Do Personnel Policies Matter for Organizational Mission Coherence? A Public School Test

• Author: Albert Cheng
• Published date: 01 December 2016
• Date: 01 December 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0734371X15587981
• Subject Matter: Articles

Review of Public Personnel Administration

2016, Vol. 36(4) 347 –369

© The Author(s) 2015

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DOI: 10.1177/0734371X15587981

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Article

Do Personnel Policies Matter

for Organizational Mission

Coherence? A Public School

Test

Albert Cheng1

Abstract

Public administration theory suggests that building mission coherence within an

organization is important for its effectiveness. Personnel policies may influence the

capacity to foster mission coherence. Through hiring or dismissal, managers could

compose a staff of workers who match with the organizational mission and abide

by its associated norms and values. Policies that limit the manager’s influence over

personnel may have the opposite effect. This article empirically tests this link between

personnel policies and mission coherence within the U.S. public schools system.

Ordinary least squares regression is used to analyze a nationally representative

sample of nearly 6,500 schools. Results indicate that schools where administrators

have greater influence over hiring decisions or face fewer formal barriers against

dismissing teachers tend to have teachers who report greater mission coherence.

Implications for theory and practice as well as study limitations are also discussed.

Keywords

person–organization fit, organizational mission, personnel management, education

policy

Public agencies and bureaucracies often face issues that may undermine their effec-

tiveness, two of which are principal–agent problems and goal conflict (Downs, 1967;

Rainey, 2014; Wilson, 1991). To address these problems, public administration

research often emphasizes fostering mission coherence within the organization—that

1University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR, USA

Corresponding Author:

Albert Cheng, College of Education and Health Professions, University of Arkansas, 208 Graduate

Education Building, Fayetteville, AR 72701, USA.

Email: axc070@uark.edu

587981ROPXXX10.1177/0734371X15587981Review of Public Personnel AdministrationCheng

research-article2015

348 Review of Public Personnel Administration 36(4)

is, clarifying and building agreement over organizational goals. In doing so, workers

would be less motivated to shirk and, instead, pursue the organization’s mission. One

possible way to build mission coherence is through the use of personnel policies.

Administrators may be able to compose a staff sharing the norms, values, and goals of

the organization, minimizing the incidence and prevalence of principal–agent prob-

lems (DiIulio, 1994; Downs, 1967; Meier & O’Toole, 2006; Wilson, 1991).

According to the principal–agent theory, less restrictive personnel policies would

give principals more autonomy to shape their organizations through the composition

of their agents (Brehm & Gates, 1999; Moe, 1984). In particular, less restrictive per-

sonnel policies may influence organizational effectiveness directly through the selec-

tion of the most talented individuals. Alternatively, less restrictive possibilities may

indirectly enhance organizational effectiveness by enabling managers to foster mis-

sion coherence. I test the plausibility of this latter proposition. Specifically, I test

whether the (a) the level of influence managers have over hiring or (b) presence of

procedural and institutional barriers to dismissing agents is associated with weaker

organizational mission coherence. The aim is simply to find descriptive, not causal,

evidence of such a relationship.

On one hand, it is useful to simply check whether a relationship between mission

coherence and personnel policies even exists because the prospects of using personnel

policies to influence mission coherence have not received much prior attention in the

research literature and in practice (Berman, Bowman, West, & Van Wart, 2012; Hess

& Kelly, 2007). Beyond that, finding such a relationship would refine the understand-

ing of how personnel policies, mission coherence, and organizational effectiveness

interact. Claims about how and why personnel policies theoretically affect organiza-

tions remain unsubstantiated absent such evidence, whereas the existence of such evi-

dence raises the possibility that personnel policies could indirectly improve

organizations by enabling managers to foster mission coherence. This conclusion

would carry implications for practice and raise additional research question such as

evaluating the efficacy of various personnel policies on mission coherence.

The remainder of the article is divided into five additional sections. The “Literature

Review and Theoretical Framework” section is a review of the literature regarding the

relationship between personnel policies and mission coherence, with some particular

attention to the field of educational administration. The “Research Methodology” section

describes the data and method used in the analysis. I conduct this analysis in the context

of the U.S. public schools system. Because it operates much like other typical public

agencies, the U.S. traditional public school system provides an appropriate context

(Chubb & Moe, 1988). I then present and discuss the results of the analysis in the “Results”

and “Discussion” sections, respectively. The final section concludes the article.

Literature Review and Theoretical Framework

The Importance of Organizational Mission Coherence

Public administration research has often emphasized the importance of fostering mis-

sion coherence within an organization. Much of the literature has argued that the