How Public Organisations Become and Remain Institutions Guardians of Public Value Edited by Arjen Boin · Lauren A. Fahy · Paul ‘t Hart Guardians of Public Value “As our public life frays at the edges, you might wish a book would come along explaining how some public organizations manage to beat the odds to become enduring beacons of public value. Well it is here! Through a study of twelve public organizations ranging from the Election Commission of India to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, this edited volume pinpoints four patterns of institutionalization that ensures public excellence and integrity.” —Christopher Ansell, Professor, University of California, Berkeley, USA “This is an intriguing book. Drawing on the seminal work of Selznick and Good- sell, editors Boin, Fahy and ‘t Hart have assembled a team of top-notch scholars to address one of the fundamental questions in the social sciences: how do organi- zations become, and remain, institutions? Combining detailed analysis with story- telling, the substantive chapters tease out key factors explaining how institutions evolve and sustain their aura, their standing and their legitimacy. This volume should be required reading across the social sciences.” —Jon Pierre, University of Gothenburg, Sweden “There is a world of institutions we hold in high esteem—businesses, media, authorities or non-governmental organizations we would be proud to work with, eager to learn more about and whose valuable service and standards are beyond any doubt. The present volume is precisely about this type of institution. The editors and authors do an amazing job in reminding us of three things—the wide range and scope of high-performance institutions in almost every area of public life, from the fine arts to hard-core monetary oversight; the effort, the spirit and the wisdom necessary to create and to maintain values, trustworthiness and reputation; and the pivotal importance of such landmark achievements for the stability and sustainable development of democracy, progress in science, economic prosperity and social justice. In times of anti-institutionalism rampant among populists across the political spectrum, this book is an eye-opener when it comes to the linkage between public values and institutional integrity.” —Wolfgang Seibel, Professor of Political and Administrative Sciences, University of Konstanz, Germany Arjen Boin · Lauren A. Fahy · Paul ‘t Hart Editors Guardians of Public Value How Public Organisations Become and Remain Institutions Editors Arjen Boin Department of Political Science Leiden University Leiden, The Netherlands Paul ‘t Hart School of Governance Utrecht University Utrecht, The Netherlands Lauren A. Fahy School of Governance Utrecht University Utrecht, The Netherlands ISBN 978-3-030-51700-7 ISBN 978-3-030-51701-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51701-4 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2021. This book is an open access publication. Open Access This book is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this book are included in the book’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the book’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa- tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover image: © Alex Linch shutterstock.com This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Acknowledgements This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innova- tion programme (grant agreement n° 694266). v Contents 1 Guardians of Public Value: How Public Organizations Become and Remain Institutions 1 Arjen Boin, Lauren A. Fahy, and Paul ‘t Hart 2 The Election Commission of India: Guardian of Democracy 37 Amit Ahuja and Susan Ostermann 3 Singapore’s Corrupt Practices Investigations Bureau: Guardian of Public Integrity 63 Zeger van der Wal 4 The BBC: Guardian of Public Understanding 87 Jean Seaton 5 Sweden’s Riksbank: Guardian of Monetary Integrity 111 Johannes Lindvall 6 The European Court of Justice: Guardian of European Integration 135 Arjen Boin and Susanne K. Schmidt vii viii CONTENTS 7 The Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra: Guardian of Symphonic Music 161 Bert Koopman 8 The World Anti-Doping Agency: Guardian of Elite Sport’s Credibility 185 Maarten van Bottenburg, Arnout Geeraert, and Olivier de Hon 9 CERN: Guardian of the Human Aspiration to Understand the Universe 211 Jos Engelen and Paul ‘t Hart 10 Rijkswaterstaat: Guardian of the Dutch Delta 237 Margo van den Brink 11 Médecins Sans Frontières: Guardian of Humanitarian Values 263 Liesbet Heyse and Valeska Korff 12 The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: Guardian of Climate Science 295 Eric Paglia and Charles Parker 13 The ACCC: Guardian of Viable Markets and Consumer Rights 323 Amanda Smullen and Catherine Clutton Index 347 Notes on Contributors Amit Ahuja is associate professor of political science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Arjen Boin is professor of public institutions and governance at Leiden University. Catherine Clutton is visiting fellow of ANU College of Asia and the Pacific at Australian National University. Olivier de Hon is chief operating officer at Doping Authority Nether- lands. Jos Engelen is professor emeritus of physics at the University of Amsterdam and NIKHEF. Lauren A. Fahy is a Ph.D. candidate of public administration at Utrecht University. Arnout Geeraert is assistant professor of public administration at Utrecht University. Liesbet Heyse is assistant professor of sociology at the University of Groningen and secretary to the SCOOP board. Bert Koopman is an independent music historian. Valeska Korff is junior professor of methods in organizational and administrative research at the University of Potsdam. ix x NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS Johannes Lindvall is professor of political science at Lund University. Susan Ostermann is assistant professor of global affairs at the University of Notre Dame. Eric Paglia is postdoctoral researcher of history and evolution of global environmental governance at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. Charles Parker is associate professor of political science at Uppsala University. Susanne K. Schmidt is professor of political science at the University of Bremen. Jean Seaton is professor of media history at the University of Westmin- ster and historian of the BBC. Amanda Smullen is senior lecturer of governance and policy at Australian National University. Paul ‘t Hart is professor of public administration at Utrecht University and the Netherlands School of Public Administration. Maarten van Bottenburg is professor of public administration at Utrecht University. Margo van den Brink is assistant professor of spatial planning at the University of Groningen. Zeger van der Wal is associate professor of public management at the National University of Singapore and Affiliate Chair Professor at Leiden University. List of Figures Fig. 1.1 An organization as institution: Selznick’s criteria 5 Fig. 1.2 The virtuous cycle of institutionalization 22 Fig. 1.3 The vicious cycle of deinstitutionalization 28 Fig. 2.1 Parliamentary election duration in India 49 Fig. 5.1 Public Confidence in the Riksbank 115 Fig. 5.2 Sweden’s short-term lending rates, 2008–2019 126 Fig. 11.1 Number of formal HRM documents created per year 278 Fig. 11.2 Accumulation of formal HRM documents over time in MSF Holland 278 Fig. 12.1 Structure of the IPCC 305 xi List of Tables Table 1.1 Organizational features of institutionalizing public organizations 6 Table 5.1 Confidence in the Riksbank among Swedish voters 116 Table 5.2 Levels of income, education and confidence in the Riksbank 117 Table 6.1 Cases put before the European Court of Justice, 1960–2018 145 Table 8.1 WADA’s mission mystique (based on Goodsell 2011) 198 Table 9.1 Pathways to effective international collaboration: the case of CERN 220 Table 10.1 Rijkswaterstaat’s technocratic mission mystique in the 1950s and 1960s 245 Table 10.2 Rijkswaterstaat’s new managerial mission mystique 256 Table 11.1 MSF’s international organizational structure 266 Table 13.1 The mission mystique of the ACCC 339 xiii CHAPTER 1 Guardians of Public Value: How Public Organizations Become and Remain Institutions Arjen Boin, Lauren A. Fahy, and Paul ‘t Hart Institutions as Enigmas It’s an institution —a phrase we have all come across or may have used. We intuitively understand what it means. The Louvre is not just a museum. Ascot is not just a horse race. The Ryman Auditorium in Nashville is not just a music venue. Wembley is not just a stadium. Cambridge University is not just a university. These are institutions . There is something special, A. Boin ( B ) Department of Political Science, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands e-mail: boin@fsw.leidenuniv.nl L. A. Fahy School of Governance, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands e-mail: l.a.fahy@uu.nl P. ‘t Hart School of Governance, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands e-mail: p.thart@uu.nl © The Author(s) 2021 A. Boin et al. (eds.), Guardians of Public Value , https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51701-4_1 1 2 A. BOIN ET AL. perhaps mythical, about them. We value these institutions. We may even find it hard to imagine a life without some of these institutions. Some public organizations, too, have achieved this special ‘institu- tional’ status: organizations that—in the words of Philip Selznick (1957: 17), the pioneering scholar of institutions—have become ‘infused with value beyond the technical requirements of the task at hand’. Institu- tions embody and safeguard certain values that are important to a society (Hendriks 2014). Institutions guard these values against overt attacks and the forces of erosion. The average citizen may never wonder about the critical importance that these public institutions play in their lives. At the same time, academics hardly ever question the importance of institutions. It is simply assumed. This combination of limited public interest and academic conventional wisdom has done little to further research into the way insti- tutions emerge and persevere. In their efforts to protect their institutions, leaders cannot fall back on a full body of academic research findings. Such protection is increasingly necessary. Government agencies as well as other public sector organizations today face a climate where perfor- mance expectations are relentless, transparency and accountability regimes have thickened, and there is little tolerance for failure. Critical factors in the broader environment—technology, economic tides, societal beliefs and values, political fault lines and ‘rules of the game’—change constantly, sometimes rapidly and deeply. No institution, however powerful and well- regarded, is immune to ‘events’ and to the churning tides of public opinion. Even long-standing institutions face reputational and sometimes existential crises. Yet, even in this volatile environment, some public organizations remain deeply valued by the public. They have not just survived challenges and controversies; they have found ways to thrive. They have adapted in the face of crises, preserving their institutional character while meeting newly imposed demands. They have become iconic features of the public landscape. That’s why we call them public institutions. This volume is about these public institutions. We have selected twelve organizations that have met Selznick’s definition for at least a significant part of their lifespan. We examine each of these twelve institutions in some depth to understand their nature, formula and impact. We seek to show what scholars and organi- zational leaders can learn from them, warts and all. The overar- ching puzzle that drives the case studies collected here is simple: 1 GUARDIANS OF PUBLIC VALUE: HOW PUBLIC ORGANIZATIONS ... 3 Why do some public organizations develop into institutions, proving remark- ably adept at becoming and remaining publicly valued over relatively long periods of time? In this introductory chapter, we explain how in Selznick’s work and of those that have followed in his footsteps institutions differ from organiza- tions. We then describe the key conceptual and analytical tools that have informed the case studies in this volume, and briefly introduce each of the cases. Next, we present a thematic preview of the institutional patterns that emerge when we look across the twelve case studies. We offer these patterns as pointers for classroom discussion, but also as starting points for more empirically informed theorizing about how and why public organizations become institutions (and how they can also ‘deinstitutional- ize’). Finally, we ask a pertinent and perhaps uncomfortable question: can public organizations that effectively and authoritatively guard public value and receive widespread recognition for doing so, continue to flourish in our turbulent and more unforgiving age? How Do We Know an Institution When We See One? We use the concept of institution to describe a particular category of organizations. An organization is, in essence, nothing more than an estab- lished way of cooperation between two or more individuals (Barnard 1938). What sets an organization apart as an institution is its pursuit of aims that are widely considered to fulfil a societal need, its reliable performance over time, and its exemplary conduct as perceived by soci- etal constituencies. The cases in the book provide powerful illustrations of these institutional characteristics: • The BBC has been producing a judicious and widely respected mix of news and entertainment, has built itself into a global media brand while adapting successfully to major technological (such as satel- lite and online television) and regulatory changes (introduction of commercial broadcasting). • The scientific centre for particle physics research CERN has gained international recognition as the hub in its field, has kept on pushing the boundaries of knowledge, has educated generations of influential researchers and has sparked the public’s imagination both through its mammoth underground research facility (the Large Hadron collider) 4 A. BOIN ET AL. and its discoveries (the Higgs Boson particle) as well as through its spinoff technologies (such as the World Wide Web). • Médicins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) has been much acclaimed for its fearless commitment to providing medical care to populations caught in complex and devastating conflicts around the world. It has become a beacon of courageous behaviour in very chal- lenging and dangerous circumstances. Moreover, it has repeatedly called attention to the follies and excesses of the humanitarian aid industry, and in doing so has become its moral conscience. These examples suggest that there is something special about institutions: they are regarded as more valuable than just any organization. Goodsell (2011a: 477) refers to mission mystique , which he defines as an organi- zation’s ‘aura of positive institutional charisma that is derived from the nature of its mission and how well it is carried out’. Aura is, of course, a matter of perception: people must recognize something special in what an organization does and how it performs its tasks. This subjective dimen- sion of institutions makes it challenging for social scientists to arrive at a more systematic way of establishing why and to what extent an organiza- tion can be categorized as an institution. But it is a challenge that has to be met. Selznick’s (1957) classic distinction between organizations and insti- tutions provides a helpful tool in this endeavour. He formulated three criteria that can help us identify the institution in a population of orga- nizations (see Fig. 1.1). Selznick’s framework can also help us track and interpret institutional trajectories: how an organization takes on institu- tional characteristics and how an institution may deinstitutionalize. Let’s have a look at these three criteria. Distinct identity and unique competence. An institution has a clearly developed and widely recognized identity that communicates to both its members and the outside world what it seeks to achieve and why, what the dominant practices in the organization are, and how it addresses conflicts that occur in the pursuit of its aims. Mark Moore (1995)— a self-confessed Selznickian—speaks about identity in terms of a ‘value proposition’ and refers to institutional competence as the ‘operational capacity’ of an organization. An institution’s identity and competences are well-suited to meet societal aspirations and expectations. An institu- tion has fostered a strong alignment between the rationale for its existence and the day-to-day strategies and practices it deploys. This alignment is 1 GUARDIANS OF PUBLIC VALUE: HOW PUBLIC ORGANIZATIONS ... 5 Fig. 1.1 An organization as institution: Selznick’s criteria routinely reconfirmed in the responses that institutional actions draw from its audiences. Strong reputation, high legitimacy. An institution is trusted and respected, to such a degree that its existence is sometimes taken for granted. Employees are proud to work there and intrinsically motivated to contribute to the cause. The institution’s external stakeholders—Moore (1995) speaks of an ‘authorizing environment’—support the institution through thick and thin by what they say and do. They provide funding, procure its products and services. They trust it to do the right thing in the right manner. They forgive its occasional lapses, to a much greater extent than they would for an organization not endowed with mission mystique It is hard to imagine that anyone would even propose to abolish it. Enduring viability through adaptation. An institution has adaptive capacity, which helps it to stand the test of time. This is not just about changing structures and practices to make the organization more effective 6 A. BOIN ET AL. or efficient. Institutions have the paradoxical ability to change in order to remain the same—changing whatever must be changed to protect the institutional core (Ansell et al. 2015). An institution can consistently deliver on its mission, working in ways that reaffirm its value proposi- tion and satisfy the evolving expectations and norms of its stakeholders. It does what most public organizations find really hard: adopting and implementing reforms that prove to be effective. An important recent study that provides support for much of what Selznick was proposing, albeit cast in slightly different language, is that of Charles Goodsell (2011a, b), who examined the organizational history and development of ‘mission-driven’ public agencies in the United States, including such iconic institutions as NASA and the National Forest Service. He provides an in-depth, case-oriented study of what life in public institutions looks and feels like. Table 1.1 gives us Good- sell’s matrix of cultural characteristics and organizational practices that his institutions all shared. It provides a useful elaboration of Selznick’s institutional characteristics. The combination of Selznick’s and Goodsell’s institutional characteris- tics allow us to make a snapshot of any organization in order to determine whether, or to what extent, it qualifies as an institution. Importantly, the three criteria can be applied in a dynamic manner: we can ‘shoot’ a film of the institution’s development by applying the criteria at several points in time. That film would show the ebbs and flows of an organization’s Table 1.1 Organizational features of institutionalizing public organizations Prime qualities Essential elaborations Temporal aspects A purposive aura A central mission purpose permeates the agency The societal need met by the mission is seen as urgent Has a distinctive reputation based on achievement Internal commitment Agency personnel are intrinsically motivated Agency culture institutionalizes the belief system Agency history is known and celebrated Sustaining features Beliefs are open to contestation and opposition Agency enjoys qualified policy autonomy to permit appropriate adaptation Agency renewal and learning are ongoing Source adapted from Goodsell (2011a: 480) 1 GUARDIANS OF PUBLIC VALUE: HOW PUBLIC ORGANIZATIONS ... 7 institutional status, identifying periods of strong institutionalization but also periods of institutional decline. Such a dynamic perspective on institutional development is crucial. Institutions are never born as ‘institutions’, though their architects and foundational leaders may have high hopes for them. They become insti- tutions. They see the light as a small social group, a budding network, a small organization; some develop and gain institutional characteristics. We refer to this as a process of institutionalization (Boin and Goodin 2007). But just as an organization can take on institutional characteristics, an institution can also lose institutional characteristics. Institutions can de institutionalize (Oliver 1992; Suchman 1995; Boin and ‘t Hart 2000; Boin 2001). Its mission can become less relevant, or diluted by mission creep . Mission creep refers to the widening of the mission, adopting new ambitions and tasks that distract from the original aims. Also, the orga- nizational structure, culture and established practices may lose relevance, hindering rather than helping to achieve the mission. The institution can become ridden with internal conflict, or lose touch with its authorizing environment. Institutions as Guardians of Public Value Institutionalization brings enormous benefits for public organizations. It helps to bind members to a common cause, thus diminishing the transac- tion costs in the organization. It buttresses against the winds of fashion, as the high level of legitimacy effectively grants a degree of autonomy so that leaders of an institution can chart its course. Institutions inspire confidence in those to whom they are accountable and as a result are less scrutinized than other organizations. When an institution is found to have failed or strayed, it is forgiven for more and for longer than organi- zations that lack their charismatic aura. Institutions are, in other words, better prepared to weather the storms of failure, scandal and crisis that any organization faces in its lifetime— provided , as Selnick (1957) reminds us, that they remain responsive and adaptive to the environments they work in and from which they derive their public licence to operate (in fact, Selznick identified this as the most difficult leadership task). Institutions also benefit society. They fulfil certain functions in ways that are appreciated by that society. As the case studies in this book will show, these functions can vary widely. The institutions discussed in this book: 8 A. BOIN ET AL. • Provide fair elections • Protect against corruption • Offer a trusted source of news • Preserve the value of money • Create a legal framework that benefits collaboration • Preserve cultural traditions • Protect the integrity of sports • Create conditions for path-breaking research • Protect a society against disaster • Assist helpless victims of disaster • Foster a shared interpretation of complex research findings. A society needs institutions to ensure that we will have fair elections in the future, that we may expect a continued stream of validated news, that we can trust research findings, and be confident that future disasters will not cut the lives of citizens short. But institutions do more than fulfilling useful functions. They guard against the erosion of these functions and protect the values that underlie them. Institutions are the guardians of a state’s promises; they preserve a society’s hopes and ambitions. Our fascination with institutions builds on two empirical observations. First, it has been observed that a minority of public organizations live a long life. A majority perishes (a sizeable chunk does not even make it longer than a decade) (Lewis 2002). Second, only a handful of those survivors meets the institutional test set forth by Selznick. We therefore conclude that public institutions are exceptions or outliers. We want to get to know these outliers. Are Institutions ‘ Good ’ by Definition? A key challenge for institutional scholars is dealing with the normative connotations that come with the “institution” concept. We generally reserve the term ‘institution’ for an organization or a cultural practice that is valued—this is, indeed, exactly how we defined the institution. But what is valued by many, may be highly controversial to others. What is valued in one society is anathema in another. An organization revered in a certain era, may today be discussed as an example of malpractice or organized evil. Selznick’s three criteria do not resolve this normative conundrum. Take, for instance, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI). When 1 GUARDIANS OF PUBLIC VALUE: HOW PUBLIC ORGANIZATIONS ... 9 applied in a broad-brush, across-lifespan fashion, Selznick’s criteria would have us regard it as an institution. The FBI has a distinct identity: most people (not just Americans) have heard of the FBI and will have an idea of what it represents. The FBI has a unique competence and has existed for a long time. At the same time, it is easy to unearth a range of questionable values it espoused and activities it deployed for extended periods of its existence. For example, the latter decades of long-serving and founding Director J. Edgar Hoover were marked by practices that are now widely recognized as questionable if not outright illegal (Jeffreys-Jones 2007). So what does this mean for Selznick’s criteria? What does it mean if organizations with dubious identities and questionable competences qualify as an institution? Should we reject these criteria and look for others? Should we avoid institutions that today are widely viewed as epitomizing questionable values? We feel that Selznick’s criteria can still be used, but their use needs to be directed and qualified by situating organizations in a particular window of time and then assessing to what extent the institution embodied, advanced or provided stewardship of values deemed important by the society in which it existed. We must take into consideration that the value sets that stakeholders and the community at large apply to an organi- zation can and do change over time. Institutions, in other words, are to be taken as organizations that have become effective and legitimate ‘guardians of public value’ in a certain time and context . When removed from that time and context, certain institutions or certain epochs in their existences or certain practices in which they engaged may well be considered dangerous or deplorable. The intriguing question is how such morally problematic organizations could maintain high levels of internal and external legitimacy at the time (cf. Selznick 1952). If we suspend judgement, we can learn—even from institutions that in our time and context may look questionable—valuable lessons about their emergence, their value proposition, their governance, their ‘formula’ for success, their ways of acquiring a public licence to operate, their ways of navigating conflict and tensions, and in some instance, their decline and downfall. An institution tells us something about the society it emerges from and exists in. This is also true for the cases included in this book. The fact that these particular organizations have ended up as specimens of ‘guardians of public value’ does not mean that we hold them up as being exemplary all of the time and in each respect. Most institutions go through periods