Red Tape and Organizational Performance: The Case of Taiwan
Don-Yuan Chen, Yu-Chin Chien *
Abstract
“Rule of law” is the foundation of a democratic government. However, the government operation is perceived by most people as delaying, inefficient and inflexible. People are just fed with bucket kicking among government offices. As a result, there have been complaints that the government is wasting their tax money. How can we define, observe, and measure these phenomena? What’s the relation between red tape and organizational performance in the public sector of Taiwan?
We adopt the definition of “red tape” given by Bozeman (1993). Briefing the article discussants on organizational performance, we put other variables including development culture, political support, the usage of information technology, and individual background, into our proposed model. It empirically tests the effects of these variables on organizational performance.
When the results of a survey of 1,464 public employees in central government agencies were analyzed, the hypothesized relationships in the proposed model were confirmed partially. The personnel red tape is found to be negatively related with organizational performance, while the budget red tape has no relation with it at all. In addition, the procurement red tape is negatively correlated with organizational performance on the external aspect. Therefore, any reform effort should focus on the personnel and budget sides of government red tape.
Keywords: red tape, organizational performance, reinventing government, Taiwan Government Bureaucrats Survey II
* Don-Yuan Chen, Professor, Department of Public Administration, National Chengchi University, e-mail: donc@nccu.edu.tw.
Yu-Chin Chien, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Public Administration, National Chengchi University, e-mail: yc98256502@gmail.com.