Procedural Entrepreneurship: Enacting Alternative Channels to Administrative Effectiveness

What do administrators do when established procedures get in the way of getting work done? They change the procedures. Because procedures, however, may have been originally installed to impose controls that ensure neutrality and obedience to political masters or equity in the delivery of public services, such procedural entrepreneurship tends to be hidden. To what extent to administrators engage in procedural entrepreneurship? What are the consequences of their actions? This investigation, surveying 71 managers, concludes that procedural entrepreneurship is the “everyday” practical activity of skilled and committed administrators who possess “ordinary competence” rather than heroic or deviant individual characterstics. Moreover, the analysis reveals that informal networks, which the procedural entrepreneur must mobilize to achieve success, provide the basis for legitimizing the actions they take and for protecting the public interest.