PUBLIC MANAGEMENT IN POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS: EXPLAINING PERCEPTIONS OF WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF INFLUENCE
| Date | 01 September 2014 |
| Author | DAVID B. COHEN,JOSÉ D. VILLALOBOS,JUSTIN S. VAUGHN |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12097 |
| Published date | 01 September 2014 |
doi: 10.1111/padm.12097
PUBLIC MANAGEMENT IN POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS:
EXPLAINING PERCEPTIONS OF WHITE HOUSE CHIEF
OF STAFF INFLUENCE
JOS ´
E D. VILLALOBOS, JUSTIN S. VAUGHN AND DAVID B. COHEN
The notion that public managers influence organizational performance is common in public admin-
istration research. However, less is known about why some managers are better at influencing
organizational performance than others. Furthermore, relatively few studies have systematically
examined managerial influence and scholars have yet to investigate either quantitatively or sys-
tematically managerial influence in the White House. Utilizing original survey data collected from
former White House officials who served in the Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Clinton admin-
istrations, this study applies empirical public management theory to examine for the first time
the key determinants that shape perceptions of chief of staff managerial influence. The findings
demonstrate how several core concepts in public management theory help explain the dynamics that
drive perceptions of managerial influence, thereby providing a new contribution to the literature
on public management.
INTRODUCTION
During the summer of 1994, President Bill Clinton embarked on a major shake-up of
his senior advisers when he replaced chief of staff Thomas F. ‘Mack’ McLarty III with
then-budget director Leon E. Panetta (see Horvitz 1994). Over the previous year and
a half, Clinton had developed a reputation for allowing too many advisers unfettered
access to Oval Office meetings while McLarty – a lifelong friend and Washington outsider
nicknamed ‘Mack the Nice’ – had been unable to control or correct the disorganization
and miscommunication that ensued. By Clinton’s own recollection, ‘There used to be
chaos around here. Every day we would have three, four meetings lasting hours and
hours. I’d sit in them, and we’d make decisions like a committee. And every day I’d read
about them in the papers. It got so that the public had an impression that I was indecisive’
(Hamilton 2007, p. 468). Stepping in to rectify the situation, Panetta – known throughout
the Washington Beltway for his management and negotiation skills – asserted himself in
ending Clinton’s open-ended bull sessions by streamlining the management of policy and
personnel. Ultimately, Panetta’s influence in redirecting operations at the White House
and his continued leadership during his three-year tenure as chief of staff helped solidify
his reputation among White House personnel (see, e.g. Drew 1995; Hamilton 2007).
The narrative that developed amid the transition from McLarty to Panetta implied that
where McLarty appeared to lack influence in his managerial duties, Panetta was able to
instil it over White House personnel as the succeeding chief of staff. But why, exactly, was
Panetta perceived to be more influential than McLarty and how did his approach help set
a new tone for changing the way business was conducted in the Clinton White House?
In the broader context, what are the qualities and characteristics that formulate overall
perceptions of chief of staff influence and how might such assessments connect and relate
to White House organizational performance?
Jos´
e D. Villalobos is in the Department of Political Science, University of Texas at El Paso, Texas, USA. Justin S. Vaughn
is in the Department of Political Science, Boise State University, Idaho, USA. David B. Cohen is in the Department of
Political Science, University of Akron, Ohio, USA.
Public Administration Vol. 92, No. 3, 2014 (744–760)
©2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF INFLUENCE 745
Although public administration scholars have long understood that managers possess
significant potential for exerting influence over personnel and the functions of their
organizations, relatively few studies have systematically examined why managers are
perceived as influential or how such evaluations relate to organizational performance.
Indeed, although previous studies on managerial influence have accumulated a great
deal of knowledge through in-depth qualitative methods (McGregor 1974; Doig and
Hargrove 1987; Hargrove and Glidewell 1990; Behn 1991; Thompson and Jones 1994; Ban
1995; Cohen and Eimicke 1995; Riccucci 1995; Holzer and Callahan 1998), only recently
have scholars begun to utilize theoretical models and quantitative techniques to conduct
more systematic research (e.g. O’Toole and Meier 1999; Meier and O’Toole 2011).
Furthermore, scholars have rarely examined key political institutions in their attempts
to uncover causal relationships between managerial actions and characteristics and their
impact on the relevant organizations (but see Romzek 2000; Rosenthal and Bell 2003).
This is particularly true concerning research on the institutional underpinnings of the
contemporary American presidency, where although importing public administration
theory to explain presidency-centric phenomena has become a somewhat standard
practice (Walcott and Hult 1987, 1995, 2005; Arnold 1998; Hult and Walcott 2004; Robinson
2004; Vaughn and Villalobos 2009), studies on the managerial dimensions of the presidency
have focused almost entirely on descriptive treatments of institutional arrangements,
structural evolution, and personnel dynamics (e.g. Patterson 1988, 2001; Burke 2000;
Kumar and Sullivan 2003).
In this study, we address this gap by applying a robust theoretical model to explain
the dynamics that shape assessments of White House chief of staff management. The
main contributions of this approach are threefold: first, it extends the application of an
established theoretical model to managerial rather than organizational-level performance;
second, it expands the theoretical paradigms of public management into the analysis of
the US presidency; and third, it yields important insights into not only management in
the modern presidency, but also the political dynamics of administrative leadership more
generally, with prospects for future application to other political institutions.
We conduct our study by applying measures of former White House officials’ percep-
tions derived from the Chief of Staff Project (COSP) (Cohen 2002) to the key theoretical
dimensions of the public management model developed by Kenneth J. Meier and Lawrence
J. O’Toole, Jr (O’Toole and Meier 1999, 2003; Meier and O’Toole 2001, 2004), hereafter
referred to as the ‘MO model’. The MO model is particularly useful for our purposes here
as it allows scholars to identify the ways in which key management concepts affect man-
agerial performance. In addition, by employing former White House officials’ perceptions
for our analyses, we are able to access indicators of influence otherwise unattainable. Our
findings indicate that the core theoretical components of the MO model serve as robust
predictors of individual-level dynamics that drive perceptions of managerial influence as
they relate to executive performance.
MANAGERIAL INFLUENCE: THEORY AND EMPIRICS
Every president since Richard Nixon has relied on a chief of staff (see table 1). As Bradley
Patterson (2001, pp. 119, 348) notes, chiefs of staff are burdened with the job of managing
‘the whole institution of the White House’, essentially serving as a ‘system manager: boss of
Public Administration Vol. 92, No. 3, 2014 (744–760)
©2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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