External control mechanisms and red tape: testing the roles of external audit and evaluation on red tape in quasi-governmental organizations
| Author | Kyungeun Lee,Youngmin Oh |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020852320974097 |
| Published date | 01 June 2022 |
| Date | 01 June 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
External control
mechanisms and red
tape: testing the roles
of external audit and
evaluation on red tape
in quasi-governmental
organizations
Youngmin Oh
Dongguk University, Republic of Korea
Kyungeun Lee
Seoul National University, Republic of Korea
Abstract
Over the past three decades, red tape has been a significant issue in public adminis-
tration. Several prior studies have discovered the external origins of red tape, noting
the roles of external control on increased red tape. Despite the empirical studies, it
remains unclear how the particular tools of external controls, such as external audits
and evaluations, are associated with employees’ perception of red tape. To answer this
question, we measured different external control mechanisms in quasi-governmental
organizations in Korea and investigated their effects on red-tape perception. The
results show that external audits increase employees’ red-tape perception, whereas
external evaluations decrease their perception. However, the positive function of eval-
uation disappears under a high level of government control because both external
audits and evaluations increase red-tape perception when more government control
is perceived.
Corresponding author:
Kyungeun Lee, Seoul National University, 57/306 Seoul, 08826, Republic of Korea.
Email: zzoi21@naver.com
International Review of Administrative
Sciences
!The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0020852320974097
journals.sagepub.com/home/ras
2022, Vol. 88(2) 355–372
International
Review of
Administrative
Sciences
Points for practitioners
This study sheds theoretical light on the negative impacts of external control in rule
management. The impacts of audit and evaluation on red tape are empirically identified
in public organizations. Practitioners need to realize that the use of audit and
evaluation may produce unintended effects that increase ineffective rules even
though such control mechanisms are designed to check mismanagement in quasi-
government organizations.
Keywords
audit, evaluation, external control, quasi-governmental organizations, red tape
Introduction
Over the past three decades, red tape—which refers here to administrative rules
and procedures that are perceived as burdensome and unwieldy—has been a sig-
nificant issue in public administration (Bozeman, 1993, 2000; Bozeman and
Feeney, 2011; Bozeman and Scott, 1996; DeHart-Davis, 2008; Pandey and Scott,
2002; Pandey and Welch, 2005). A challenge surrounding red tape regards how it is
created in the public sector. Several studies report that the level of red tape in
public organizations is higher than in private organizations (Baldwin, 1990; Rainey
et al., 1995) because public organizations are highly influenced by external environ-
ments. To clarify the external origins of red tape, Bozeman (2000) suggested the
external control model of red tape because a high level of external controls creates
a high level of red-tape perception. Following his model, many scholars have
explored the external contexts where red tape happens (Brewer et al., 2012;
Chen and Williams, 2007; Stazyk et al., 2011; Torenvlied and Akkerman, 2012;
Yang and Pandey, 2008).
Despite the plethora of prior studies, little research has measured how the par-
ticular tools of external control, such as audits and evaluations, influence red tape
in public organizations. The only case study available described the detailed con-
texts of such external control tools and red tape (Bozeman and Anderson, 2016).
To fill the emptiness, this study makes a first attempt to test the roles of audit and
evaluation on red tape. The US Government Accountability Office (1980)
addressed the difference between audit and evaluation. Audit focuses on the
legal compliance and the accuracy of administrative or accounting records, while
evaluation seeks to assess whether an organization produces intended outcomes
through management and rules. We test the links between external control mech-
anisms and red tape through the following questions: (1) “How do external control
mechanisms affect managers’ red tape perception in state-owned organizations?”;
and (2) “Is the effect of such external control mechanisms on managers’ perception
of red tape different for high or low government control?”
356 International Review of Administrative Sciences 88(2)
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