Inside the Push for Good Governance: Institutional Predictors of Administrative Transparency in Public Organizations

• Author: G. Breck Wightman,Amanda Rutherford
• Published date: 01 November 2021
• Date: 01 November 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/02750740211031925
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/02750740211031925

American Review of Public Administration

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DOI: 10.1177/02750740211031925

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Article

In one of his first acts as president, President Barack Obama

issued a memorandum aimed at expanding transparency and

open government (Obama, 2009). This action clearly sig-

naled the administration’s commitment to transparency as a

means for holding the government accountable, ensuring

public trust, and otherwise strengthening the U.S. system of

democracy. Statements within the memorandum were repre-

sentative of a broader set of governmental actors and entities

that support institutional transparency. For example, Trans-

parency International, a large nongovernmental organization

that focuses on fighting corruption, was founded in Berlin in

1993; by 2010, the organization boasted 90 chapters world-

wide. In addition, Armstrong (2005) reports that most

European Union member states identify transparency, integ-

rity, and accountability as among the core values of their

public administration systems.

Scholarly research presents a more nuanced landscape on

issues of transparency. Studies of transparency developed as

discussions of good governance spread globally in the 1990s

and 2000s; many practitioners and, to a lesser extent, scholars

who were concerned with issues of transparency treated it as

normatively good (Hood, 2007). This body of research consid-

ers the effects of transparency on a number of outcomes of

interest including perceptions of trust, competency, and per-

formance (Grimmelikhuijsen, 2009, 2012; Porumbescu,

2017). While studies aimed at identifying the mechanisms that

drive transparency are not uncommon, these studies often fail

to move beyond issues of socio-demographics or fiscal and

economic measures to concerns of administrative structures

and processes that often set the rules of the game for how poli-

cies are formed, interpreted, and implemented.

The purpose of this study is to consider the institutional

and structural determinants of administrative transparency.

More specifically, we consider how institutional structures

influence the level of transparency in executive hiring pro-

cesses in public agencies. Hiring transparency has been fairly

standardized in some contexts—for example, positions sub-

ject to merit-based hiring policies in the U.S. federal bureau-

cracy—but is much more variable in others including, but

not limited to many local and state contexts where public

organizations such as hospitals, nursing homes, and schools

operate in market-like settings. In many cases, stakeholder

groups desire a responsive government and thus value

administrative transparency in regards to who staffs a bureau-

cracy and whether such employees make decisions that align

with particular values or missions. On the contrary, organiza-

tions might seek to limit transparency about personnel mat-

ters in an effort to make decisions in a timely manner, protect

sensitive information, or preserve the capacity of fiscal or

human resources.

1031925ARPXXX10.1177/02750740211031925The American Review of Public AdministrationRutherford and Wightman

research-article2021

1Indiana University, Bloomington, USA

Corresponding Author:

G. Breck Wightman, Indiana University, 1315 East Tenth Street, SPEA

A333, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA.

Email: bwightm@iu.edu

Inside the Push for Good Governance:

Institutional Predictors of Administrative

Transparency in Public Organizations

Amanda Rutherford1 and G. Breck Wightman1

Abstract

Policy actors around the world perceive transparency as a means to achieve good governance. Research often focuses on

the determinants of fiscal and economic transparency and gives less attention to administrative transparency. This study

examines whether multiple types of institutional factors influence administrative transparency in the context of the hiring

of college and university presidents in U.S. postsecondary education. Across 54 contracts obtained between institutions of

higher education and third-party search firms, no contract explicitly referred to the term transparency, but contracts varied

in attention given to issues of confidentiality. Using data for 157 presidential searches between 2010 and 2018, we find that

few structural components predict indicators of transparency, though the presence of state sunshine laws and whether a

governing board oversees multiple institutions can influence specific portions of the executive search process.

Keywords

transparency, good governance, open government, hiring, executive search

2021, Vol. 51(8) 590–604