Employee Perceptions of the Deployment and Effectiveness of Different Management Practices in Eight State Revenue Agencies.

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to twofold. The first purpose is to determine if employees in state revenue agencies perceive a relationship between the deployment of nine different management practices and their perceptions of results. The nine management practices are: strategic planning, performance measures, performance feedback, customer service, empowerment, teamwork, training, rewards and recognition and process improvement. The result measures are: taxpayer satisfaction, improvement in processes leading to improved services, service delivery, job satisfaction and morale.

The second purpose is to determine if employees' favorable perception of the management practices and results is dependent upon their position in the agency (i.e., senior executives, managers, front-line supervisors and non-supervisors). Employee opinions were collected from eight different state revenue agencies using a 44-item web-based survey. There were 4,186 completed surveys, for a total response rate of 50.5 percent.

The major findings indicate that state revenue employees perceive that the 'hard components' of management (i.e., strategic planning, performance measures, performance feedback and process improvement) have larger effects on results than do the 'soft components' of management (i.e., customer service, empowerment, teamwork, training, and rewards and recognition). The most effective management practice, as perceived by employees, is process improvement, followed by strategic planning, performance measures and performance feedback. Although some of the agencies did not collect comparable objective performance data, an analysis of the available objective data suggested a relationship between some of the management practices and actual results, thereby supporting the survey findings.

This research also indicated that upper level managers generally had much more favorable views about the extent of management tool deployment, and about the results, than did lower level employees. Interviews with agency employees were used to explore possible reasons for these disparities.