eprintid: 10084275 rev_number: 30 eprint_status: archive userid: 608 dir: disk0/10/08/42/75 datestamp: 2019-10-28 14:09:54 lastmod: 2022-08-27 06:10:13 status_changed: 2020-08-12 17:30:57 type: article metadata_visibility: show creators_name: Schuster, C creators_name: Meyer-Sahling, J creators_name: Mikkelsen, K title: (Un)principled principals, (un)principled agents: The differential effects of managerial civil service reforms on corruption in developing and OECD countries ispublished: pub divisions: UCL divisions: B03 divisions: C03 divisions: F30 note: This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions. abstract: Do management practices have similar anticorruption effects in OECD and developing countries? Despite prominent cautions against “New Zealand” reforms which enhance managerial discretion in developing countries, scholars have not assessed this question statistically. Our article addresses this gap through a conjoint experiment with 6,500 public servants in three developing countries and one OECD country. Our experiment assesses Weberian relative to managerial approaches to recruitment, job stability, and pay. We argue that in developing countries with institutionalized corruption and weak rule of law—yet not OECD countries without such features—“unprincipled” principals use managerial discretion over hiring, firing, and pay to favor “unprincipled” bureaucratic agents who engage in corruption. Our results support this argument: managerial practices are associated with greater bureaucratic corruption in our surveyed developing countries, yet have little effect in our OECD country. Alleged “best practices” in public management in OECD countries may thus be “worst practices” in developing countries. date: 2020-10 date_type: published publisher: Wiley-Blackwell official_url: https://doi.org/10.1111/gove.12461 oa_status: green full_text_type: other language: eng primo: open primo_central: open_green article_type_text: Article verified: verified_manual elements_id: 1703941 doi: 10.1111/gove.12461 lyricists_name: Schuster, Johannes lyricists_id: JWCSC36 actors_name: Schuster, Johannes actors_id: JWCSC36 actors_role: owner full_text_status: public publication: Governance: an international journal of policy, administration, and institution volume: 33 number: 4 pagerange: 829-848 citation: Schuster, C; Meyer-Sahling, J; Mikkelsen, K; (2020) (Un)principled principals, (un)principled agents: The differential effects of managerial civil service reforms on corruption in developing and OECD countries. Governance: an international journal of policy, administration, and institution , 33 (4) pp. 829-848. 10.1111/gove.12461 <https://doi.org/10.1111/gove.12461>. Green open access document_url: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10084275/1/Schuster%20et%20al%20-%20Accepted%20Manuscript.pdf