Management, organizational performance, and task clarity: evidence from Ghana’s civil service

Journal article

We study the relationship between management practices, organizational performance, and task clarity, using observational data analysis on an original survey of the universe of Ghanaian civil servants across 45 organizations and novel administrative data on over 3600 tasks they undertake. We first demonstrate that there is a large range of variation across government organizations, both in management quality and task completion, and show that management quality is positively related to task completion. We then provide evidence that this association varies across dimensions of management practice. In particular, task completion exhibits a positive partial correlation with management practices related to giving staff autonomy and discretion, but a negative partial correlation with practices related to incentives and monitoring. Consistent with theories of task clarity and goal ambiguity, the partial relationship between incentives/monitoring and task completion is less negative when tasks are clearer ex ante and the partial relationship between autonomy/discretion and task completion is more positive when task completion is clearer ex post. Our findings suggest that organisations could benefit from providing their staff with greater autonomy and discretion, especially for types of tasks that are ill-suited to pre-defined monitoring and incentive regimes.

Authors: Rasul, I; Rogger, D; Williams, M

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Journal: Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory
• Volume: 31
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 259-277
• Publication date: 2020-11-11
• Acceptance date: 2020-08-16
• DOI: 10.1093/jopart/muaa034
• EISSN: 1477-9803
• ISSN: 1053-1858
• Language: English
• Keywords: FFR