관료적 자율성의 효과 분석: 한국 중앙행정기관 실증분석

초록

Bureaucratic autonomy is a topic in public management empirically understudied contrast with the abundance of its theoretical arguments. The purpose of this study is to fill the gap to a large extent by analyzing bureaucratic autonomy and its impact on organizational performance and probity. This study operationalized the abstract and multi-dimensional concept, bureaucratic autonomy, into measurable variables and indices. Bureaucratic autonomy is divided into three dimensions: political/structural autonomy(the distance from the President and days of congressional audit), financial autonomy, and legal autonomy. We provide objective measures of these autonomy dimensions adopting data derived from the South Korean central government agencies. Interestingly, the results of this research provide some evidence that bureaucratic autonomy is somewhat conducive to both performance and probity in government agencies in Korea. The findings imply that the “let the managers manage” notion of managerialism from New Public Management movement has some merits in that bureaucratic autonomy is positively related to the degree of performance. Simultaneously, the findings also demonstrate that there is a bit of truth in the traditional belief that as bureaucratic autonomy increases, bureaucratic probity may get worse. Overall, the key implication of this research is that bureaucratic autonomy is closely related to the trade-offs in administrative values in public management. Therefore, decision on the design of bureaucratic autonomy should be a political decision, rather than a managerial one.

키워드