Representative Bureaucracy, Environmental Turbulence, and Organizational Performance

• Author: Xiaoyang Xu,Carla Flink
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/02750740221123106
• Published date: 01 October 2022
• Date: 01 October 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

Representative Bureaucracy,

Environmental Turbulence, and

Organizational Performance

Xiaoyang Xu

1

and Carla Flink

1

Abstract

The literature on representative bureaucracy posits that increased representation at the managerial level leads to improved

outcomes for minority clients. These managers, however, must work within organizational constraints and during times of

environmental turbulence to sustain organizational performance. We forward the theory that contextual factors, such as envi-

ronmental turbulence, could moderate the effects of representation on organizational performance. Utilizing a Texas school-

level dataset of K-12 education from 2011, we examine how the race of the school principal inf‌luences student standardized

test performance in a time of widespread f‌inancial resource cuts. Our f‌indings suggest that same-race school principal rep-

resentation improves the academic performance of both African American and Latino students, but the positive effects dimin-

ish as budgetary cuts become more widespread in the school. This means that environmental turbulence can decrease the

impact of representation.

Keywords

representative bureaucracy, environmental turbulence, race, cutback management

Introduction

There is a long-standing literature on representative bureauc-

racy, dating back to Kingsley (1944) who introduced the

concept. Theories in representative bureaucracy posit that

bureaucrats bring positive effects to clients with similar iden-

tities (Mosher 1968). The literature has assessed the benef‌its

of having representation for minority clients in a variety of

policy and agency contexts, including education, health,

law enforcement, substance use disorder, and child support

agency (Carroll, 2017; Hawes, 2022; Keiser et al., 2002;

Meier and Nicholson-Crotty, 2006; Park, 2013, 2020;

Wilkins and Keiser, 2006; Wilkins and Williams, 2008;

Wright, 2022). In each of those policy settings, research

has found that minority clients benef‌it from having bureau-

crats who share their identities.

One of the foundational inquiries in the representative

bureaucracy literature is understanding when bureaucrats

represent (Meier 2019). The literature tells us that contextual

factors, such as policy and political environment, matter for

bureaucratic representation (An et al., 2021; Wilkins and

Keiser, 2006). In this article, we examine another contextual

factor, organizational environment, and focus on how it inf‌lu-

ences the representation process. To improve policy out-

comes, public organizations consider how factors in the

environment affect their work. The environment can bring

benef‌its and opportunities for growth but can also create

obstacles for the organization. In consequence, bureaucrats

are representing their clients in good times and challenging

times. Representation can potentially matter greatly for

minority clients when the environment is unstable. The

current literature in representative bureaucracy, however,

remains understudied on how representation inf‌luences the

performance of those represented clients in times of environ-

mental turbulence, with a few exceptions (see Carroll, 2019).

To address this gap in the representative bureaucracy litera-

ture, we assess how an aspect of environmental turbulence

—budgetary cuts—moderates the effects of representation

on the performance of underrepresented groups in the

context of education.

There is little debate on the importance of f‌inancial

resources for public organizations. Well-funded government

organizations can hire, retain, and train employees, provide

better facilities, and produce more goods, services, and so

on—all elements likely to improve overall organizational

School of Public Affairs, Department of Public Administration and Policy,

American University, Washington, DC, USA

Corresponding Author:

Xiaoyang Xu, School of Public Affairs, Department of Public Administration

and Policy, American University, 4400 Massachusetts Avenue, NW,

Washington, DC 20016-8070, USA.

Email: xx0266a@american.edu

Article

American Review of Public Administration

2022, Vol. 52(7) 498–512

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/02750740221123106

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