Theodore H. Poister’s research while affiliated with Georgia State University and other places

Needs‐based grant programs are budgeting systems that tie grant dollars to the needs of the grantees as determined by objective indicators. Although performance improvement is not an explicit goal of such grants, the associated awards could work as incentives for grantees to meet the grant criteria. In other words, grantees seek to improve their performance to fulfill the criteria, even though the grant‐makers intend such grants to support the existing operational needs of the grantees. This study tests these assertions in the context of the small transit intensive cities (STIC) grant that was established as a needs‐based grant system by the federal government to support small local transit agencies operating with unusually high service demands. This study argues that these systems would have a stronger impact on indicators over which grantees have more control. This study tests these assertions using a difference‐in‐differences analysis of 290 transit agencies over 17 years. The findings show that STIC is effective in improving grantee performance, at least on the indicators which are more amenable to control.

Performance management is an established concept in the public sector, with several empirical studies supporting its beneficial impact on organizational performance. Research on performance management, however, is still in initial stages and mostly examines the impact of this practice under stable environmental conditions. This study adds to the literature by analyzing the effect of this system on performance of local transit agencies in a turbulent environment characterized by the Great Recession and its aftermath. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) on survey responses from 162 local transit agencies in the United States is used to extract the four components of performance management, namely, formal strategic planning, logical incrementalism, performance measurement, and performance information use. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analysis shows that an independent use of formal strategic planning and logical incrementalism has a negative impact on organizational performance under turbulence. Performance measurement and a blend of formal strategic planning and logical incrementalism, however, show a positive impact.

State legislatures and their member legislators serve as important overseers to state administrative departments, charged to function as principals relative to departmental agents. Yet, we know relatively little about how legislators assess the performance of those departments. This research is designed to improve that knowledge through an exploratory analysis of how and why legislators in one state assess the performance of a large state government department. Using data from a survey of Georgia state legislators, the article explores legislator evaluations of the state’s Department of Transportation (GDOT) and the factors that may underlie those evaluations. The findings suggest that legislators assess administrative performance on three principal dimensions: (a) administrative service to individual legislators, (b) assistance to the legislature as a whole, and (c) performance in meeting the state’s transportation needs. Those assessments appear to be shaped by legislator perceptions of (a) personal interactions with the department and (b) the quality of specific GDOT products and services. These and earlier findings suggest that the focus of public performance measurement systems might be broadened to include measures of personal treatment by administrative agencies in addition to traditional objective service outcome measures.

Originally developed to explain the leadership styles of political leaders and societal reformers, the theory of transformational leadership is increasingly used to explain organizational performance in public administration. Transformational leaders supposedly use their inspirational abilities, motivational skills, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration to change employee aspirations and behavior, resulting ultimately in improved organizational performance. Using Bayesian SEM on survey responses of 2,786 employees of a state transportation department, this article examines the impact of transformational leadership on mission valence at three organizational leadership levels, with organizational goal clarity and performance management hypothesized as intervening mechanisms. Results show transformational leadership having the strongest impact on organizational goal clarity at the topmost leadership level, and on the use of performance management at the lowest leadership level.

This article adds to the growing literature exploring the impact of cutbacks and environmental turbulence on organizational operations by studying the changes in strategy formulation and performance measurement practices in the public sector in the wake of the Great Recession. Survey data were collected from public transit agencies in small and medium-sized cities at the beginning of the recession in 2009 and again in 2013. The analyses found that transit agencies dealt with the fallout from the economic crisis by increasing their use of logical incrementalism approaches to strategy formulation through negotiating with organizational stakeholders and responding to newly emerging information through continuing changes in strategy. Agencies also placed greater emphasis on performance measurement practices. While the use of formal strategic planning itself remained constant under turbulence, the blended approach of formal strategic planning and logical incrementalism showed significant increase. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed in the conclusion.

Performance-based grants management is a strategy used by public agencies to improve performance and strengthen accountability by connecting annual award amounts to performance information. This study evaluates the impacts of a performance-based grants management process implemented by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to strengthen the effectiveness of its National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program. The study uses panel data and interrupted time-series analysis over 10 years for 51 grantees. Results show partial and conditional effectiveness of the performance-based grants management process in strengthening performance. In particular, the implementation of the performance-based grants management system consistently improved the performance of those grantees for whom the targets were challenging. While prior research has found, in some cases, evidence of a positive impact of performance management practices in improving programs delivered directly by public organizations at the local level, this study examines the performance management–performance relationship in a more challenging context of a federal grants program delivered through a highly decentralized system.

While models of organizational strategy saturate private sector research, public sector research lags behind. The model created by Boyne and Walker (2004) is an exception. The main objective of this study is to operationalize this model using a unique data set from the US transit industry. Through a survey of 103 local transit agencies, we developed separate strategy profiles for each agency that help us answer important questions about organizational strategy. We find that not only do the organizations adopt a mix of strategic stances through the action areas; they also have distinct profiles, which vary greatly between agencies.

Performance measurement systems can be thought of as both evaluation tools and management systems that are designed to provide useful feedback on performance in order to strengthen decision making and improve program and organizational performance. This chapter provides a brief overview of performance measurement in terms of types of measures and the connection between performance measurement and program evaluation studies. It discusses the development of measures, and particularly the criteria for good performance measures. The chapter then examines how to convert performance data into information and present it effectively to decision makers. It then turns to two particular challenges in performance measurement, using the data to improve performance and developing measurement systems in networked governance structures. The chapter concludes with brief comments on the outlook for performance measurement at this point in its evolution. © 2015 by Kathryn E. Newcomer and Harry P. Hatry, and Joseph S. Wholey.

This study is a continuation of previous work that emphasizes an alignment between the internal management (strategy formulation) of public organizations and their environment (strategic stance). As public organizations formulate strategy through strategic planning or logical incrementalism, they relate to their external environments through the strategy stances of prospector or defender. Current research asserts that organizations with a prospector stance perform better when they adopt logical incrementalism, whereas organizations with a defender stance perform better when they formulate their strategy through formal strategic planning (FSP). Our study on the transit industry, however, could not find support to these assertions.

In this paper we explore the impact of transformational leadership on employee attitudes and behavior associated with organizational success. We argue that transformational leaders ingrain their own leadership styles in their followers, while increasing the mission valence among them by clarifying organizational goals and using performance management systems. We also explore the influence of different levels of leadership on performance management, goal clarity, and mission valence. Using structural equation modeling we tested these relationships through a survey of 2,305 employees of the Georgia Department of Transportation. The model provides evidence that transformational leadership flows from higher to lower leadership levels, such that the senior departmental leadership influences the leadership behavior of the first level supervisors indirectly through their influence on middle managers. No direct flow from top-tier to lower-tier leadership was observed. Further, we also found that each level of leadership has independent effects and, in some cases, even different mechanisms by which they influence employee mission valence. While transformational leadership of all three levels was found to increase mission valence indirectly through the use of performance management, only the top-tier leadership increased mission valence by enhancing goal clarity. Consistent with previous studies (Wright et al., 2013), no evidence of a direct impact of transformational leadership on mission valence was observed.