Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Abstract:Agencies have historically been characterized by being the result of public sector’s vertical specialization. Moreover, as the first actor of responding public needs and solving social problems, agencies have often been linked to the devolution of authority from political executives. A key point of the degrees and contents of autonomy the agencies obtains from local governments. Thus, a main research question is related to causes and determinants of changing process in agencies’ organizational forms. This paper discusses this in the complex structural context of the Chinese public apparatus. I start by discussing the definitions of organization form and organization change from the instrumental-structural perspective and institutional-cultural perspective in organizational theories. Followed by analysing question: How can we interpret the increasing tendency of hybrid organizational forms of local government agencies in China based on organization theories? I illustrate it by textual analysis of official documents and media reports in the context of China’s local government agencies. Moreover, we can understand the major mechanisms of transformation logics of local government agencies base on tracing of some empirical cases and structured interviews with China’s local governments’ officials and leaders of local agencies.

Keywords: China, Local Governments, Agencies, Vertical Specialization, Hybrid Coordination