Studying Dynamics of Government Agencies: Conceptual and Methodological Results of a Hungarian Organizational Mapping Exercise

Coming to Terms with Termination of Public Organizations

“…In Lewis's 2002 and2004 studies, insulation from executive interference (arm's length status -H5) makes organizations fare better than those created in proximity to the executive but this is contradicted by other research (Boin et al 2010;Hajnal 2012). Newness of the organization is an asset according to some and a liability according to others (H1).…”

“…The number of terminations in their study is so high though (109 of 153 organizations in 23 years, which adds up to 71%) that it might indicate a bias in favor of discontinuation. As Park (2013: 416) concluded, Bthe distinction between termination and change remains a matter of pragmatic choice rather than strict theoretical underpinnings^(see also Hajnal 2012). Again, much is left to the judgment of the researcher.…”

Mapping Public Sector Organizations: An Agenda for Future Research

“…The importance of the form and extent of specialization becomes evident also in the case of CEE countries where, for example, the high level of specialization of the administrative structures inherited from the post-communist predecessors provided politicians with very different conditions for reform than in the Western democracies (Sarapuu, 2012). In the CEE case, frequent reversals in the trajectory of structural reform can be related to the absence of a clear agency model (Nakrošis & Budraitis, 2012) or where the adoption of regulation on the structural features of the agencies has been induced by previous unregulated growth of government organizations and units (Hajnal, 2012).…”

“…However, as the country studies reveal, it is necessary to further distinguish between the different types of birth, survival, and death events, and the contributors have each identified how they have sought to handle diversity in organizational change. This is not an easy task: as the article by Hajnal (2012) points out, there are particular methodological difficulties in distinguishing between different types of events. He argues that what we classify as a change (in particular, as a birth or termination) can determine what is or is not considered to be a new organization, which in turn affects our population count of agencies.…”

“…The country studies of Estonia (Sarapuu, 2012), Lithuania (Nakrošis & Budraitis, 2012), and Hungary (Hajnal, 2012) examine organizational change after 1990. They expand considerably our knowledge of Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, where the focus has tended to be on the development of political institutions and systems rather than their systems of public administration.…”