Frances Stokes Berry

State Lottery Adoptions as Policy Innovations: An Event History Analysis

Two types of explanations of state government innovation have been proposed: internal determinants models (which posit that the factors causing a state government to innovate are political, economic, and social characteristics of a state) and regional diffusion models (which point toward the role of policy adoptions by neighboring states in prompting a state to adopt). We show that the two are conceptually compatible, relying on Mohrs theory of organizational innovation. Then we develop and test a unified explanation of state lottery adoptions reflecting both internal and regional influences. The empirical results provide a great degree of support for Mohrs theory. For the empirical analysis, we rely on event history analysis, a form of pooled cross-sectional time series analysis, which we believe may be useful in a wide variety of subfields of political science. Event history analysis may be able to explain important forms of political behavior (by individuals, organizations, or governments) even if they occur only rarely.

Tax Innovation in the States: Capitalizing on Political Opportunity

This paper assesses the factors that prompt states to adopt taxes during the twentieth century. We test five explanations of state tax innovation derived from the literature-economic development, fiscal health, election cycle, party control, and regional diffusion-using event history analysis, a pooled cross-sectional time-series technique. While little support is found for the economic development and party control explanations, our empirical results are highly consistent with a political opportunity explanation of state tax adoptions; (1) the presence of a long time until the next election, (2) the existence of a fiscal crisis, and (3) the presence of neighboring states that have previously adopted a tax all create opportunities for politicians to shield themselves from the political costs of supporting a tax increase and are all shown by empirical analysis to increase the probability of a tax adoption. This empirical evidence is consistent across different tax instruments and different periods of analysis throughout the twentieth century.

The State of Public Strategic Management Research: A Selective Literature Review and Set of Future Directions

Strategic planning and related strategic management elements have become ubiquitous practices at all levels of U.S. government and many nonprofit organizations over the past 25 years. The authors review strategic planning and management research over that time period using the premises of practice theory to guide the discussion. The review is organized according to 10 research directions proposed by Bryson, Freeman, and Roering (1986). Important gains have been made in a number of areas, but much more remains to be done. The authors also propose four new research directions, including the need to (1) attend more fully to the nature of strategic management practice, (2) focus on learning and knowledge management generally as part of strategic management, (3) focus specifically on how strategy knowledge develops and is used, and (4) understand how information and communication technologies can be best integrated into strategic management. The fruits of further concentrated research can be improved public strategic management practice, including enhanced organizational capacity for addressing current and future challenges and improvements in long-term performance.

Exploring The Diffusion Of Innovation Among High And Low Innovative Localities

Abstract Berry and Berry (1999, 2007) argue that diffusion of policy innovations is driven by learning, competition, public pressure or mandates from higher levels of authority. We undertake a first time analysis of this whole framework and present three sub-studies of innovation. First, we examine the drivers of total innovation. Second, we assess whether the factors influencing the most innovative localities are similar to or different from the factors impacting the low localities. Finally, we disaggregate total innovation into three different innovation types. Our findings, undertaken on a panel of English local governments over four years, reveal that a majority of the diffusion drivers from innovation and diffusion theory are indeed positively significant for total innovation. However, local authorities that adopt higher and lower levels of innovation than predicted do things differently while the framework has limited applicability to types of management innovation. We concluded that the Berry and Berry model is best suited to the analysis of total innovation, but not as well suited to the analysis of different types of innovation. We also outline a research agenda that might better explain the diffusion of public policy and public management innovation types than is captured by current literature.

Specifying A Model of State Policy Innovation

How should policy innovations undertaken by states be modeled? Frances Stokes Berry and William D. Berry presented an event history analysis of the determinants of lottery adoptions by state governments in the June 1990 issue of this Review . Howard Front argues that the way Berry and Berry tested for interaction among variables is invalid on the grounds that what they take to be empirical results are only artifacts of the model specification. In response, the Berrys elaborate their original model and add alternative specifications.

Strategic Planning as a Tool for Managing Organizational Change

Abstract This article surveys primary definitions and models of strategic planning used in state and local government. Two models of strategic planning are discussed in length: a. an eight step agency model, with attention to how managers can use each step to manage change in the organization, and b. an alternative approach for community-based strategic planning. Finally, comments on made on the development of strategic planning in the 1990s and its integration into broader quality management reforms. We conclude by laying out some of the lessons we are learning from these broader strategic management approaches to managing change.

PUBLIC ENTREPRENEURS IN THE POLICY PROCESS: PERFORMANCE-BASED BUDGETING REFORM IN FLORIDA

How do entrepreneurs in the public sector effect major policy changes? Are the same entrepreneurs likely to be involved from the idea initiation stage through design, adoption, implementation and institutionalnation, or are there different prominent entrepreneurs in each of the policy stages? What does the pattern of entrepreneurial participation mean for the success of the policy? Utilizing a case study of Performance-Based Program Budgeting (PB2 ) in the State of Florida, this paper employs the observations of key Florida policymakers and advocates to describe the strategic and purposive actions of public entrepreneurs in the four stages of the PB2 budget reform policy process. The work supports current research that major policy changes, such as the adoption of PB2 in Florida, require purposive and strategic actions from public entrepreneurs for their fruition. The paper also contributes to the growing implementation and budgeting literature that describes and assesses performance-based budgeting in the states, and provides observations on necessary conditions for institutionalizing PB2 in Florida.

Successful Diffusion of a Failed Policy: The case of pay-for-performance in the US federal government

Abstract Pay-for-performance (PFP) is a popular management approach that came out of the business sector and was adopted as a centre piece of the 1978 US Civil Service Reform Act. An extensive set of studies assess PFP as largely unsuccessful in the federal government, and many of the private sector studies also found problems in PFP in the private sector. Yet, PFP continues to be adopted by governments in Europe, the United States and Australia. Our study examines the original adoption of PFP in 1978 to assess why it diffused so readily from the private sector to the federal government. We find PFP as a good example of Kingdons (2002) garbage can decision making in which the policy champions presented PFP as a rational policy solution to widely perceived performance appraisal and reward problems at an opportune time. The PFP was trumpeted as an innovative policy but had almost no systematic evidence of success to support its use. Indeed, the problems of private sector PFP were diffused to the public sector. This case study underscores the lack of evidence-based decision making on an important presidential human management agenda, demonstrates an example of policy adoption based on myth rather than fact and concludes that better human resource management theories built on assumptions and public service motivation pertinent to the public sector are needed.

Analyzing effective municipal solid waste recycling programs: the case of county-level MSW recycling performance in Florida, USA

Municipal solid waste (MSW) recycling performance, both nationally and in Florida, USA, has shown little improvement during the past decade. This research examines variations in the MSW recycling program performance in Florida counties in an attempt to identify effective recycling programs. After reviewing trends in the MSW management literature, we conducted an empirical analysis using cross-sectional multiple regression analysis. The findings suggest that the convenience-based hypothesis was supported by showing that curbside recycling had a positive effect on MSW recycling performance. Financial (cost-saving) incentive-based hypotheses were partially supported meaning that individual level incentives can influence recycling performance. Citizen environmental concern was found to positively affect the amount of county recycling, while education and political affiliation yielded no significant results. In conclusion, this article discusses the implications of the findings for both academic research and practice of MSW recycling programs.

A Theoretical Framework on the Determinants of Strategic Cities: Empirical Results From Florida City Governments

Strategic planning is a commonly used management technique, but most state and city studies on strategic planning are descriptive and have not developed a clear theory as to why cities use strategic planning. In this paper, we develop a framework for measuring cities’ use of strategic planning, that includes factors related to form of government, community wealth, and other community attributes as well as the more commonly examined factors related to internal city management capacity. Rather than using a dichotomous dependent variable of “use” or “not use,” we use an index of four strategic planning activities to represent the extent of strategic planning use. We test our multivariate model using ordered logit and data collected from a 2005 survey of Florida city managers, mayors and chief administrative officers. We find support for all four of the major theoretical factors in our model. More strategic cities are more likely to be council manager cities, heterogeneous in population, depend less on sales tax revenue, have risk-taking leadership, use more contracting out, and have staff who participate in professional networks.