Reform Adoption in a Postcollective Bargaining Governance Environment

• Published date: 01 September 2021
• Date: 01 September 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0734371X20907656
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0734371X20907656

Review of Public Personnel Administration

2021, Vol. 41(3) 546 –565

© The Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/0734371X20907656

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Article

Reform Adoption in a

Postcollective Bargaining

Governance Environment

Michael R. Ford1 and Douglas M. Ihrke2

Abstract

In this article, we use data collected from Wisconsin superintendents to determine

the extent to which the curtailing of collective bargaining facilitated local public

management reform adoption. The results show the near elimination of collective

bargaining did spur substantial reform adoption in areas of performance pay and

recruitment, and that longer serving superintendents and those with partisan

ideologies were more likely to adopt management reforms. However, the results also

indicate that curtailing collective bargaining appeared to hurt employee morale and

made it more difficult to recruit and retain quality teachers. The results contribute to

the public human resource literature by providing a real life case study of how public

management practices change when collective bargaining is eliminated.

Keywords

civil service reform, employee attitudes, behavior, and motivation, local government

HRM, collective bargaining, pay systems

In 1959, Wisconsin became the first state in the union to adopt a public sector collec-

tive bargaining law, cementing it as a leader in the public sector labor movement (Stein

& Marley, 2013). Just over 50 years later, Wisconsin enacted legislation severely cur-

tailing public sector collective bargaining, fundamentally reshaping the relationship

between public sector employee and manager. Although the media coverage of

Wisconsin’s new collective bargaining law, which was passed in 2011 and known as

Act 10, focused largely on the political protests it spurred, the legacy of the legislation

1University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh, USA

2University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, USA

Corresponding Author:

Michael R. Ford, Associate Professor of Public Administration, University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh, Clow

Faculty 422, Oshkosh, WI 54901, USA.

Email: fordm@uwosh.edu

907656ROPXXX10.1177/0734371X20907656Review of Public Personnel AdministrationFord and Ihrke

research-article2020

Ford and Ihrke 547

serves as a case study in public sector management reform. As Lewin et al. (2012)

state, research on public sector collective bargaining is relatively sparse. Work that

does exist tends to focus on political (see Anzia & Moe, 2016; Flavin & Hartney,

2015) and fiscal issues (see Brunner & Ju, 2018; Frandsen, 2016; Frandsen & Webb,

2017) rather than management concerns. At the same time, reform adoption cannot be

divorced from its political context, nor from the characteristics of those adopting

reforms (Riccucci & Thompson, 2008). Thus, this analysis places particular focus on

the role of ideology and manager length of service in reform adoption.

The case of Wisconsin’s Act 10 provides a unique opportunity to understand what

public sector managers do differently once they no longer need to bargain with public

sector labor unions on substantive issues. As Ford (2015) notes, specific reforms such

as longer hours, merit-pay, signing bonuses, contracting out for services, and nontra-

ditional professional development can now be unilaterally enacted by most Wisconsin

public managers. The managers arguably most impacted by Act 10 are the school

superintendents overseeing the operations of Wisconsin’s 423 public school districts.

The largest group employed by school districts, teachers, were long the most powerful

organized special interest in Wisconsin, and had the longest and most detailed collec-

tively bargained labor contracts prior to Act 10 (Fuller & Mitchell, 2006; Stein &

Marley, 2013). In this article, we use data collected from the Wisconsin superinten-

dents supervising teachers to answer the research question: Were superintendents

more likely to adopt reforms after Act 10 allowed them to do so? More specifically, we

seek to understand what superintendent characteristics made them more likely to adopt

management reforms because of Act 10. The results of this analysis contribute to exist-

ing literatures on public sector human resource management and government perfor-

mance (Baron, 2018; Freeman & Han, 2012; Kearney, 2010; Klingner, 1993).

The article is structured as follows. First, we present a literature review of the

larger body of public administration research relating to collective bargaining and

government performance. Second, we explain the Wisconsin case and its relevance to

the preceding literature review. Third, we present our theoretical model, and hypoth-

eses informed by the preceding literature review and explanation of the Wisconsin

case. Fourth, we discuss our survey and methods. Fifth, we present out data and

models. Finally, we present our conclusions and their implications for theory and

practice.

Literature Review

This research is guided by the confluence of the public sector collective bargaining

and public sector reform adoption literatures. As stated, existing literature on public

sector collective bargaining and its relationship with reform adoption is relatively

sparse compared with other areas of public sector human resource management.

Nonetheless, there are significant strands of research exploring the politics, and per-

formance implications, of public sector collective bargaining. We divide these strands

into three specific and partially overlapping areas: