The Failure of Theory to Predict the Way Public Sector Organisation Responds to its Organisational Environment and the Need for a Mosaic-View of Organisational Theory

Bryane Michael and Maja Popov

Public Organization Review, 2016, vol. 16, issue 1, 55-75

Abstract: What does theory predict about the way government size and structure adapts to changes in government’s organisational environment (particularly to uncertainty and complexity)? In this paper, we review the theory and evidence from the literature about the way government size adjusts to such changes -- particularly to changes in macroeconomic fundamentals like gross national product (GDP). We find that the traditional theories from the organisational theory literature—like the contingency-based view, resource-based view and the rational choice view -- fail to provide global explanations for much of the variation we see in the world around us. Instead, theorists need to adopt a “mosaic view” of organisational theory -- accepting that different theories may explain the way public sector size and structure responds to the uncertainty and variability in its (macroeconomic) organisational environment. We also provide several empirical hypotheses to test such a mosaic-view. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016

Keywords: Contingency theory; Public sector organisational theory; Resource-based view; Size of government; Government structure; “Mosaic view”; JELCodes; F4; D7; E6; H1; H4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11115-014-0296-5 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:porgrv:v:16:y:2016:i:1:p:55-75

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ce/journal/11115/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11115-014-0296-5

Access Statistics for this article

Public Organization Review is currently edited by Ali Farazmand

More articles in Public Organization Review from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().