Nature or nurture? Agency life‐cycles as a function of institutional legacy, political environment, and organizational hardwiring

• Published date: 01 November 2023
• Author: Bjorn Kleizen,Muiris MacCarthaigh
• Date: 01 November 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13741

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Nature or nurture? Agency life-cycles as a function

of institutional legacy, political environment,

and organizational hardwiring

Bjorn Kleizen

1

| Muiris MacCarthaigh

2

1

Department of Political Science, Research

Group Politics & Public Governance, GOVTRUST

Centre of Excellence, University of Antwerp,

Antwerp, Belgium

2

School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy

and Politics, Queen’s University Belfast,

Belfast, UK

Correspondence

Bjorn Kleizen, Department of Political Sciences,

Research Group Politics & Public Governance,

GOVTRUST Centre of Excellence, University of

Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium.

Email: bjorn.kleizen@uantwerpen.be

Muiris MacCarthaigh, School of History,

Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics, Queen’s

University Belfast, Belfast, UK.

Email: m.maccarthaigh@qub.ac.uk

Abstract

A growing body of literature attempts to explain the life-cycles of public sector

organizations. Of particular interest have been the form and incidence of their

birth and termination, and connecting these events to such variables as legal sta-

tus and political ideology. Less attention has been given to the effect of intermedi-

ary life-cycle events, the tasks performed by agencies, and their policy domains.

This study builds on existing fixed characteristics (nature) and dynamic environ-

mental (nurture) approaches and uniquely supplements them with a new institu-

tional legacy paradigm that examines how previous organizational reforms

influence future reform. Moreover, we advance existing studies by providing more

comprehensive tests of the role that task type and policy domain play. Finally, we

retest “classic”nature and nurture variables, namely, political turnover and legal

form. Results suggest that nature and nurture provide important pieces of the

organizational life-cycle puzzle and that nurture comprises both external and

intra-organizational dynamics.

Evidence for Practice

•The probability of organizational reforms in the public sector is influenced by

past reforms, providing initial evidence that reform cycles can become self-

perpetuating cycles.

•Would-be reformers in an organization should inform themselves of historical

reforms, the reasons for them, and their subsequent effects before engaging in

new reforms with new challenges.

•Further support is found for the argument that political turnover heightens

probability of reform, suggesting that public organizations should plan their tra-

jectories such that they can smoothly absorb shocks from post-election

changes.

•Legal form, policy field, and task also affect reform rates, suggesting that man-

agers can, in part, assess the risk of (political) intervention over time by looking

at their organization’s“DNA.”

•Organizational reforms, bonfires, culls, and merger programs create new chal-

lenges and organizational legacy effects down the line, which should be taken

into account when announcing them.

INTRODUCTION: THE STUDY OF PUBLIC

ORGANIZATION LIFE-CYCLES

The creation and evolution of public sector organizations

is a theme of long-standing interest in public administra-

tion. Why governments seek to establish ministries or

arm’s length “agencies”and how they design, allocate

tasks, manage, and coordinate them lie at the heart of

the study of bureaucracy (Downs, 1967; Gulick, 1937;

Simon, 1947; Weber, 1947; Wilson, 1989). And once cre-

ated, the survival of public sector organizations has also

animated researchers seeking to explain why some

Received: 15 January 2023 Revised: 20 July 2023 Accepted: 29 September 2023

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13741

Public Admin Rev. 2023;83:1833–1854. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/puar © 2023 American Society for Public Administration. 1833

organizations last longer than others (Aldrich, 1999; Hager

et al., 1996), or even appear “immortal”(Kaufman, 1976;

Strange, 1998). Recently, survival analyses and other tem-

poral empirical investigations have produced new

insights concerning the relevance of environmental fac-

tors (specifically various forms of political turnover) as

well as some foundational or “hardwiring”factors for

understanding these issues (Chen et al., 2019; Kuipers

et al., 2018; Lim, 2021; Yesilkagit, 2021).

In contrast with the study of organizational creation

and survival, organizational termination studies have

emerged comparatively recently and in intermittent fash-

ion (Lim, 2021). Having originally emerged in the late

1970s with ground-breaking work by Kaufman (1976)

concerning public organizations and Bardach (1976), de

Leon (1978) and others concerning public policy, and sub-

sequently developed during the 1980s by Hogwood and

Peters (1982,1985) and Kaufman (1985) with an increased

focus on event history models, little new theory develop-

ment occurred during the 1990s. However, interest has

re-emerged recently, with studies concerning the fre-

quency of organizational terminations for the USA (Boin

et al., 2010), Ireland (MacCarthaigh, 2014), the UK

(Greasley & Hanretty, 2016; James et al., 2015), and Korea

(Park, 2013) as well as more theory-focused work

(Lim, 2021).

Advanced longitudinal approaches to organizational

change in state administrations have become possible

through the creation of databases that document

organizational changes over time (MacCarthaigh &

Roness, 2012). Early work on this includes analyses of the

number and types of public organizations in Ireland

between 1922 and 2010 (MacCarthaigh, 2012), Norway

between 1947 and 2011 (Rolland & Roness, 2012), Estonia

from 1990 to 2010 (Sarapuu, 2012), Lithuania from 1990

to 2010 (Nakroˇ

sis & Budraitis, 2012), and Hungary from

2002 to 2009 (Hajnal, 2012). Concurrent with these devel-

opments has been an increase in focus on the factors that

predict agency termination or reform (e.g., Boin

et al., 2010; Lewis, 2004). Boin et al. (2010), for instance,

advanced work on the relationship between formative

design decisions and organizational survival by examining

New Deal agencies created in the USA between 1933 and

1936. They found that “birth characteristics”(such as

whether a government board or commission was created,

or a sunset clause) matter, but in different ways as time

progressed. Such relatively stable, structural “nature”

characteristics thus form one category of potential expla-

nations for agency reform and/or termination. Others

have focused instead on the more dynamic and change-

able “nurture”factors that shape agency reform or termi-

nation, such as political ideology, the presence of

minority governments or right-wing incumbencies

(Danielsen & Fleischer, 2023; Götz et al., 2018;

Lewis, 2002), budgetary pressure, and economic variables

(e.g., Carpenter & Lewis, 2004). Such nurture factors,

whether they stem from the external environment or

from internal developments, are another interesting

avenue of inquiry as they represent the more rapidly

changing factors that public organizations face.

Recently, comparative work examining structural

changes in the formal organization of governments chal-

lenged some conventional wisdoms about the pace and

consequences of bureaucratic change. For example, Yes-

ilkagit et al. (2022) found strong evidence that politicians

are interested in issues of institutional design (and minis-

try names) and the organization of internal structures for

ministries they have responsibility for. Indeed, there is re-

awakened interest in the relationship between political

decisions over policy portfolio design and the allocation

of competencies between and within ministries (Bertels &

Schulze-Gabrechten, 2021; Carroll et al., 2020; Sieberer

et al., 2019), as well as the effects of this at lower levels of

government organization (Fleischer et al., 2022). What is

more, attention has gradually shifted from a pure focus

on termination to also incorporating the reforms that

occur during an organizational life-cycle (Kuipers

et al., 2018; Yesilkagit, 2021)—an approach we contribute

to here.

However, several important gaps remain. Extant con-

tributions viewing agency life-cycles as a (partial) function

of nurture factors (i.e., developments that the agency

experiences over time) have primarily focused on the

impact of external variables such as political and eco-

nomic environment (Kuipers et al., 2018). Although pro-

viding important insights, approaches focusing purely on

the external environment could miss how dynamics inter-

nal to an organization may shape it over time, that is, its

internal institutional legacy (Brunsson, 2006). Moreover,

although our insight on the role of some factors in an

organization’s“nature”—such as task and legal form—is

advancing, a variety of policy fields and task types have

yet to be explored. To incorporate this dual focus in a rel-

atively comprehensive study of both nature and nurture

factors, we pose a broad research question: what factors

explain the probability of public sector organizations

being reformed, that is, subject to a major transition in

their legal form, task, policy domain, or structure?

On the nature side, specific gaps remain in examining

task types beyond regulatory and advisory tasks. This

means that tasks such as direct service provision or adju-

dication remain relatively unexplored, even though orga-

nizations with such tasks may be faced with greater

turbulence due to their salience to citizens or reduced

turbulence due to credible commitment requirements.

Moreover, the role of policy field remains relatively unex-

plored, with only a few contributions providing partial

tests of a small number of policy field (Chen et al., 2019;

Yesilkagit, 2021). On the nurture side, we advance insights

in the nurture domain by looking not just at the well-

established influence of the external political environ-

ment (Kuipers et al., 2018), but by also considering how

prior reforms affect future reforms—adopting what we

call an internal “institutional legacy”approach. These

1834 NATURE OR NURTURE?