The politics of implementation: Egocentric value maximization as strategic action

EasyChair Preprint 1148

Abstract

Moulton and Sandifort’s (2017) Strategic Action Field Framework (SAF) positions political authority, exogenous shocks, and the social skills of organizational actors as the drives of stability and changes in coordinated policy implementation. When political authority is weak, how can social skills compensate and drive the implementation process? In this study, we studied a stratified sample of public managers and other organizational actors to examine policy implementation in county level Community Child Protection Teams in North Carolina. We find that when there is weak political impetus and little exogenous funding or interest, policy actors can use social skills to maximize agency level benefits, minimize agency level transaction costs, and create policy at the local level in ways that benefit member agencies.

Keyphrases: Public Management, policy implementation, strategic action

@booklet{EasyChair:1148,
  author    = {Teshanee Williams and Jason Coupet},
  title     = {The politics of implementation: Egocentric value maximization as strategic action},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 1148},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2019}}