Legitimacy, autonomy and trust: a recipe for organizations to operate in the public interest

PurposeThis study aims to examine the effect of publics' legitimacy evaluations on Arthur W. Page's conceptualization of “reasonable freedom of action” by breaking it into two parts: (1) perceived organizational autonomy and (2) trust in the organization.Design/methodology/approachThis study conducted an online experiment using a 2 (legitimacy: low, high) × 2 (legitimacy type: institutional, actional) between-subjects design. Measured variables included perceived organizational autonomy and trust.FindingsOrganizations acting in their own self-interest while ignoring community norms and expectations were perceived to be exercising higher levels of organizational autonomy and have lower levels of trust. The interaction between legitimacy type and level had an effect on perceived organizational autonomy and trust.Research limitations/implicationsPublic's view their relationships with organizations from a perspective that prioritizes responsibility and conformity to community norms and expectations. Also, organizations have more to lose by acting in their own self-interest to resolve institutional legitimacy concerns and more to gain by handling them in a way that includes the public interest than when they are managing an actional legitimacy situation.Practical implicationsSocietal norms, values and beliefs, which may have accommodated, or even supported, an organization's approach to doing business in the past, can change over time, calling into question an organization's legitimacy and its ability to operate in the public interest. As a result, organizational leaders need the Chief Communication Officer to help them understand current societal norms, values and beliefs.Originality/valueThis study addresses a core assumption of the organization–public relationship paradigm that has not yet been studied empirically. It also expands the understanding of organizational autonomy from a public perspective and examines the effect of legitimacy on organizational autonomy and trust.

Organizational autonomy in public science and technology non - business units in Vietnam

Organizational autonomy is a state that demonstrates an organization’s ability to make decisions on its own. Organizational autonomy is explored in many different aspects and contents. In the scope of this article, the author mentions organizational autonomy through the following contents: management autonomy, policy autonomy, structural autonomy, and financial autonomy. By doing quantitative research with 137 questionnaires to leaders, managers, and employees working in public science and technology non - business units, the article aims to clarify the assessment of reality status and degree of autonomy of public science and technology non - business units, thereby giving several recommendations to contribute to improving the autonomy of these units in Vietnam.

Loss or Gain? Unpacking Nonprofit Autonomy-Interdependence Paradox in Collaborations

Nonprofit organizations interested in collaborating with other entities find it difficult to strike a balance between keeping their autonomy and reaping the benefits from collaborating with other organizations. Although interorganizational collaborations come with various benefits, such as reducing competition over limited resources, participating in collaborative relationships can also damage the autonomy of individual nonprofits. Using an original survey of 275 nonprofits, we examine how various dimensions of collaborative relationships affect an individual nonprofit’s autonomy. Our findings suggest that having highly specified administrative arrangements and stronger trust as well as reciprocity among partner organizations serve as critical factors to secure the autonomy of individual organizations. We also find that nonprofit organizations engaged in mostly informal relationships and in partnerships across sectors feel less threatened about maintaining their autonomy. Our post hoc analysis further suggests that organizational autonomy is a significant antecedent for seeking more collaborations. To this end, we discuss how nonprofits can keep their organizational autonomy without giving up collaborating with other entities by strategically managing several aspects of the collaborative relationships.

THE STATE OF IMPLEMENTATION OF ORGANIZATIONAL AUTONOMY IN DOMESTIC INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER

The article considers the need for the introduction of university autonomy, which will allow higher education institutions to be independent, self-sufficient. The state and tools of introduction of organizational autonomy in higher education institutions of Ukraine are analyzed. It is established that higher education institutions have the right to: independently develop the procedure for electing the head, within the legislation; determine the academic structure (scientific, educational-scientific, research, research and production institutes, faculties, departments); to create legal entities (to form innovative structures that will ensure the implementation of its statutory tasks and the implementation of innovative projects); adjust the number of external representatives in supervisory and academic boards (including the involvement of potential employers in their governing bodies and in the development and modernization of educational programs). The article identifies measures to expand organizational autonomy in domestic higher education institutions: the spread of decentralization of higher education; development of normative legal acts to increase the legal field of practical activity of universities; termination of participation of representatives of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine in the election of the rector; weakening the procedure for participation in the governing bodies of representatives of civil society and commercial organizations. The state of implementation of organizational autonomy in Ukrainian higher education institutions is determined through the adaptation of the domestic legal framework on higher education to the indicators of its level assessment, defined by the Association of European Universities.

Managing development plans in the Norwegian healthcare system

Background: As part of a national plan to govern professional and organizational development in Norwegian specialist healthcare, the country’s hospital clinics are tasked with making development plans. Using the development plan as case, the paper analyses how managers navigate and legitimize the development plan process among central actors, and deals with the tension between governmental control and organizational autonomy in such strategy work.Method: This study applies a qualitative research design, triangulating different kinds of data. The study was performed in two steps: a) an analysis of various guidelines for development plans and how they are translated through the different levels of Norwegian specialist healthcare, and b) a single-case study of the process of developing a development plan at the clinical level. Findings: Findings shows that the development plan was shaped through a multilevel translation process consisting of different contending rationalities. At the clinical level, the management had difficulties legitimizing the process. Underlying tension between top-down and bottom-up steering challenged their involvement and made it difficult to manage the contingency of decisions.Conclusions: The findings are relevant to public sector managers working on strategy documents, as well as to policymakers identifying challenges that might hinder fulfillment of political intentions. This paper uses a case from Norway; however, the findings are of general interest. It contributes to the academic discussion on how to take account both the health authorities perspective and the organizational perspective in order to understand tensions between control and autonomy, applied to a functionally differentiated health care system.

A Positive Project Outcome: Lessons from a Non-Dominant Government University-Based Program

This article explores factors contributing to a non-dominant collaboration paradigm in a partnership between a government-based international development agency and a university-based non-governmental organization. Anchored in Wood’s and Gray’s collaborative framework, this article describes how the steeply hierarchical partnership navigated the elements of collaboration – organizational autonomy; shared problem domain; interactive processes; shared rules, norms, and structures; and decision making – to produce non-dominant values and practices deriving from negotiated processes, rules, norms, and structures that produced positive collaboration outcomes. In particular, a history of prior mutually beneficial interactions emerges as a critical precondition for achieving a non-dominant collaboration in this case study’s steeply hierarchical organizational relationship, one in which egalitarianism and equal decision-making regarding the agenda and the goals of the collaboration could have been highly constrained.

International parliamentary institutions

This chapter describes the universe of international parliamentary institutions (IPIs): their attributes, their historical development, their regional variation and their organizational features. It shows that, while the first IPI dates from the nineteenth century, IPIs have only emerged in larger numbers after World War II and in particular during the post-Cold War period. In addition, IPIs have become increasingly affiliated with IOs. The chapter further assesses the autonomy and authority of IPIs. Whereas IPIs have retained or gained considerable organizational autonomy, their authority and capacity to affect the constitutional and policy decisions of international organizations as well as appointments of international officials have remained weak. The descriptive analysis thus provides detailed evidence for the rise of IPIs in numbers, but not in powers, and thus motivates the research puzzle of the study.

TYPES OF TERRITORIAL COMMUNITIES IN WHICH A HUMAN – A MEMBER OF THE COMMUNITY FUNCTIONS

The article is devoted to the study of human participation as a member of the community in the existence and functioning of the territorial community. The article contains a description of the types of territorial communities, as well as their general features. The article defines the way a person functions as a member of the community in the territorial community. It is determined that the territorial communities of the primary level are those communities in which a person fully realizes his right to local self- government, including, first of all, the realization of their existential interests and other needs due to the implementation of human life cycle within the territorial community. , mainly in the ordinary implementation of statehood. It is noted that the activities of local councils and their executive bodies in the understanding of teleological guidelines are carried out on behalf of and in the interests of the respective territorial communities, so there is a clear methodological and procedural link that arises in the implementation of these rights and interests. This issue is quite relevant, because most local communities and their members focus and concretize their needs and interests through the formation of key issues of local importance, which is a fundamental object of the institution of local government and local government. It is determined that the possibilities of territorial communities to determine their own administrative structures are quite limited in Ukraine, they are quite exhaustively defined centrally – in the relevant Law of Ukraine "On Local Self-Government in Ukraine". In addition, the cities of Kyiv and Sevastopol have not yet established their own executive structures of local self-government, and their functions are entrusted to the relevant local state administrations. This significantly limits the implementation of the principle of organizational autonomy.