MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATION IN FEDERAL AGENCIES: AN ANALYSIS OF THE CHARACTERISTICS AND FUNCTIONING OF BOUNDARY-SPANNING PERSONNEL

The need for effective boundary agents in organizations increases as environmental turbulence increases. Traditionally, management and organization (M&O) units have served as boundary agents and efficiency experts in Federal organizations. Today the M&O role requires a high level of boundary-spanning activity (BSA), which has not been formally acknowledged, or rewarded. A multi-level data gathering was used to ascertain the current status of M&O units, including both archival information and a mailed-out questionnaire to heads of M&O units throughout the government. The findings indicate that the work programs of M&O units have shifted toward increasing their administrative management activities--an increase of 225 percent over the 1959 figure. In addition, very little time is being committed to conducting long-term studies to improve operations; most studies are short-turnaround, problem-solving exercises. A major problem for management analysts is the continuing conflict and ambiguity they experience as a consequence of their staff positions among less than totally supportive line managers. Evidence of chronic organizational stress was expected, but little was found, as both high levels of job satisfaction and low tension levels were reported. Four causal models based on previous research linking the study variables were evaluated, resulting in discarding two of the four models. The model containing a direct link between BSA and job satisfaction in addition to a link to tension explained the observed data better than the other models. This implies that increasing boundary-spanning activity not only increases satisfaction by reducing tension, but also increases job satisfaction directly. At the organizational level the findings indicate that the M&O function is not being used as it was intended. Analytical work has been displaced by increased administrative management responsibilities, and staffing levels within the units are dropping, compounding the erosion of the resources available for analytical work. Because reducing the analytical capabilities of an organization impairs its ability to adapt to environmental changes, we can expect the changes within M&O units to affect our Federal agencies' long-term health and viability negatively.