Management and Bureaucratic Effectiveness : Evidence from the Ghanaian Civil Service
A burgeoning area of social science research examines how state capabilities and bureaucratic effectiveness shape economic development. This paper studies how the management practices of civil service bureaucrats correlate to the delivery of public...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2018
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/335361537384686708/Management-and-Bureaucratic-Effectiveness-Evidence-from-the-Ghanaian-Civil-Service http://hdl.handle.net/10986/30467 |
| Summary: | A burgeoning area of social science
research examines how state capabilities and bureaucratic
effectiveness shape economic development. This paper studies
how the management practices of civil service bureaucrats
correlate to the delivery of public projects, using novel
data from the Ghanaian Civil Service. This paper combines
hand-coded progress reports on 3,600 projects with a
management survey in the government ministries and
departments responsible for these projects. The analysis
finds that management matters: practices related to autonomy
are positively associated with project completion, yet
practices related to incentives/monitoring of bureaucrats
are negatively associated with project completion. The
negative impact of incentives/monitoring practices is partly
explained by bureaucrats having to multi-task, interactions
with their intrinsic motivation, their engagement in
influence activities, and project characteristics such as
the clarity of targets and deliverable outputs. The paper
discusses the interplay between management practices and
corruption, alternative methods by which to measure
management practices in organizations, and the external
validity of the results. The findings suggest that the focus
of many civil service reform programs on introducing
stronger incentives and monitoring may backfire in some
organizations, and that even countries with low levels of
state capability may benefit by providing public servants
with greater autonomy in some spheres. |
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