Political Adiminstration: Cultures of fragmentation behind goal-failure

Abstract

The seminal work of Herbert Kaufman claims that homogenous organizational cultures are crucial for goal achievement throughout organizations with a central-peripheral structure and a task-handling process which cannot be fully regulated through formal rules. In that vein, this article examines if fragmented organizational cultures can account for illegitimate variations in outcome in these types of organizations. The analysis draws on data from a unique questionnaire study; of the whole population of public employees handling sick-leave benefits in the Swedish Social Insurance Agency (SSIA). Sweden represents an interesting case as its welfare system has a decentralized structure and its general and generous coverage needs high revenues and therefore relies on legitimacy from larger sets of the population. The article shows that fragmented organizational culture does account for a considerable amount of regional variations in outcome. The main result is that employees with non-socialist political views contribute to lower levels of sick-leave benefits granted. The paper argues that public administration is politicized in ways not shown before, a pattern that is in violation of Constitutional rules in most countries. Further, the analysis shows an effect of two ethical orientations of employees on outcome; rule-orientation contributes to lower levels of sick-leave benefits granted and so does also care-orientation given a certain level of self-reported self-discipline among citizens. Finally, the analysis shows that higher levels of social capital among citizens correlate with higher benefits levels. This latter result suggests that social insurance administration might be an area where there is a limit for how much increasing levels of social capital improve results.