Measuring red tape in a hospital setting: A survey experiment
| Published date | 01 December 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00208523211073498 |
| Author | Janis Luyten,Wim Marneffe |
| Date | 01 December 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Measuring red tape in a
hospital setting: A survey
experiment
Janis Luyten
Hasselt University, Belgium
Wim Marneffe
Hasselt University, Belgium
Abstract
Public administration research is actively exploring alternatives for the General Red Tape
(GRT) scale to measure red tape. Owing to increasing criticism on the GRT scale, scho-
lars proposed the Three-Item Red Tape (TIRT) scale as an alternative. Using a repeated
cross-sectional design, this article tests both scales in a before–after analysis of a major
change in the organization of administration in a hospital. The results indicate that the
GRT scale does not capture the resulting major change in red tape, which raises ques-
tions on the instrument’s validity in a bottom-up research design within one organiza-
tion. The TIRT scale, however, which measures red tape at the work environment
level, does reflect the change in red tape but shows empirical weaknesses in its design.
Additionally, by randomly assigning respondents to substantially different red tape defi-
nitions, this article shows that the red tape definition does not significantly impact
respondents’GRT ratings.
Points for practitioners
•The predominantly used GRT scale is not able to capture an increase in red tape in a
bottom-up intraorganizational research design in a hospital, which raises questions on
the instrument’s validity.
•A more recent alternative for the GRT scale, more specifically the TIRT scale, captures
the increase in red tape but shows empirical weaknesses.
•The wording of the red tape definition does not impact respondents’answers on the
GRT scale.
Corresponding author:
Wim Marneffe, Faculty of Business Economics, Hasselt University, Martelarenlaan 42, 3500 Hasselt, Belgium.
Email: wim.marneffe@uhasselt.be
Article
International
Review of
Administrative
Sciences
International Review of Administrative
Sciences
2023, Vol. 89(4) 958–976
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/00208523211073498
journals.sagepub.com/home/ras
Keywords
General Red Tape scale, hospital, public administration, red tape, survey experiment,
Three-Item Red Tape scale
Introduction
Recent empirical public administration research focuses mainly on the effects of red tape
on organizational or individual factors and the drivers of red tape perceptions (see e.g.
Jacobsen and Jakobsen (2018); Kaufmann and Tummers (2017); Migchelbrink and
Van de Walle (2020); Oh and Lee (2020)). Scholars have demonstrated that reducing
red tape leads to enhanced organizational performance, which emphasizes the importance
of the concept in public and private policy-making (see e.g. De Jong and Van
Witteloostuijn (2015); Walker and Brewer (2009)). To date, however, significant uncer-
tainty remains in the literature on how to measure red tape. This article contributes to the
existing red tape literature by examining two major methodological shortcomings using
an experimental survey design.
First, most scholars employ the General Red Tape (GRT) scale, introduced by Rainey
et al. (1995), to gain insight into red tape. Over the years, however, the GRT scale has
received a substantial amount of criticism (see e.g. Bozeman and Feeney (2011);
Luton (2007)), which resulted in scholars shaping new measures, including the
Three-Item Red Tape (TIRT) scale of Borry (2016). One of the critiques is aimed at
the definition used in the GRT scale. Scholars claim the definition carries a negative con-
notation, triggering respondents to give a more negative response on the scale (see e.g.
Bozeman and Feeney (2011); Feeney (2012)). Moreover, Feeney (2012) finds ratings
of perceived organizational red tape to be substantially influenced by the definition
accompanying the GRT scale. Another frequently used red tape definition is the
European Commission’s (EC) conceptualization of red tape, which is considered to be
more practice-based, and distinguishes rules from red tape more explicitly compared
with the original GRT definition (European Commission, 2017). Using unique,
primary survey data from a hospital and by randomly assigning one of the two definitions
to respondents, this article tests whether the random presentation of the original GRT def-
inition or the EC definition leads to variations in red tape ratings.
Second, to date, the predominant research approach of red tape scholars is to collect
data from multiple organizations each represented by one manager to gain insight into
organizational red tape at a given point in time, using a top-down oriented cross-sectional
research design. Recently, however, leading red tape scholars identified this research
approach as one of the caveats currently present in red tape research (see e.g.
Kaufmann et al. (2020)). The predominantly used cross-sectional design does not
allow researchers to assess the validity of red tape instruments. A repeated cross-sectional
design, however, does provide the possibility to examine the validity of the instrument,
especially when a fundamental transformation of the administrative processes changes
red tape levels, by testing whether this change is reflected in the instrument’s results.
Luyten and Marneffe 959
To continue reading
Request your trial