IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/pubmgr/v16y2014i7p945-968.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Personnel Formalization and the Enhancement Of Teamwork: A public-private comparison

Author

Listed:
  • Chung-An Chen
  • Hal G. Rainey

Abstract

Formalization has long been regarded as one of the most distinctive features of the public sector. Personnel systems in the public sector are particularly formalized due to merit system protections and strong due process requirements. In much of the contemporary public management literature, personnel formalization implies red tape, referring to excessive rules that bring negative outcomes such as employee frustration. The present study offers an alternative view, suggesting that personnel formalization results in high-performance work practices, particularly teamwork, by ensuring that organizations attract the right employees and provide employees with various protections such as worker safety, procedural justice and conflict resolution. Given that public organizations are structured more formally, public sector employees are more likely to work in teams than their peers in the private sector. The authors test this view by using variables from the National Organization Survey (NOS) data set and find strong statistical support. Therefore, personnel formalization is not necessarily equivalent to red tape and not always detrimental to the public sector. It enhances teamwork, a central element of high-performance work practices.

Suggested Citation

  • Chung-An Chen & Hal G. Rainey, 2014. "Personnel Formalization and the Enhancement Of Teamwork: A public-private comparison," Public Management Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(7), pages 945-968, October.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:pubmgr:v:16:y:2014:i:7:p:945-968
    DOI: 10.1080/14719037.2013.770057
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/14719037.2013.770057
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/14719037.2013.770057?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Vogel, Dominik & Kroll, Alexander, 2019. "Agreeing to Disagree? Explaining Self–Other Disagreement on Leadership Behaviour," SocArXiv 62ngj, Center for Open Science.
    2. Triguero-Sánchez, Rafael & Peña-Vinces, Jesús & Ferreira, João J. Matos, 2022. "The effect of collectivism-based organisational culture on employee commitment in public organisations," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    3. Morteza Nagahi & Niamat Ullah Ibne Hossain & Raed Jaradat & Vidanelage Dayarathna & Chuck Keating & Simon Goerger & Michael Hamilton, 2022. "Classification of individual managers' systems thinking skills based on different organizational ownership structures," Systems Research and Behavioral Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(2), pages 258-273, March.
    4. Mohammed Khalifa Abdelsalam & Ibrahim Mohammed Massoud Egdair & Halima Begum & Diara Md. Jadi & Hussein-Elhakim Al Issa & Omar Saad Saleh Abrika & A. S. A. Ferdous Alam, 2021. "The Key Organizational Factors in Healthcare Waste Management Practices of Libyan Public Hospitals," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(22), pages 1-19, November.
    5. Roshni Das, 2024. "What do we know about High Performance Work Systems? A bibliometric summary of 30 years of research," Management Review Quarterly, Springer, vol. 74(1), pages 415-438, February.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:pubmgr:v:16:y:2014:i:7:p:945-968. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RPXM20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.