Organizational culture and the 'reinvention of government'

This dissertation explores the implied relationship between management reform and organizational culture established by the Clinton administration's "reinvention of government" and found in the call to change the organizational culture of the federal bureaucracy. To change organizational culture in order to facilitate a government that "works better and costs less," the Clinton administration launched a management reform effort that is described as radically different from those Presidential management reforms that preceded it.Operational level organizations in two very different contexts were surveyed, interviewed, and archival data collected on the type of management reform implemented, the types of culture that existed in the organizations, and the performances of the organizations with respect to "reinvention." The assumptions that guided this research were: One, that organizations with types of organizational cultures that encouraged and supported management reform would perform at higher levels than those with organizational cultures that did not Two, that organizations with high achievement in "reinvention" would have organizational cultures that encouraged and supported management reform while those with less achievement in "reinvention" would have less of these cultural characteristics and Three, that organizations with higher achievement in "reinvention" would be performing at a higher level than those with less achievement in "reinvention."Utilizing eleven components of organizational culture, two major "reinvention" efforts in each agency, and departmental performance criteria, nine organizations were compared in all three of the relationships. Although the research assumptions that "High" performing organizations would also be "High" on most culture components was only marginally supported by the findings, there is little doubt that a relationship does exist between organizational culture and performance. It could not, however, be determined in the course of this research that those organizations "high" in reinvention are performing at higher levels of efficiency and effectiveness or that their organizational cultures support more management reform. The findings do argue for more research in the relationship between management reform and organizational culture, as well as the ability of organizations in the public sector to deal with the constraints of accountability and control while attempting to implement management reform.