Abstract
Administrative reform policies cutting across several sectors are commonplace in the public sector. However, reform policies do not necessarily result in organizational change. This article examines intra-organizational change within the Austrian Ministry of Agriculture in a longitudinal case study covering a period of three decades, which allows us to study short-term and long term-effects of administrative reforms. Whereas existing research mainly uses single-factor explanations for inter- and intra-organizational change, this article emphasizes the interplay of various drivers of organizational change within government organizations. In analytical terms, we draw on the multiple streams framework to study intra-organizational decision-making which is embedded in government-wide administrative reform policies. We find that reform leads to intra-organizational change when a political entrepreneur is able to couple solutions and problems in a decision window, which may happen decades after the initial reform attempts, underscoring that short-term reform failure may turn into success in a long-term perspective.
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The interaction of multiple drivers of intra-organizational change in ministerial administrations: A study of three decades of structural reforms in the Austrian Ministry of Agriculture
Christina Lichtmannegger and Tobias Bach
Public Policy and Administration