues of causality. Such studies are, however, relatively rare.
6
In cited LOG scholarship, an analytic scheme is used to code, for each included study, the
dependent and independent variables whose causal influence is under investigation. Thus each
was characterised by its location within the LOG and by categories of variables at that level
(for management variables, administrative structures, use of management tools, authoritative
articulation of managerial strategies and values). Coded information about each study was
entered into a spreadsheet that included identifiers (author, date and journal), the governance
relationships examined, the LOG codes and the primary research methods.
complex, that is, field-level personnel had spheres of discretionary authority

but such authority was broadly exercised on behalf of objectives set by others
(Forbes et al. 2007).
Several caveats were noted by the LOG’s authors concerning the database
from which such conclusions were derived (Lynn et al. 2001; Hill and Lynn
2005). Firstly, individual studies meet the standards of quality established by
the various journals; these standards may vary across journals and over
time. Secondly, the strategy for selecting publications introduces three kinds
of possible bias: the tendency of academic journals to publish positive
findings, LOG-investigator bias in favour of articles that feature a verbally
or formally transparent causal model, and limitations on the journals
included and on years of publication. Finally, the ‘‘correct’’ way to char-
acterise a study’s variables and logic can be ambiguous: does ‘‘coordination
of care’’ refer to efforts by treatment personnel or the strategies of their
supervisors and managers? To the extent possible, variables are coded
according to the stated or implied definitions employed in each study.7
Governance, organisations and performance

Because the influence of state action through duly constituted gover-
nance structures is often overlooked in alternative governance frameworks
(Robichau and Lynn 2009; Lynn 2011), we have chosen to extend the body
of LOG-based research but based on a revised framework. The LOG
research cited in the previous section did not conceptualise the specific
influence of organisational factors in classifying its variables at various levels.
The research reported in this section uses Scott’s concept of OE to categorise
factors at different levels of governance that directly or indirectly (via
administrative mediation) influence system performance. To the extent that
the variables used in previous LOG research represented actions occurring
within organisations, the reconceptualisation was straightforward.
This revised framework has an important advantage over the original
LOG approach. Applying concepts from organisational literature to public
7
The authors’ confidence that their selection and coding methods were consistent and
appropriate to the questions they addressed was, they say, steadily strengthened by the fact
that, as the number of studies grew beyond 200 or so, basic patterns of findings remained quite
stable, no matter which additional journals or years were added. They concluded that the
studies in the database approximate a random sample from the population of ‘‘governance
studies’’ across disciplines and policy domains. It is possible that readers will disagree with the
inclusion or exclusion of particular articles, or the coding of particular variables in a particular
study. However, the authors’ say, based on the steady aggregation of studies in this database,
and the stable pattern of findings, they were confident that their selection and coding methods
are not biased by such anomalies (Forbes et al. 2007).
management studies helps overcome tendencies to conflate outcome-

oriented conceptions of ‘‘public sector performance’’ with ‘‘OE’’, as if
administrative systems and the organisations they comprise were uni-
formly bent towards achieving the same goals. Thus, we can suggest how
the multifarious determinants of governmental performance revealed in
published research studies include considerations both of statutory
authority and of organisational values.
The empirical analysis was undertaken in two steps: firstly, with the
body of studies from 1990 through 2001 included in the original LOG
analyses, then with a new sample of studies published from 2002 through
2006. The additional articles used the same criterion as used with
the original LOG database: included studies explicitly specified causal
relationships between variables from two or more levels of the LOG.
However, the analytic approach used to code the additional studies differs
in some important aspects from the original studies for reasons, and with
consequences, elaborated below.
Re-analysis of 1990–2001 LOG data

In the first stage of the analysis, we selected those studies with indepen-
dent and dependent variables at the public policy, management, service
delivery and output/outcome levels, over 600 studies. We then assigned
each of these variables to one of Scott’s three categories of effective
indicators. We discussed specific coding ambiguities with each other and
with previous LOG researchers until agreement was reached.8 A number
of issues arose during the recoding.
Firstly, there are multiple ways to operationalise ‘‘process’’. According to
Scott (2003, 366), process measures answer two types of questions, ‘‘What
did you do?’’ and ‘‘How well did you do it?’’. Answers to the first question
can be represented by measures of either relational behaviour – collaboration
between agencies, network relationships and cooperation (Jennings 1994;
Agranoff and McGuire 1998) – or principal/agent choices – the degree of
employee compliance (Bigelow and Stone 1995; Barker and Wilson 1997;
Franklin 2000; Hood 2001), managerial decisions about how to allocate
time and material resources (Gamoran and Dreeben 1996) and duration of
client participation in a programme (Ahluwalia et al. 1998). Answers to the
more ambiguous question ‘‘How well did you do it?’’ take the form of what
8
This method of analysis is not unprecedented. Sowa et al. (2004) incorporate structures,
processes and outcomes into their ‘‘multidimensional, integrated model of nonprofit effec-
tiveness’’ (MIMNOE). As does the LOG, the MIMNOE model distinguishes between effec-
tiveness at the management and programme levels. Within each of those levels, effectiveness is
further broken down into capacity measures (structures and processes) and outcomes.
we term ‘‘process-as-output’’ indicators. These indicators include both ‘‘final’’

outputs, such as the number of clients served, number of vaccines given or
mediating activities such as managerial strategies and the implementation
procedures of agency programmes. For dependent variables, the majority of
outputs-as-process indicators are found at the service-delivery level of the
LOG. Despite emphasising different types of processes, all variables that
answer either process question reflect effort rather than effect, and are thus
coded as processes rather than as outcomes.
A second issue concerned the coding of ‘‘efficiency’’ variables as process
or outcome variables. Hannan and Freeman argue that the vast majority of
organisations face constraints on costs and thus ‘‘profit from a distinction
between efficiency and effectiveness’’ (Hannan and Freeman 1977, 110).
Following this reasoning, we treat efficiency as a process rather than an
outcome indicator (Katz and Kahn 1966).
Thirdly, the ‘‘correct’’ way to characterise a study’s variables using any
coding scheme may be ambiguous: does ‘‘integration of mental health
delivery’’ refer to a process, output or outcome? To the extent possible,
our coding reflects the authors’ stated or implied meanings in each study.9
The results of the re-analysis of the original LOG studies are sum-
marised in Table 1. These results can be summarised as follows:
> The outcomes of public policy-making almost always take the form of
structures. That is, policy-making typically creates administrative
capacity at both management and service-delivery levels of governance.
Policy structures are also commonly used to influence service delivery
without considering the mediating role of management, a theoretically
questionable research design that will be discussed below.
> Managerial discretion (i.e. management as an independent variable)
is used both to further shape productive capacity by elaborating
administrative structures, and to engage in productive activity that
influences both service delivery and administrative system outputs and
outcomes.
> The enabling and constraining of capacity by both policy-makers and
managers are usually reflected in (i.e. constrain and enable) processes
that are outcomes at the service delivery and outputs/outcomes levels.
> Service-delivery processes usually explain outputs/outcomes, in other
words, effort produces results.
9
We do not assess the quality of the authors’ research. Moreover, our coding reflects the
authors’ theoretical conception of variables versus the way they operationalise them. As our
interest is in using extant literature as a source of general insights for theory building, we
regarded the critique of individual study quality as beyond the scope of this paper.
214
LY N N A N D R O B I C H A U
Table 1. Integrated logic of governance findings (1990–2001)
Independent Variables
Public Policy Management Service Delivery
Dependent Variables Structures Processes Outcomes Structures Processes Outcomes Structures Processes Outcomes
Management
Structures 66 6 0 – – – – – –
Processes 57 3 0 – – – – – –
Outcomes 11 6 0 – – – – – –
Service delivery
Structures 20 2 0 18 9 0 – – –
Processes 89 15 0 75 35 6 – – –
Outcomes 46 4 0 15 7 8 – – –
Output/outcome
Structures 7 4 0 2 3 1 0 1 0
Processes 23 5 0 8 2 0 2 3 0
Outcomes 111 31 0 73 33 5 42 61 3
Thus, step one of the analysis suggests an operational ‘‘LOG’’ that is

intuitive and consistent with traditional thinking: whereas policy-makers
deal primarily in structures10 and those who deliver services deal primarily
in processes, public managers employ both structures and processes in
performing their discretionary roles.
Analysis of 2002–2006 literature

In step two of the analysis, we created a new LOG database from over 300
additional research studies published from 2002 through 2006 in the nine
US and international journals that regularly publish multi-level empirical
research.11 Using the same methodology as in the just-described analysis,
with two exceptions, independent and dependent variables were assigned
to levels in the LOG and then coded according to Scott’s OE definitions.
The first exception in methodology concerns the treatment of outputs
and outcomes. Coding outputs and outcomes as if they were synonymous,
as the original LOG analyses did, obscures the fact that outputs oper-
ationally precede outcomes. For this reason, in the second step of our
analysis, outputs and outcomes were assigned to hierarchically separate
levels of governance. Most, but not all, of the output indicators coded at
the service-delivery level in the preceding step are more appropriately
coded as outputs. For example, in a study by Steiner (2003), one of his
dependent variables, ‘‘quantity and quality of services’’, is now coded as
an output at the output level because it reflects a ‘‘final’’ output rather
than effort. Conversely, the other dependent variables in the study,
‘‘intensity and existence of inter-municipal cooperation’’ and ‘‘projects’’,
are now coded at the service-delivery level as output and process vari-
ables, respectively, because they measure effort by municipalities rather
than the results of such effort.12
10
The construct ‘‘policy structures’’ is similar to the construct ‘‘policy designs’’ as used by
Schneider and Sidney (2008). Policy design elements include ‘‘problem definition and goals to
be pursued, benefits and burdens to the distributed, target populations, rules, tools, imple-
mentation structure, social constructions, rationales and underlying assumptions’’ (see also
Schneider and Ingram 1997).
11
The additional articles were collected from the following journals: Administration &
Society (n 5 8), American Journal of Political Science (n 5 33), Governance (n 5 6), Journal of
Policy Analysis & Management (n 5 83), Journal of Politics (n 5 23), Journal of Public
Administration Research & Theory (n 5 51), Local Government Studies (n 5 19), Public
Choice (n 5 56) and Public Management Review (n 5 25). These journals were chosen because
they published much of the multi-level and causal model research identified in the 1990–2001
databases. After author agreement on article relevance and variable coding was reached, a total
of 304 articles were identified for analysis.
12
The independent variables in this study were local government reforms, municipal
characteristics and political orientation of the local government.
Findings from analysis of the new studies are summarised in Table 2.

They are generally consistent with the findings in Table 1. Of additional
interest, however, is the fact that over 70 per cent of the modelled rela-
tionships skipped levels of governance, a pattern more pronounced than
in Table 1. Also notable is that despite the rising popularity of networks
and other consociational arrangements as governance mechanisms, few
studies use networks in multi-level research as causes or consequences of
actions at other levels; network research focuses on within-level network
dynamics, behaviours and consequences.13
Distinguishing outputs from outcomes reveals that most investigations
were output- rather than outcome-oriented. Few empirical models recognise
or incorporate an outputs-precede/cause-outcomes logic. Further, a lower
proportion of studies incorporated variables at the service-delivery level, a
possible manifestation of a growing interest in policy and agency perfor-
mance over treatment and service-delivery effectiveness as well as an
explanation for increased level skipping. In Table 1, around 20 per cent of
all independent and dependent variables were coded at the service-delivery
level but only 6 per cent were coded as such in Table 2. This change could
reflect any of several factors: differentiating between outputs at the service
and outputs/outcomes levels, the particular journals chosen for step two, or,
as already noted, the influence of the performance movement.
Step two of our analysis, then, produces additional insights concerning
the persistence of a hierarchical perspective in recent research on govern-
ance, an increase in the questionable practice of level skipping when
designing such research, and the lack of precision in the analysis of how
outcomes are related to outputs of a multi-level administrative system.
Towards a theory of government performance

The relatively few analyses of governmental performance in the literature,
that are both synoptic and quantitative, have foundations in prior con-
ceptual and empirical research (Rainey and Steinbauer 1999; Boyne 2003;
Meier and O’Toole 2007). Our modelling efforts also draw explicitly
on the analysis of published literature reported above, framed, however,
by the reconceptualised LOG. The results summarised in Tables 1 and 2,
as well as previous LOG research cited earlier, warrant the assumption
that hierarchical relationships down a chain of delegation are significant
and quantitatively important determinants of performance. Beyond this
13
Hall and O’Toole (2000) studied legislation enacted by a 1960s congress to that of a
congress in the early 1990s. They found no changes in legislative emphasis on networks as
mandated implementation structures.
Table 2. Integrated logic of governance findings (2002–2006)
Independent Variables
Policy-Making Management Service Delivery Outcomes/Outputs
Dependent Variables Structures Processes Outputs Outcomes Structures Processes Outputs Outcomes Structures Processes Outputs Outcomes Structures Processes Outputs Outcomes
Policy-making

Structures , , , , 5 2 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 1 6 4
Processes , , , , 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1
Outputs , , , , 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Outcomes , , , , 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Management
Structures 36 0 0 0 , , , , 5 2 0 0 0 1 1 0
Processes 34 2 0 0 , , , , 5 0 1 0 0 0 0 0
Outputs 6 0 0 0 , , , , 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Outcomes 12 0 1 0 , , , , 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0
Service delivery
Structures 7 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 , , , , 0 0 0 0
Processes 14 0 0 1 5 6 0 0 , , , , 0 1 1
Outputs 5 1 0 0 2 3 0 0 , , , , 0 0 1 0
Outcomes 10 0 0 0 5 3 0 0 , , , , 0 1 0 0
Outcomes/outputs
Structures 2 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 , , , ,
Processes 37 0 1 0 7 11 0 1 3 1 0 0 , , , ,
Outputs 121 12 0 0 50 32 0 1 17 8 2 3 , , , ,
Outcomes 82 8 1 0 18 14 1 0 16 5 0 1 , , , ,
general presumption, our results provide further insights into how OE

mediates these hierarchical relationships. The predominance of outputs in
how ‘‘results’’ are defined in the empirical literature is consistent with the
assumption that an outputs-precede-outcomes logic governs the deter-
mination of ultimate results. These assumptions constitute basic elements
of our model.
The fact that significant number of studies use models that skip levels in
the LOG might seem to contradict this logic. Such modelling strategies are
questionable, however, if investigators do not consider possibly influential
levels of governance in their models for expedient rather than theoretical
reasons. An analysis of 112 studies of health-care delivery by Forbes
et al. (2007), which employed an analytic strategy that incrementally
aggregated findings from studies of adjacent and non-adjacent levels of
governance led the authors to conclude that, ‘‘[i]n general, the choices of
organizational arrangements, administrative strategies, treatment quality
and other aspects of health care services by policy-makers, public managers,
physicians, and service workers, together with their values and attitudes
toward their work, have significant effects on how health care policies are
transformed into service-delivery outputs and outcomes’’ (p. 453). Omitting
levels, in other words, is likely to be conceptually unjustified.
Based on the logic of delegation, control and accountability, and the
suggestive empirical findings just cited, the model sketched below includes
all levels of an administrative system with one important exception. In the
following sections, we develop specific hypotheses that constitute our
model of government performance.
The influence of policy structures

As Table 2 shows, in studies with management dependent variables,
almost all public policy independent variables are structural. The majority
of them represent mandated policy designs or organisational ownership.
Further, almost two-thirds of the management structure independent
variables are ‘‘administrative structures’’ (e.g. contracting out with private
firms). In other words, the enactment of policy structures leads to further
structural refinements of the administrative system at the managerial
level.14 Intuitively, policy-making is primarily about the creation and
14
It should be noted that a few studies in the present database employ outcome effec-
tiveness indicators as dependent variables at the management level. While we have chosen not
to include outcome indicators of managerial effectiveness in our model, their occasional use
does suggest that at least some public management research regards performance or change at
the management level as, in effect, ends in themselves, a phenomenon acknowledged in
organisational theory. Outcomes such as changes in management culture (Ates 2004) and
design, directly and through management-level agents, of administra-

tive capacity and division of labour. These findings are the basis for
Hypothesis 1a:
Hypothesis 1a: The governance of and by public management is primarily
structural.
In support of this reasoning, Calvert et al. (1989, 590) argue that ‘‘con-
centrating on acts of decision-making rather than on influences over decision-
making is a kind of myopia that can lead to false conclusions about where
the responsibilities for policies lie’’. One implication is that studies whose
causal logic begins with managerial decision-making are disregarding a level
of explanation that may be decisive in the determination of downstream
outputs and outcomes, especially including why managers do what they do.
A striking finding of the literature analysis is that 60 per cent of studies
use policy structures to model service-delivery processes (such as enrol-
ment of severely handicapped persons in local programmes instead of in
state hospitals) without requiring mediating actions by management.15
As already noted, such research designs may compromise the usefulness
or validity of study findings. In contrast, some policies go so far as to
restrict the extent of managerial discretion and specifically prescribe how
the service is to be delivered. Calvert et al. (1989) note in this regard that
‘‘in those areas in which they care the most, politicians will expend greater
effort and resources in reducing the uncertainty that affords bureaucrats
the opportunity for discretion’’ (p. 590).
In such instances, the extent of managerial discretion may be insignifi-
cant. An example is statutes that prescribe how front-line workers are
to bill patients for mental health services or set rules for filing claims.
That such policies are possible warrants Hypothesis 1b:
Hypothesis 1b: Service-delivery processes may be directly affected by

enacted public policies if policies and incentives are, in effect, self-
executing.
In a principal–agent relationship, a policy can be said to be self-executing

if it satisfies both participation (all participants are better off with than
without the policy) and incentive compatibility (agents have no hidden
middle managers’ thoughts and beliefs about values in the British National Health Service
(Hewison 2002) illustrate this perspective.
15
This number is consistent with the pattern found in the subset of health studies pre-
viously used by Forbes et al. (2007), where almost 70 per cent of studies employing policy
structures as independent variables and process measures of effectiveness at the service delivery
level omitted management variables.
information or information that would require costly audits to discover)

constraints (Dixit 2002). Such policies are arguably rare.16
The influence of management on service delivery

The influence of policy structures on management and service delivery hardly
extinguishes managerial influence. Policy structures enable as well as con-
strain managerial discretion. Such discretion may in turn be employed to
influence government performance in various ways. As noted earlier, man-
agers employ both structures and processes to influence service delivery and
its outputs/outcomes, implying that management contributes in significant
ways to the ultimate performance of public policies and programmes. Thus,
we postulate that both structural and process indicators at the managerial
level are determinants of public sector performance, as summarised in the
following hypothesis (Brodkin 1987, 1990; Hill and Lynn 2005):
Hypothesis 2: The outputs of service-delivery processes are influenced by

public policies as mediated by managerial use of administrative structures
and processes to shape the links between enacted policy and service
delivery and its proximate consequences.
Principal–agent and other models of organisational dynamics confirm that,
although the strengths of top-down effects on service delivery may vary, they
are unlikely to be altogether absent or to be negated by external factors,
especially if public money or lawful authorities are causes of these effects.
Service delivery and performance

As Table 2 also shows, over 70 per cent of studies that use management-
level variables to explain outcomes omit the effects of service-delivery
outputs, a potential reason for biased findings. Even if this is not the case,
ignoring outputs-precede-outcomes logic may result in an incomplete
account of how outcomes are determined. Street-level workers virtually
always have some capacity to affect the impacts of policies and man-
agement on end users via the outputs of their activities. Accordingly, our
final hypothesis reflects the logical and empirical primacy of outputs:
Hypothesis 3: The outcomes of public policies are, all else equal, produced
by the outputs of service-delivery processes.
16
More generally, such a policy can be construed as an equilibrium outcome in a separa-
tion-of-powers game, that is, as a policy status quo that cannot be overturned given the
preferences of all participants and the rules of the game (see Segal 1997).
The relationship between outputs and outcomes is a neglected aspect

of government performance. James Q. Wilson (1989) explains why
this neglect is unwarranted. He defines outputs as ‘‘the work the agency
does’’ and outcomes as ‘‘how, if at all, the world changes because of the
outputs’’ (Wilson 1989, 158). Management, Wilson argues, will reflect
the transparency of agency outputs and outcomes. Thus, depicting out-
puts as necessary to achieving outcomes seems intuitive.17
A model of government performance

These hypotheses comprise the basis for the graphic depiction of our
model of government performance in Figure 1. Direct causal relationships
are depicted by solid lines. The dotted line linking public policy structures
and service-delivery processes represents a self-executing policy.
We stress that this model does not purport to subsume all possible
complexities of implementation across policies, regimes or systems of gov-
ernment. Firstly, in some cases, accountability may be multi-dimensional
and multi-directional, that is, pluralistic rather than strictly mission driven.
Environmental influences exogenous to the core model may at times
impinge on choices endogenous to the model. Secondly, in some contexts, as
already noted, interdependencies may be bi-directional; ‘‘organisational
cultures and sub-cultures’’ at the service-delivery level, for example, may
affect higher-level managerial and policy-maker behaviour. Thirdly, there
may be complex interactions within levels, within organisations or as a
consequence of networks and collaborations, which influence between-level
relationships. Fourthly, public organisations may have more complex
missions, have quango-like structures, or be ‘‘hollow’’ or ‘‘virtual’’. Finally,
outcomes, specifically the values of outcome measures, may reflect a wide
variety of non-random individual and social factors. Though outcomes may
be significantly affected by service-delivery outputs, the explanatory power
of the relationship need not be high.
These possibilities suggest two types of complementary modelling
strategies depending on investigator focus and data availability. Firstly,
more complex causal relationships within the administrative system, such
as the influence of service-delivery cultures and processes on management,
might be postulated and investigated using appropriate model specifica-
tions. Secondly, effectiveness at any level of the administrative system
17
The US Office of Management and Budget’s Program Assessment Rating Tool used from
2001 to 2009 defines the distinction as follows: ‘‘Outputs refer to the internal activities of a
program (i.e. the products and services delivered). y Outcomes describe the intended result of
carrying out a program or activity’’ (United States Office of Management and Budget 2008,
9–10).
Environment/Policy Context
Public Policy
Structures
Management Structures &

Management Processes
Service Delivery
Processes
Outputs as Processes
Outcomes
Figure 1 Theory of public sector performance. Dotted lines represent potential

modelling patterns that skip levels in the logic of governance but still reflect
plausible theoretical causal relationships.
might be influenced by factors exogenous to the system itself (environment/

policy context in Figure 1), such as the way public policy-making itself is
organised and functions (i.e. the operative policy process) or the influence
of community norms and characteristics on service-delivery cultures and
processes.18 Many of the studies in our literature analysis incorporate
complex relationships and variables exogenous to the administrative system.
We argue, nonetheless, that these kinds of considerations constitute
variants of our basic model that may modify, but are unlikely to nullify
altogether its explanatory value. The influence on governmental outputs
of external pressures, organisational cultures, consociational relationships
and lengthening chains of delegation relative to the influence of policy
18
For a graphic example of how such considerations might be considered, see Heinrich and
Lynn (2000, 79).
structures, organisational management and service delivery can in prin-

ciple be investigated using elaborated versions of the core model and data
sets that allow for testing the relative effects of various structural and
procedural configurations.
Why this model?

Prior efforts, cited earlier, to identify types of variables that might be
included in a multi-level model of government performance have not
provided a general causal account of relationships among multiple levels
of governance. Our model, and the analytic framework from which it was
derived, provide such an account. The model can contribute to public
policy and management scholarship in several ways.
Firstly, with considerable theoretical and empirical support, the model
explicitly implicates policy design, agency management, and service-delivery
processes and their outputs in the determination of administrative system
performance. It does so in a way that reflects a lawful, multi-level chain
of delegation characteristic of developed democracies (Selden and Sowa
2004). Secondly, the model explicitly acknowledges the reality that
outputs mediate the relationship between what administrative systems
do and how individuals, families, communities, jurisdictions and other
objects of public policy interventions are thereby affected. Thirdly, the
model, which highlights the influence of administrative hierarchy on
performance, has strong empirical support. Hypotheses to the effect that
networked institutions of civil society are ascendant are hereby challenged
to provide convincing theoretical and empirical evidence for why and
how republican institutions no longer approximate the logic of the basic
model presented here (Lynn 2012b).
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Governance and organisational effectiveness:

Laurence E. Lynn, Jr. and Robbie Waters Robichau

Journal of Public Policy / Volume 33 / Issue 02 / August 2013, pp 201 - 228

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Governance and organisational

Abstract : Research on the determinants of government performance has identified

Key words: governance, outputs and outcomes, performance, processes,

with New Public Management reforms, whose goal is to promote

Governance and performance: theoretical considerations

they engender. The specific mechanisms to accomplish this goal range

emphasises the importance of the political chain of delegation whereby

interact (see Hall 1999, for a review).3 In their analysis of OE indicators

Organisation-centred explanations for government performance also

The LOG serves two important purposes, according to the authors.

comparison of findings from dispersed but potentially complementary

complex, that is, field-level personnel had spheres of discretionary authority

Governance, organisations and performance

management studies helps overcome tendencies to conflate outcome-

Re-analysis of 1990–2001 LOG data

we term ‘‘process-as-output’’ indicators. These indicators include both ‘‘final’’

Public Policy Management Service Delivery

Thus, step one of the analysis suggests an operational ‘‘LOG’’ that is

Analysis of 2002–2006 literature

Findings from analysis of the new studies are summarised in Table 2.

Towards a theory of government performance

Policy-Making Management Service Delivery Outcomes/Outputs

Governance and organisational effectiveness 217

general presumption, our results provide further insights into how OE

The influence of policy structures

design, directly and through management-level agents, of administra-

Hypothesis 1b: Service-delivery processes may be directly affected by

In a principal–agent relationship, a policy can be said to be self-executing

information or information that would require costly audits to discover)

The influence of management on service delivery

Hypothesis 2: The outputs of service-delivery processes are influenced by

Service delivery and performance

The relationship between outputs and outcomes is a neglected aspect

A model of government performance

Management Structures &

Figure 1 Theory of public sector performance. Dotted lines represent potential

might be influenced by factors exogenous to the system itself (environment/

structures, organisational management and service delivery can in prin-

Why this model?

Barringer B. R. and Harrison J. S. (2000) Walking a Tightrope: Creating Value Through

Eggertsson T. (1990) Economic Behavior and Institutions. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Parhizgari A. M. and Gilbert G. R. (2004) Measures of Organizational Effectiveness: Private

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