Beyond Stereotypes

Date01 November 2005
DOI10.1177/0095399705278594
Published date01 November 2005
Subject MatterArticles
10.1177/0095399705278594ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / November 2005Pandey, Welch / MANAGERIAL PERCEPTIONS OF RED TAPE
BEYOND STEREOTYPES
A Multistage Model of Managerial
Perceptions of Red Tape
SANJAY K. PANDEY
Rutgers University, Campus at Camden
ERIC W. WELCH
University of Illinois at Chicago
Red tape is a significant management challenge, and this article seeks to understand how
some managers areable to better cope with it. The authors find that managers with positive
work attitudes cope better with personnel constraints as compared to those who have less
positive work attitudes. The findings cast doubt on stereotypes depicting public managers as
being engaged in aggressivered tape production or slothful permitting of red tape. The au-
thors conclude by suggestingthat future research should steer away from relegatingstudy of
red tape to the realm of negative stereotypes. Instead, managerial and organizational
responses to red tape should be studied as part of the normal.
Keywords: public management; red tape; positive psychology; bureaucracy
Are public managers responsible for producing and disseminating red
tape? Alternately, do public managers striveto do their best in the face of
daunting challenges such as red tape? Dominant theoretical frameworks
employ stylized descriptions of managers bordering on stereotypes, and
suggest that public managers are responsible for creating red tape (e.g., A.
542
AUTHORS’NOTE: This is a revisedversion of a refereed conference paper presentedat the
Academy of Management AnnualMeeting in Seattle, Washington, in August 2003. Wethank
Stuart Bretschneider,Hal Rainey, Sheela Pandey,and the journal’sanonymous reviewers for
providingvaluable comments that have significantly strengthened our theoretical arguments
and methodologicalapproach. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed
to Sanjay K. Pandey, Rutgers University,Campus at Camden, Department of Public Policy
and Administration, 401 Cooper Street, Camden, NJ 08102-1521; phone: (856) 225-6057;
fax: (856) 225-6559; e-mail: skpandey@camden.rutgers.edu.
ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY, Vol. 37 No. 5, November 2005 542-575
DOI: 10.1177/0095399705278594
© 2005 Sage Publications
Downs, 1967; Merton, 1940; see Bozeman & Rainey, 1998, for a recent
reassessment). Although we do not question processes of abstraction and
simplification of real-world phenomena so essential for analytic pur-
poses, we do propose that the credibility of these stylized descriptions
relies on debatable claims.
Consider two contrasting views of the managerial role in creating red
tape, viewpoints that may be labeled as aggressivered tape production and
slothful permitting of red tape.1Both viewpoints have origins in economic
analyses of bureaucracy.Perhaps the best illustration of the aggressive red
tape production viewpoint is A. Downs’s (1967) characterization of the
bureaucrat as a conserver who seeks to maximize the perquisites of his or
her office. Conservers in their pursuit to maximize security are likely to
behave in ways that maintain their current level of power, income, and
prestige while holding the expenditure of personal efforts to a minimum.2
A. Downs believesthat rigid adherence to rules and procedures, even pro-
duction of new ones, is a mechanism that the conserver uses to advance
self-directed ends.3
In contrast to A. Downs (1967), economists in the property rights tradi-
tion view public managers’ behavior in this regard as slothful permitting
of red tape (Alchian & Demsetz, 1972, 1973; Davis, 1971; see Bozeman,
2000, pp. 51-55, for an overview). Rather than acting on maximizing
impulses such as A. Downs’s (1967) conserver, the public manager is
viewed as somewhat derelict, tolerating red tape and inefficiency for two
reasons. First, public managers (unlike privatecounterparts) have no stake
in the economic returns of the organization. Second, there are no system-
levelfactors motivating efficient use of resources (Bozeman, 2000; Hood,
Huby, & Dunsire, 1987). For example, managers at the helm of a
nonperforming private organization can lose quite a lot, including their
jobs, if the owners decide to liquidate the firm’s assets. Not being subject
to individual or systemic incentives that require productive and careful
use of resources, public managers permit red tape.
How do the two viewpoints, namely, aggressive red tape production
and slothful permitting of red tape, inform our understanding of the man-
ager’s role vis-à-vis red tape? If managers indeed produce red tape, these
are plausible rationales that taken together render quite unnecessary the
role of human nature in the sense that red tape generation is a result of both
maximizing and minimizing behaviors.4However,if the range of manage-
rial behaviors is not confined within the narrow parameters laid down in
these stylized descriptions, and if instead managers face a complex task
Pandey, Welch / MANAGERIAL PERCEPTIONS OF RED TAPE 543
environment rendered more so by red tape, then an alternate model for
understanding red tape and managerial role becomes necessary.
An obvious alternative in considering the relationship between red
tape and managerial role is to dispense with stereotypical portrayals of
public managers. Instead, it is not unreasonable to assume that public
managers try their best to cope with challenges posed by red tape, an
assumption that leads to two important corollaries. The first corollary is
that stereotypes are inadequate for describing the relation between mana-
gerial role and red tape. This is so because one or two stereotypes can
scarcely be expected to model the wide range of attitudes and behaviors
that a large cross-section of managers is likely to exhibit (Pandey &
Kingsley, 2000). The second and more important corollary is that the
work attitudes of the manager (rather than maximizing or minimizingpro -
clivities) may have a significant bearing on the manager’s assessment of
red tape. The goal of this article, thus, is to better understand managerial
perceptions of red tape. Wedo this in the next section by proposing a theo-
retical model of managerial perceptions of red tape that builds on and
extends prior research. Sections that provide detail on data collection,
measurement, estimation methods, and findings follow this. The final
discussion section reviews implications of our research for theories of
bureaucratic red tape.
AN EXPLANATORY MODEL OF
MANAGERIAL PERCEPTIONS OF RED TAPE
Although recent research has made significant progress in advancing
our knowledge of red tape (Bozeman, 2000; Pandey & Scott, 2002; Scott,
2002), managerial perceptions of red tape remain poorly understood.5Our
effort to propose a systematic theoretical model of red tape is informed by
recent research that has addressed a range of issues pertaining to red tape
such as public-private differences, concept development and elaboration,
and empirical testing of convergent and discriminant validityof red tape
measures (Baldwin, 1990; Bozeman, 1993, 2000; Bozeman & Scott,
1996; Bretschneider, 1990; Pandey & Scott, 2002; Rainey, Pandey, &
Bozeman, 1995). First, we present a theoretical model of managerial per-
ceptions of red tape. Next, we briefly review the concept of red tape. This
review is necessary because of the recent provenance of red tape as a
social scientific construct (Pandey & Scott, 2002).
544 ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / November 2005

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