scholarly journals Untangling Agile Government: On the Dual Necessities of Structure and Agility

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keegan McBride ◽  
Maximilian Kupi ◽  
Joanna J. Bryson
Keyword(s):  

Agility has become a common term when it comes to today's discourse on digitalization and government transformation. There is a widely held view that governmental bureaucracy with its laws, regulations, institutions, and `red tape' is unable to keep up with a rapidly changing and digitizing society. It is now often claimed that the solution is for governments to become agile. Along these lines, the resulting discourse on `agile government' posits that government is not agile now, but it could be, and if it were agile then government would be more e?ective, adaptive, and, thus, normatively better. We argue that while agility can represent a useful paradigm in some contexts, it is often applied inappropriately in the governmental context due to a lack of understanding about what `agile' is, and what it is not.

2012 ◽  
Vol 45 (14) ◽  
pp. 4
Author(s):  
MARY ELLEN SCHNEIDER
Keyword(s):  

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
AKHIL GUPTA
Keyword(s):  

Author(s):  
A Dudau ◽  
G Kominis ◽  
Y Brunetto

Abstract Assuming that red tape is inevitable in institutions, and drawing on positive organizational behavior, we compare the impact of individual psychological capital on the ability of street-level bureaucrats (SLBs) with different professional backgrounds to work within the confines of red tape. The two SLB professions investigated here are nurses and local government employees; and the work outcomes of interest to this study are well-being and engagement. The findings show that red tape has a different impact on each professional group but, encouragingly, they also indicate that psychological capital has a compensatory effect. Implications include nurses requiring more psychological resources than local government employees to counteract the negative impact of red tape. A practical implication for managers is that, if perception of red tape in organizations is set to increase or to stay constant, enhancing the psychological capital of professionals in SLB roles, through specific interventions, may be beneficial to professionals and organizations alike.


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hemin Ali Hassan ◽  
Xiaodong Zhang ◽  
Ahmad Bayiz Ahmad

PurposeThis paper builds on and extends the theory of planned behavior (TPB) by examining empirically the underlying mechanism through which red tape is associated with employee change-supportive intention (CSI). It investigates red tape as an antecedent of CSI and examines the mediation role of change-related attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioral control (PBC) in the relationship between red tape and CSI.Design/methodology/approachTo test the study's hypotheses, cross-sectional data were collected from 183 employees working at a public organization in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq that was going through a major change. Regression analyses and the PROCESS macro for SPSS were used.FindingsConsistent with our expectations, the results indicate that red tape negatively predicts CSI. Red tape also predicts change-related attitude, subjective norm and PBC, which consequently predict CSI. The results also reveal that the relationship between red tape and CSI is mediated by change-related attitude and subjective norm.Research limitations/implicationsThe study is limited in using cross-sectional data at a point in time and in investigating intention only, rather than actual behavior.Originality/valueWhile prior work shows that red tape is a relevant factor that may affect employee responses to change in public sector, the psychological processes on which this relationship is based are still not fully explained. Therefore, this is the first study that aims to shed some light on this relationship.


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