Inside the Push for Good Governance: Institutional Predictors of Administrative Transparency in Public Organizations

Abstract

Policy actors around the world perceive transparency as a means to achieve good governance. Research often focuses on the determinants of fiscal and economic transparency and gives less attention to administrative transparency. This study examines whether multiple types of institutional factors influence administrative transparency in the context of the hiring of college and university presidents in U.S. postsecondary education. Across 54 contracts obtained between institutions of higher education and third-party search firms, no contract explicitly referred to the term transparency, but contracts varied in attention given to issues of confidentiality. Using data for 157 presidential searches between 2010 and 2018, we find that few structural components predict indicators of transparency, though the presence of state sunshine laws and whether a governing board oversees multiple institutions can influence specific portions of the executive search process.

Keywords

transparency good governance open government hiring executive search

In one of his first acts as president, President Barack Obama issued a memorandum aimed at expanding transparency and open government (Obama, 2009). This action clearly signaled the administration’s commitment to transparency as a means for holding the government accountable, ensuring public trust, and otherwise strengthening the U.S. system of democracy. Statements within the memorandum were representative of a broader set of governmental actors and entities that support institutional transparency. For example, Transparency International, a large nongovernmental organization that focuses on fighting corruption, was founded in Berlin in 1993; by 2010, the organization boasted 90 chapters worldwide. In addition, Armstrong (2005) reports that most European Union member states identify transparency, integrity, and accountability as among the core values of their public administration systems.

Scholarly research presents a more nuanced landscape on issues of transparency. Studies of transparency developed as discussions of good governance spread globally in the 1990s and 2000s; many practitioners and, to a lesser extent, scholars who were concerned with issues of transparency treated it as normatively good (Hood, 2007). This body of research considers the effects of transparency on a number of outcomes of interest including perceptions of trust, competency, and performance (Grimmelikhuijsen, 2009, 2012; Porumbescu, 2017). While studies aimed at identifying the mechanisms that drive transparency are not uncommon, these studies often fail to move beyond issues of socio-demographics or fiscal and economic measures to concerns of administrative structures and processes that often set the rules of the game for how policies are formed, interpreted, and implemented.

The purpose of this study is to consider the institutional and structural determinants of administrative transparency. More specifically, we consider how institutional structures influence the level of transparency in executive hiring processes in public agencies. Hiring transparency has been fairly standardized in some contexts—for example, positions subject to merit-based hiring policies in the U.S. federal bureaucracy—but is much more variable in others including, but not limited to many local and state contexts where public organizations such as hospitals, nursing homes, and schools operate in market-like settings. In many cases, stakeholder groups desire a responsive government and thus value administrative transparency in regards to who staffs a bureaucracy and whether such employees make decisions that align with particular values or missions. On the contrary, organizations might seek to limit transparency about personnel matters in an effort to make decisions in a timely manner, protect sensitive information, or preserve the capacity of fiscal or human resources.

One context in which hiring transparency has become the subject of much debate is that of postsecondary education in the United States. In many colleges and universities across the country, stakeholder groups have expressed vastly different views on the degree to which a search for a new president or chancellor should be transparent. Some argue that confidentiality helps to protect the identities of candidates and attract a larger, more talented pool of applicants while others insist that transparency improves participation and buy-in from stakeholder groups such as faculty, staff, and students and increases the legitimacy of the new president. Given the controversy and salience of executive hiring, this context provides the opportunity to study the micro-, meso-, and macro-level predictors of administrative transparency in public organizations. Our analysis consists of two parts. First, we provide a qualitative assessment of 54 presidential search contracts between highly ranked public universities and third-party search firms. In terms of contractual language, this analysis highlights the spectrum of orientations and preferences toward transparency on one hand, and confidentiality on the other hand. Second, our quantitative analysis focuses on 157 presidential searches across 124 public, doctoral universities in the United States between 2010 and 2018. Findings are mixed but suggest that whether a university is part of a larger system of institutions increases the propensity of transparency during a search while the presence of state sunshine policies that require a particular amount of time to elapse between announcing one or more final candidates and a final hiring decision is associated with lower levels of transparency.

Transparency—A Passing Fad or Permanent Fixture?

Discussions of transparency date back to at least the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the mid-1700s (Hood, 2007) and have received growing attention since the late 20th century. A variety of frameworks have attempted to provide holistic typologies of transparency; these include discussions of event and process transparency in government by Heald (2006) and transparency in decision-making processes, policy content, and policy outcomes and effects by Grimmelikhuijsen and Welch (2012). A contemporary review of transparency research by Cucciniello et al. (2017) classified the forms of transparency as administrative, political, and budget transparency, though the authors recognized that such categories are not entirely independent of one another. Budget transparency considers whether and how information about the fiscal state of a government or public agency is conveyed to others or used by public actors while political transparency focuses on the disclosure of information about and by elected bodies and political representatives (see also Cucciniello et al., 2012). Finally, administrative transparency, the subject of this study, considers the availability of information from bureaucratic actors about the mission, operations, or activities of an agency (Cucciniello et al., 2017). In their review, the authors found that discussion of budget transparency (present in 47 of 102 articles) received greater emphasis than either political (31 of 102) or administrative (24 or 102) transparency, though the latter two categories are certainly salient and expected to be consequential for the quality of and efficiency in government processes and the delivery of goods and services.

Beyond concentrated theoretical and empirical attempts to classify specific types of government transparency, much research has considered the ways in which transparency succeeds or fails in achieving particular outcomes. These outcomes of interest range from shifts in trust in government and citizen participation (Kim & Lee, 2012) to lower levels of corruption (Lindstedt & Naurin, 2010) and higher levels of performance in government (Ljungholm, 2015). Results are squarely mixed for citizen-oriented outcomes and more uniform in predicting less corruption and better financial management. This implies that more transparency is not a solution that can readily cure all challenges present in the provision of public goods and services. Although few would argue for less transparency in the public sector, research has highlighted the need for systematic research in understanding the varied types of transparency that governments may attempt to strengthen as well as the multidimensional consequences that can stem from lower or higher levels of transparency.

The need for more research regarding the types of transparency present in public organizations is particularly evident when considering the trade-offs in valuations of transparency and confidentiality. Transparency directly opposes opaqueness, but it also implicitly opposes privacy and confidentiality (Heald, 2003). The decision not to reveal information may stem from a legitimate concern for the privacy and security of an individual or for the general welfare of one or more larger groups of citizens. Thus, it is possible for an individual or institution to value both transparency and confidentiality simultaneously. However, in the era of good governance, arguments for confidentiality must not only counter the instrumental benefits of transparency but also supersede persuasive arguments about the citizen’s right to know (Vishwanath & Kaufmann, 2001). For these reasons, we focus much of this study on the tradeoffs between transparency and confidentiality rather than more general arguments for or against transparency.

Institutional Factors That Drive Administrative Transparency

While transparency has garnered much attention in prior literature, the purpose of this article is to specifically consider the extent to which institutional structures, or the established laws, policies, and customs that define the operations of a public agency, help to explain the variance observed in administrative transparency, or the degree of openness by a public agency and its employees about formal and informal organizational decisions, operations, and procedures. This is not to suggest that the determinants of transparency have not been studied in the past; indeed, a range of studies over the last 20 years has considered economic, socio-demographic, and political determinants of both general transparency as well as specific (often fiscal) types of transparency.

Table 1 summarizes factors that have previously been associated with lower or higher levels of transparency. This table should not be interpreted as a comprehensive review of all prior literature; rather, it helps to highlight common factors that are considered drivers of multiple types of transparency. Overall, the table indicates that factors that shape transparency range from individual actions that may accumulate across a populace to traits of elected policymakers and characteristics of government systems. For example, voter turnout not only boosts discussion of political events and policies by citizens, but it can also act as an incentive for a government to provide more information to an informed and active citizenry (Guillamón et al., 2011; Schaltegger & Torgler, 2007). On the contrary, higher levels of debt in a national or subnational government have a negative effect on transparency (Alt et al., 2006), perhaps as a way to avoid blame in political cycles (some research also indicates that more transparency leads to lower debt, see Alt & Lassen, 2006).

Table 1.

Determinants of Transparency.

Mechanisms	Expected relationship	Example sources
Socio-demographic
Population size	+	Treisman (2002)
Male (gender)	+	Verba et al. (1987), Jennings (1983)
Age	+	Piotrowski and Van Ryzin (2007)
Fiscal
Debt	−	Baber (1983), Ingram (1984)
Budget surplus	−	Alt et al. (2006)
Intergovernmental transfers	+	Guillamón et al. (2011)
Political
Left-leaning policymakers	+	Piotrowski and Van Ryzin (2007)
Voter turnout	+	Sol (2013)
Political competition	+	Rodríguez Bolívar et al. (2013)
Economic
Unemployment	−	Sol (2013)
Economic activity	+	Verba and Nie (2004)

While Table 1 provides an overview of many of the mechanisms that are expected to contribute to the degree of transparency observed in government, institutional structures, particularly those policies that influence the processes by which decisions are made in bureaucracies, are largely absent. These structures play a key role in shaping the management and performance of public agencies as they define the ways in which policies are created, interpreted, and implemented as well as the ways in which different actors in the policy process interact (see, for example, Heinrich & Lynn, 2000). We argue, further, that institutional structures influence formal and informal organizational norms, the flow of information, and the extent to which managers face constraints in meeting organizational goals (Howlett, 2004; Simon, 1976); each of these phenomena are likely to shape efforts toward achieving or avoiding transparency.

To explore the role of institutional structures in determining the administrative transparency of public organizations and agencies, we focus on personnel search and hiring processes. Public bureaucracies require street-level employees and senior-level managers to implement policy and provide goods and services to multiple stakeholder groups. While differing organizational contexts are associated with varying levels of hierarchy, span of control, and size, one common factor is the presence of one or more executives, or those individuals who are tasked with overseeing the mission, strategic goals, and general direction of a particular public organization. These individuals include the heads of public departments and bureaus, CEOs of public hospitals, public school superintendents, and more.

Concerns related to hiring transparency, at least in the context of the United States and many other established democracies, extend back several decades. The Pendleton Act of 1883 in the United States established that federal government jobs were to be awarded on the basis of merit rather than personal networks or political allegiance (Otenyo & Lind, 2004). Of course, this policy has strengths and weaknesses and does not extend into other sectors or even into many areas in which a public agency is not distinctly part of the federal bureaucracy. Nevertheless, discussions of hiring processes and transparency in pay commonly rise to the forefront of debates related to best practices in human resources across all sectors (e.g., Dresang, 2017).

Academic scholarship related to the variance observed in the transparency of executive-level hires (or appointments, in the case of some positions in state- or federal-level agencies) has yet to fully develop (for an exception, see additional discussion on the importance of transparency as related to human resource policies by Mellander, 2014). On one hand, public agencies are often expected to be responsive to the will of the general public and are tasked with generating public value (Harrison et al., 2012). Stakeholder groups, whether individual citizens or well-resourced interest groups, often want to participate in the decision-making process within the bureaucracy and expect to access information about organizational processes and decisions, including information regarding who is hired in an executive role and how hiring decisions were made. For example, in many cases, clientele want to interact with bureaucrats who appear to be like them or who can relate to their lived experiences (e.g., Gade & Wilkins, 2012). However, heightened transparency is not delivered without some potential trade-offs. In terms of personnel, greater transparency could mean that the search for a new executive takes longer due to input from multiple groups with opposing preferences or that potential applicants are hesitant to apply when given little protection regarding their identities and reputations. As such, while some view transparency as a normatively good trait that should be maximized, there are also cases in which more transparency may not be viewed as valuable in terms of efficiency or effectiveness (see, for example, discussion of the benefits and costs of openness in work spaces in Ayoko & Härtel, 2003 and Bernstein & Turban, 2018). Such trade-offs likely lead to a large range of variation observed in the executive hiring practices of public agencies.

In considering what institutional factors might foster or inhibit transparency in the executive hiring process, micro-, meso-, and macro-level mechanisms can be distinguished. We do not seek to create an exhaustive list of all possible mechanisms but rather intend to highlight select characteristics at each level that can theoretically be expected to shape the extent of transparency present in hiring processes. First, at the micro-level,¹ it is likely that both formal and informal processes within an organization influence transparency. While many of these factors—such as nonwritten norms and workplace cultures—may be difficult to empirically measure and compare, other quantifiable traits can provide a glimpse into how the organization operates. More specifically, the characteristics of a search committee can provide tangible insight into the disposition of an organization toward transparency. In the formation of the search committee, various stakeholder groups may or may not be included, and the resulting composition can determine what groups are afforded some type of representation and voice in the process (see literature on deck stacking such as West, 1997). This also often reflects general appreciation for the notion of participatory democracy (McLaughlin & Riesman, 1985).

We argue that search processes that involve more individuals—and thus more groups at the table—may be more inclined to value feedback from multiple stakeholder groups as well as share information with those stakeholder groups. While it can certainly be the case that search committee seats are given to particular groups or individuals in an effort to achieve symbolic rather than substantive representation (e.g., Schwindt-Bayer, 2003), the former may still afford some opportunity for an individual to voice opinions about potential hires. More generally, as the size of a search committee for an executive hire grows, we expect that an organization will be more likely to value inclusion and openness which would then lead to greater levels of transparency about an executive hire.² These expectations can be formalized in the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 1 (H1): The larger the size of an executive search committee, the more transparent an executive search process will be in a public organization.

Next, we characterize the meso-level as the governing or oversight board that has formal control over an organization. Such boards are present in the structure of many organizations across all three sectors. Importantly, while boards vary across a range of characteristics (size, appointment process, and demographics), they are commonly responsible for the hiring and firing of an organization’s chief executive (e.g., Young et al., 2000). However, boards are often unprepared for the task of managing an executive transition and can underestimate the level of risk associated with a bad hire (Allison, 2002). In the public sector, governing board structures often “institutionalize the preferences of different sets of stakeholders, which seek to shape policy consistent with their premises” (McLendon et al., 2006, p. 19). In other words, the preferences and interests present on a governing board can often become officially adopted into polices or unofficially accepted in organizational expectations and norms.

Boards with higher levels of centralization can offer greater opportunities for control and oversight to political principals (in the case of public agencies and policymakers) while less centralized boards may be able to respond more directly to the unique context of a particular organization. Here, we argue that boards that are more centralized (e.g., have formal oversight of a system of related agencies rather than a single agency) are often more responsive to elected officials and will therefore place greater emphasis on transparency as a public good (see also Lowry, 2001). On the contrary, decentralized boards (e.g., boards that have formal control of a single agency or institution) can have less formal oversight power and may either be less mindful of search processes or more likely to collude with organizational interest in maintaining confidentiality so as to avoid blame for any mistakes made during the search process or upon selecting a final candidate. As such, we hypothesize that:

Hypothesis 2 (H2): Centralized governing boards will lead to more transparency in an executive search process in a public organization.

Finally, at the macro-level, governmental policies are often designed with the intent of regulating the behaviors and actions of organizations. In comparisons of the three sectors, public agencies are widely cited as subject to the highest degree of regulation and accountability (Bozeman, 2004; Rainey, 2014). In the context of the United States, where the Madisonian principles of self-governance and checks and balances are embraced (Bertelli & Lynn, 2006; Cook, 2021), open meeting statutes exist at the local, state, and federal level. Such policies, many of which take the form of sunshine laws, intend to increase the likelihood of an informed citizenry and lessen the likelihood of corruption. Of course, there also exist many exceptions by which meetings are not required to be open or accessible to the public; these commonly relate to issues in which an open meeting would threaten the personal privacy or other guaranteed rights of one or more individuals, including but not limited to discussions of personnel and judicial proceedings.

While the requirements of specific state sunshine laws vary widely, one aspect that is of particular interest to personnel issues is the presence of a specified window of time that must elapse between the announcement of a final candidate or candidates for a position and the formal hiring of that candidate. In theory, such policies aim to prohibit organizations from simply hiring their preferred candidate without feedback or input from other groups or individuals. While the inclusion of a specified window is inconsistent across the U.S. states, we expect that, if implemented as intended by policymakers, they will lead to higher levels of transparency in executive search processes. This leads to the third hypothesis:

Hypothesis 3(H3): Institutions subject to sunshine laws that mandate a minimum time for public comment will exhibit higher levels of transparency in an executive search.

U.S. Postsecondary Education and Transparency in Executive Search Processes

We consider our hypotheses in the context of U.S. postsecondary education, where issues of transparency, accountability, and performance have been fervently debated. Much of the discussion about transparency in higher education can be tied to the fact that it is difficult to assign clear, measurable value to the completion of postsecondary courses, certificates, and degrees. Higher education is often categorized as an experience good such that its true value is determined in the long rather than the short term (McPherson & Winston, 1993).

At a more localized level, institutions of higher education generally, and highly salient public universities specifically, have been subject to great scrutiny for the transparency (or lack thereof) present in hiring processes for institutional presidents. For many institutions, the search for a new president includes creating a search committee, hiring a search firm (this practice is believed to have started in the mid-1970s, see Wilde, 2018), and vetting applicants in a variety of ways. The search committee nominates one or more candidates and presents their names to a governing board, whose members are then tasked with finalizing a hire. In this context, as in many others, the president acts as the chief executive officer and serves at the pleasure of the governing board.

While this process, at first glance, might appear relatively straight forward, a variety of hiring processes have made national headlines. At the forefront of most of these headlines are debates regarding whether and to what extent searches should be transparent. Those in favor of confidentiality argue that open processes are no longer viable in the information age, where open searches will fail to attract the best candidates who do not want to risk reputational damage or irreparable relationships (Glick & Dettmar, 2019; Tzuker, 2019). On the contrary, those in favor of transparency often argue that additional groups—including faculty, staff, and students—should be able to evaluate a candidate and provide comments about where their institution may be headed. In practice, such evaluations most often take the form of on-campus visits with public lectures and town hall meetings in which candidates’ identities are made public.

Cleveland (1985) suggests that transparency policies for public institutions of higher education place three societal values in perpetual tension: public accountability, personal privacy, and the institution’s autonomy to achieve its public purpose. In essence, because public institutions in a democratic system depend to some extent upon public funds and are subject to the directives of elected officials (or their appointees), accountability to the public is widely expected. In addition, making applicant names public might deter a number of potential applicants who would rather remain anonymous to ensure personal privacy and to prevent any potential fallout with their current employer, both of which lead to a less-talented hiring pool. Finally, an institution’s preference for confidentiality likely represents a desire to maintain the autonomy necessary to carry out their public purpose in an efficient and timely manner.

However, even when the specific hiring decision is shielded by strict confidentiality, the hiring process is often subject to scrutiny. For example, when the Mississippi State Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees appointed Glenn Boyce as chancellor of the University of Mississippi in 2019, the decision was met with public outcry regarding the lack of transparency in the selection process. In addition to the fact that the names of the candidates were never made publicly available, Boyce was reportedly never an actual candidate and did not participate in the formal interview process. Protestors and editorials from the campus community accused the board of acting unilaterality, calling the selection “an incredibly secretive process” and a “flagrant disregard” for the campus community (Johnson, 2019).

Trying to balance these competing values is a controversial process, and mainstream examples are not hard to find. LoMonte (2019), in discussing a presidential search by the University of Maryland during the 2018–2019 academic year, went so far as to state that “higher education has a secrecy addiction” (para. 5). Both the University of Louisville and the University of Oklahoma recently used campus police officers to ensure members of the public would not see presidential candidates who visited campus to meet with search committee members; the practice was criticized in student newspaper outlets as well as by third-party commentators (Wilde, 2018). The debate surrounding the ideal balance between individual privacy of prospective hires and the generally recognized right of the public to access and obtain information about government processes continues to be rife with opposing opinions.

Qualitative Insights From Institutional Contracts With Third-Party Search Firms

To better understand approaches to transparency in the context of hiring in U.S. institutions of postsecondary education, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests were sent to the top 100 doctoral-granting public institutions, as ranked by the 2020 U.S. News and World Report, to obtain any contracts between these institutions and third-party search firms during presidential searches conducted since 1990. This endeavor resulted in 54 contracts from 38 universities.³ Institutions that failed to provide contracts did so for a number of reasons. Some institutions simply did not respond while others cited their exemptions from state FOIA laws, as is the case for Pennsylvania universities, or from fulfilling the requests of citizens in other states, as is the case in Virginia. Even when institutions were willing to share information, many did not retain contracts on file after a specified number of years following a search. Consequently, while we obtained two contracts from the 1990s, most of the sample is heavily skewed to represent more recent hires. Table 2 compares the sample of 38 universities from which contracts were received to the top 100 public universities from which the contracts were requested as well as all doctoral-granting public universities that report information to the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) within the U.S. Department of Education. Each contract in the obtained sample was read, digitally searched, and coded for language regarding transparency and confidentiality; the latter is considered here to be a term that would indicate little to no open or accessible information for one or more parts of a search.

Table 2.

Comparison of Summary Statistics.

Statistic	All doctoral publics (N = 328)	Top 100 publics (N = 101)^a	Contracts received (N = 38)
Total enrollment	18,837.38	30,249.58	30,331.28
% Black	14.76	6.20	5.26
% Hispanic	12.65	11.02	9.97
% Women	55.93	51.16	50.15
% Undergraduate	81.25	77.44	77.44
% Part-time	24.39	15.82	16.69
150% grad rate	54.92	73.96	72.76
State approp./FTE	7,412.79	8,929.46	8,808.308
Region^b
New England	0.05	0.07	0.03
Mid-East	0.13	0.19	0.10
Great Lakes	0.15	0.14	0.21
Plains	0.09	0.08	0.15
Southeast	0.30	0.25	0.23
Southwest	0.13	0.08	0.08
Rocky Mountains	0.05	0.05	0.05
Far West	0.09	0.15	0.15

Source. Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS).

Note. FTE = full-time equivalent.

101 universities are included due to a two-way tie for the 100th ranking.

Because the region variables are dichotomous, these means represent proportions, not mean percentages.

Transparency and Confidentiality as Opposing Terms

Language regarding confidentiality occurred far more frequently than that of transparency in the contracts in our sample. Nearly 65% of the contracts made some kind of reference to the term “confidentiality,” and none explicitly referred to the term “transparency.” Interestingly, of the 35 contracts that referenced confidentiality, 86% included specific language that ensured confidentiality regarding candidate identities. The remaining 14% pertained only to legally protected databases or materials being shared between the two entities during the contract period.

Whether the push for candidate confidentiality was driven on the part of the university or the search firm varied from contract to contract. In some cases, search firms required confidentiality as part of the terms of their proposals, which were eventually addended to multiple contracts in the sample. For example, one contract stated

It is important to underscore the extremely confidential nature of this assignment. All information is the property of [the search firm], [a]nd cannot be copied or distributed to parties not involved in the search. This is essential to protect confidences and attract the best candidates.

In other cases, search firms placed the responsibility on the institution to “clearly inform [the search firm] about matters relevant to the search that [search committee members] wish to keep confidential” and “what special action, if any, should be taken regarding [the] candidates in the search process.”

The discussion of confidentiality was also initiated by universities that requested candidate confidentiality in their request for proposals, which were later addended to the final contracts. For example, one university required that the search firm “shall at all times maintain the confidentiality of search information/materials, especially concerning the identity of individual nominees and candidates.” A focus on application materials and processes was consistent throughout the contracts in our sample. For example, search firms were commonly expected to “[m]aintain all applications, resumes, and related materials in a manner that is consistent with the requirements of state and federal law and which is designed to preserve the confidentiality of all prospective candidates for the position.”

The emphasis on confidentiality in these contracts reveals that, while these public organizations may generally consider transparency to be normatively good and essential to their public purpose, they regularly seek to ensure less transparency when it comes to hiring decisions. Several factors may account for this phenomenon. First, these institutions could view transparency as being antithetical to the autonomy required to make effective hiring decisions. In other words, institutional actors could worry that too much transparency inhibits their ability to attract and hire a reputable candidate who could improve future performance. The market in which higher education exists may further highlight such tensions. Private institutions arguably hold higher levels of autonomy than their public counterparts (Rainey, 2014), yet both types of institutions compete to recruit the same candidates. Second, the emphasis on confidentiality could also be interpreted as a risk-taking preference. More specifically, these priorities may suggest that institutional actors are more concerned with mitigating the risks associated with transparency (e.g., a less-qualified hiring pool) than the risks associated with confidentiality (e.g., public scrutiny and poor press coverage). If these two values are mutually exclusive, it would indicate that, at least in the case of executive hiring processes, institutional actors can be more willing to put up with the risks of confidentiality to avoid the risks associated with transparency.

Considering a Continuum of Transparency

From another perspective, the characteristics of an executive search can be conceptualized as a point on a continuum between complete transparency, in which all candidates’ names and details of the search are made public, and complete confidentiality, in which no information—finalists names, procedural norms, or effect of public input—is offered (McLaughlin & Riesman, 1985). In our sample, contractual language often proposed search methods that would fall somewhere in the middle of such a continuum; organizations sought more transparency in some stages of the search process and more confidentiality in other portions of the search. For example, in a 2009 contract, one search firm ensured that they would provide “confidentiality for each candidate until the time when [they] must release a final group to the media.” This approach has been incorporated into a number of institutional policies and state-level sunshine laws that require higher education institutions to publicly announce finalists (not additional applicants) and provide a public comment period before a final vote is taken.⁴ While this approach provides some attempt to reconcile the tensions surrounding transparency that are present in hiring processes, large variations still exist concerning how many finalists are selected and whether finalists’ names are publicly announced.

Data and Methods

To test the linkages between institutional structures and administrative transparency, data were collected about presidential searches in public, doctoral-granting institutions of higher education in the United States between 2010 and 2018. IPEDS reports information from every postsecondary education institution that participates in federal student financial aid programs, including the names of each institution’s president. From this system, 272 unique presidential hires, excluding interim appointments, were identified across 182 public, doctoral-granting institutions.⁵ Online searches were conducted to collect information about the characteristics of the search process and the search committee from official university statements and news articles from both local and school newspapers. Data were successfully coded for 157 of 272 presidential hires, the unit of analysis for all models shown below. These data were combined with additional variables gathered from IPEDS and original data sets regarding postsecondary governing board and state-level characteristics to consider determinants of transparency at the micro-, meso-, and macro-levels.

The outcome of interest in this study is transparency. In the context of a university presidential search, two key measures that tap transparency were identified and successfully coded through original data collection efforts. First, we created a dichotomous measure for whether the names of finalists were publicly announced before a final vote on any particular candidate occurred. When some interval of time exists between an initial announcement and a final vote, search committees have the opportunity to receive feedback from others; of course, whether the committee changes their course of action in response to feedback is an open question.

Second, we coded a continuous variable for the number of finalists each committee announced before the final vote was taken. Even when the names of the individuals are not revealed, committees will often publicly announce how many finalists are under consideration. In addition, because search committees are sometimes required, either by institutional policy or by state law, to have a comment period before a final vote is taken, it is not uncommon for institutions to announce only a single finalist before the final vote is taken (in our data, this was the case in 54 presidential hires). This technically fulfills policy requirements but also maintains a higher level of confidentiality in the decision-making process. Since this provides little to no transparency as to whether or what extent other candidates were considered, announcing the consideration of more than one finalist represents at least some marginal degree of transparency.

The independent variables of interest stress the potential role institutional structures play in shaping transparency within a public organization. At the micro-level, we use the total number of members on the search committee. This size measure is indicative of the power dynamics and general propensity for transparency; in other words, the larger the committee, the larger the number of people who are able to directly weigh in on a hire (McLaughlin & Reisman, 1985). We do not include dichotomous measures of whether specific constituent groups had representation as, among searches included in the analysis, nearly all committees include at least one faculty and one student representative and strong majorities included staff and alumni representatives. The only group for which more variance was observed was for representatives from the university foundation (half of the searches in this data set included foundation representatives).

At the meso-level, we focus on institutional governing boards. We capture governing board centralization via a dichotomous variable for whether an institution’s governing board is responsible for the oversight of multiple institutions within a larger university system (e.g., the University of California system), or of a single institution (e.g., the University of Wyoming). Governing boards with oversight for multiple institutions within a larger system were coded “1.” We also include the size of the governing board and the percent of board members who are appointed by the governor, as the composition of the board could also influence median preferences and decisions. Finally, at the macro-level, we consider a dichotomous variable measuring whether or not an institution is located within a state with sunshine law requirements regarding a minimum period of time between the announcement of finalists and the final vote for public comment. Such a policy implies interest in transparency generally and an attempt to provide a minimal level of transparency in the structure and process of specific decisions by public agencies.

Beyond these key structural variables, all models include a number of controls to consider additional factors that may influence the environment in which a search is conducted and, consequently, the level of transparency present during the search process. At the micro-level, we account for full-time equivalent (FTE) enrollment (logged) as well as the percent of students who are black, the percent of students who are Hispanic, the percent of students who are female, the percent of students who are undergraduates, and the percent of students who are enrolled part-time. We expect that the composition of the student body can create different types of demands of institutional decision makers; for example, a more diverse student body—one that includes undergraduate and graduate students as well as part-time and full-time students—may create perceived or real needs for particular skills or types of expertise a president is expected to possess. Next, we control for 6 year (150%) graduation rates as a popular metric of institutional performance. Those institutions that are performing at high (low) levels are likely to have more (less) success in competing for competent presidential candidates during the hiring process. In addition, to more fully control for reputation and prestige, factors that affect the recruitment and retention of students as well as administrators (Sung & Yang, 2008), we include Barron’s classification of institutional selectivity as determined by SAT/ACT scores and high school grade-point averages. While Barron’s rankings have been released at various points in time, we apply the 2013 classification as a constant as it is not available for more recent years in our data.⁶

Meso-level controls include governing board size and composition (e.g., percent of the board appointed by the governor) as mentioned above. These factors can weigh heavily in determining shared values and median voter positions on the board, which can then influence decisions regarding presidential hiring processes directly through the board as well as indirectly through the selection committee. In terms of factors that are external to the institution at the macro-level, we control for whether or not a presidential hire occurred during a gubernatorial election year, the share of state legislators who are Democrats,⁷ and the total state appropriations to the institution per FTE student as these factors may influence the pressures placed on institutional actors and priorities. More specifically, each of these factors shapes the political and fiscal environment in which an institution operates, which we expect can influence decisions made about personnel search processes and hiring decisions.

Descriptive statistics for all variables are presented in Table 3. The models reported below use ordinary least squares regression or, for dichotomous dependent variables, logit models. For all findings reported, analyses include year fixed effects to control for additional changes over time (e.g., national shifts in enrollment patterns) and errors that are clustered by institution.

Table 3.

Descriptive Statistics.

Variable	M	SD	Min	Max
Dependent variables
Number of finalists	2.80	1.57	0.00	7.00
Finalists announced (0/1)	0.67	0.47	0.00	1.00
Micro-level factors
Search committee size	18.85	6.09	4.00	44.00
Total enrollment (ln)	9.87	0.59	7.70	11.13
Percent undergraduate enrollment	78.59	7.71	24.01	95.00
Percent black enrollment	12.01	16.28	1.00	92.00
Percent Hispanic enrollment	10.17	12.37	0.00	89.00
Percent female enrollment	53.90	6.80	23.00	88.00
Percent part-time enrollment	22.33	10.67	0.77	63.48
150% (6 year) graduation rate	59.03	16.48	17.00	94.00
Barron’s selectivity rating	3.53	0.99	0.00	6.00
Meso-level factors
Governing board system (0/1)	0.59	0.49	0.00	1.00
Governing board size	14.35	6.51	5.00	53.00
State sunshine law window (0/1)	0.29	0.45	0.00	1.00
Percent governing board appointed by governor	78.17	28.72	0.00	100.00
Macro-level factors
Gubernatorial election year (0/1)	0.29	0.45	0.00	1.00
Percent democratic legislature	44.79	15.02	13.33	89.47
State appropriations/FTE (ln)	1.76	3.54	0.00	9.57

Note. SD = standard deviation; FTE = full-time equivalent.

Findings

The results displayed in Table 4 address whether various institutional structures influence whether finalists’ names are announced to the public as well as the number of finalists that are considered. Model 1 presents the results of a logit regression predicting a dichotomous measure of whether or not the name(s) of the final candidate(s) were publicly announced. Using ordinary least squares (OLS) regression, Model 2 considers the number of finalists announced to the public. In some cases, an institution chooses to publicly announce the number of finalists being interviewed but not reveal the finalists’ names. To account for this strategy, Model 3 considers the number of finalists only in cases where the finalists’ names were also publicly announced. While the norm for cases in Models 2 and 3 is three candidates, the range of finalists across all cases (n = 132) is 0 to 7. For cases where candidate names are also publicly announced, the range shifts slightly to 1 to 6.⁸

Table 4.

Effect of Structure on Transparency in Presidential Searches.

Variable	Announcement of finalist(s)	Finalist count, All	Finalist count, Announce = 1
Search committee size	0.032 (0.042)	−0.010 (0.021)	0.010 (0.029)
Total enrollment (ln)	−0.396 (0.696)	−0.398 (0.371)	−0.994* (0.410)
Percent undergraduate enrollment	0.095* (0.045)	0.014 (0.027)	0.034 (0.031)
Percent black enrollment	0.002 (0.019)	−0.034* (0.010)	−0.027* (0.010)
Percent Hispanic enrollment	0.039 (0.035)	−0.012 (0.012)	−0.017 (0.011)
Percent female enrollment	−0.057 (0.058)	0.057* (0.022)	0.009 (0.038)
Percent part-time enrollment	0.072⁺ (0.042)	−0.014 (0.023)	0.020 (0.026)
150% (6 year) graduation rate	−0.004 (0.033)	−0.007 (0.020)	0.011 (0.021)
Barron’s selectivity rating	−0.400 (0.389)	−0.021 (0.245)	−0.044 (0.298)
Governing board system (0/1)	1.073* (0.513)	−0.052 (0.309)	−0.141 (0.353)
Governing board size	0.035 (0.057)	0.032 (0.041)	−0.045 (0.046)
Percent governing board appointed by governor	0.013 (0.012)	0.004 (0.005)	−0.009 (0.007)
State sunshine law window (0/1)	0.310 (0.707)	−0.556 (0.385)	0.083 (0.489)
Gubernatorial election year (0/1)	0.647 (0.821)	0.584 (0.510)	0.631 (0.515)
Percent democratic legislature	−0.049* (0.024)	0.017⁺ (0.010)	0.012 (0.011)
State appropriations/FTE (ln)	0.257 (0.894)	0.312 (0.341)	0.986* (0.382)
Constant	0.515 (8.627)	2.286 (4.426)	9.050⁺ (5.116)
N	152	132	96
Pseudo R²	.34
R ²		.27	.33
Year fixed effects	Yes	Yes	Yes

Note. Errors clustered by institution. FTE = full-time equivalent.

p < .10. *p < .05.

Across all models, our independent variables of interest fail to consistently predict transparency, at least in regards to the indicators of transparency measured here. In Model 1, the size of the search committee is not associated with the likelihood of announcing the finalists’ names. Instead, at the micro-level, select enrollment patterns are associated with the likelihood of an announcement; institutions that focus more heavily on undergraduate education as well as those that have higher shares of part-time students are slightly more likely to announce finalists’ names. It is also the case that institutions that are more heavily undergraduates or are comprised of more part-time students are less prestigious—both factors are negatively correlated with Barron’s rating in our sample—though the Barron’s selectivity rating is not linked directly to the likelihood of an announcement.

At the meso-level, governing boards that oversee a system of institutions are significantly more likely to announce the names of presidential finalists. This finding provides some support for our second hypothesis. It may be the case that norms and structures for institutional systems operate differently than contexts in which a governing board oversees a single institution; at a minimum, there simply may be more pressure to provide transparency as board members are less loyal to any one institution. On the contrary, other governing board characteristics exhibit no strong associations with the announcement variable. At the macro-level, the presence of a sunshine law that requires a window for public comment is also not associated with the likelihood of finalists’ names being announced. Instead, the percent of Democrats in the state legislature is linked to lower likelihoods of an announcement, though the substantive size of the effect is small.

For cases in which a finalist count is made public, Model 2 shows that search committee size continues to have little effect on the number of finalists considered. Instead, the percent of black students is negatively associated with the number of finalists while the percent of female students has a positive association with the number of finalists considered. Interestingly, no governing board or state-level characteristics, structural or otherwise, matter in predicting the number of finalists with one exception—the percent of Democratic legislators in a state is positively linked to the number of final candidates considered. The presence of a state sunshine law window also has a strong negative association with the number of finalists considered, though the linkage does not meet standard levels of significance (p =.15). Still, the potential for a negative relationship could suggest that sunshine laws influence actors involved in the search committee to announce fewer rather than more candidates. Even the announcement of a single finalist would meet the requirements of many of these state-level policies but might open the institution to less scrutiny in comparing the finalist to other applicants.

In Model 3, where observations are narrowed to only include cases in which the names and number of finalists are both announced, search committee size continues to have no linkage to the number of finalists considered. Instead, the percent of black students continues to have a negative association with the number of finalists announced as does total enrollment. The latter linkage is interesting, as higher enrollment levels arguably make an institution more salient to stakeholders but evidently result in fewer final candidates for public consideration. At the meso-and macro-levels, neither governing board centralization nor the presence of a statutory requirement for public comment have a meaningful effect on the number of finalists search committees or governing boards consider as they approach a final hiring decision. This indicates that few external structural factors have the ability to shape the extent to which these institutions integrate transparency into their executive searches. Alternatively, higher levels of state appropriations per student are positively associated with the number of finalists considered. In other words, as more government support in the form of taxpayer dollars is invested in an institution, the institution may be more transparent in sharing information about finalists. Whether this is a voluntary action or is considered a necessary response to taxpayer demands is a question that cannot be answered here.

Discussion

The goal of this article was to highlight the need to study administrative transparency. While prior literature has acknowledged this type of transparency, it has been the subject of empirical work to a lesser extent than fiscal or economic transparency. Furthermore, in determining what factors shape transparency, we argue it is important to go beyond fiscal and economic indicators to consider institutional structures that can shape the boundaries within which administrative and personnel decisions are made within public agencies.

Curiously, we find that neither a qualitative assessment of personnel search contracts nor the structural components that often influence institutional actors and decision processes hold notable weight in shaping the degree of transparency present in executive searches. Our study approached transparency in the context of U.S. postsecondary education, where the hiring of university presidents—essentially agency CEOs—has generated much debate about transparency over the last decade. This context should provide an ideal scenario in which to understand how different structures influence the variance observed in various indicators of transparency. Interestingly, across 54 contracts between public, doctoral institutions and third-party search firms, no contract explicitly mentioned the term “transparency.” Instead, a range of approaches to confidentiality are present. This finding suggests that the institutional preferences of salient public colleges and universities lean toward ensuring confidentiality rather than transparency to various stakeholder groups.

For a larger set of 157 presidential searches between 2010 and 2018, we found no evidence to support Hypothesis 1; our micro-level variable of interest, search committee size, matters little in predicting any of our measures of transparency. Rather, it seems that various facets in the composition of the student body appear to have more traction in shaping institutional processes. Of course, the size of the board can only convey so much information. The backgrounds and levels of expertise of individual board members may reveal much more about how transparency is perceived and integrated into a search. It could also be the case that preferences of the governing board outweigh any preferences of individual search committee members or the search committee as a whole.

At the meso-level, we find limited evidence to support Hypothesis 2; governing boards that oversee multiple institutions are more likely to publicly announce the names of finalists prior to solidifying a new hire. On the contrary, this measure has little effect on how many finalists are considered for the job. Furthermore, that additional governing board measures do not play a direct role in determining transparency is particularly interesting given that university presidents typically serve at the pleasure of the governing board (e.g., the governing board makes official decisions of who to hire to lead the institution).

At the macro-level, our models offer contradicting evidence related to Hypothesis 3. The presence of state sunshine laws may have some potential to dampen the number of finalists considered, though this linkage does not hold strongly or consistently in our models. Furthermore, the mix of Democrats and Republicans in the state legislature can hold some sway over how presidential searches operate, as institutions in states with larger shares of Democratic legislators are slightly less likely to publicly announce candidates’ names but may consider a larger number of finalists. Some of this influence could be related to the fact that state legislators influence the amount and types of funds available in state budgets that provide allocations to public institutions. While 19 states cut funding per student by more than 20% between 2008 and 2018 (Mitchell et al., 2019), appropriations still provide a nontrivial portion of many institutional budgets. In other words, institutional actors continue to rely on state policymakers for important sources of funding and, as a result, may be intentionally or unintentionally swayed by the preferences and opinions of policymakers to maintain strong relationships.

Taken together, the institutional factors considered here do not hold strong and consistent influence over transparency in presidential search processes. It may be that this is intentional; for example, state-level actors either have other needs competing for their attention or do not want to be subject to blame for mistakes. As such, while they support transparency as normatively good, specific decisions are largely left up to institutional actors. It could also be the case that the indicators of transparency we are able to capture for this study are not the points in the search process that ultimately display the degree of transparency present in an executive search. Dimensions of transparency may also be evident in the drafting of specific job announcements, the process for selecting search committee members, how the creation of a list of final candidates is determined, and the ways in which individual campus visits are structured. Of course, these are much harder to track in an effort to generate a dataset with adequate observations to conduct empirical analysis. More qualitative and quantitative work is required to determine additional points in which transparency is ultimately determined.

This study is not without its weaknesses. We consider a specific context that does not generalize to many other settings, though a range of public and nonprofit agencies experience on a regular basis the convergence of institutional, board level, and state or federal factors in the process of hiring a new executive. In addition, there are many other formal and informal organizational decisions, operations, and procedures that cumulatively define the overall degree of administrative transparency in an organization; hiring processes represent just one of these procedures. Our outcome variables—the number of finalists revealed and whether the names of those candidates are made public—do not capture much of the transparency of the actual decision-making process. It is possible that, far before interviews are arranged, an institution does not involve various stakeholder groups in the drafting of the job application or openly discuss what approach is taken for the initial vetting of applications. It is also possible that, even after announcing the number and names of final candidates, a hiring committee will remain opaque about the structure of interviews and the level of accessibility that various groups will have to finalists. Of course, it is also possible that a search committee that does not reveal the number and names of final candidates is fairly open and transparent about the hiring process after the final candidate is named. Notwithstanding these limitations, these measures provide a measurable proxy for each institution’s general orientations toward the tradeoff between transparency and confidentiality.

Next, our dataset is one that is meaningful but not large. As such, we couple our empirical models with the consideration of specific contracts between institutions of higher education and third-party vendors that shape executive search procedures. Together, these data highlight the need for scholars to grapple theoretically with the causes and effects of administrative transparency—in addition to other types of transparency—in public organizations. Determining whether and when stakeholder feedback or structural constraints can shape the transparency of personnel processes can be critical for the field’s understanding of administrative decisions in public agencies in an era of constant information cycles and expectations of access. It also raises important questions about whether varying levels of transparency influence the quality or fit of hires in public, nonprofit, and private organizations alike.

Finally, in considering implications for practitioners, this study is limited in its ability to answer the question of whether more transparency is meaningfully associated with desirable outcomes such as citizen perceptions of the organization, person-institution fit, or particular performance expectations. Future research should not only consider the determinants of administrative transparency but also its effects on a range of outcomes. Still, prior research has established that transparency is often viewed as necessarily good. Perceptions that an organization is lacking in transparency for salient administrative issues, including but not limited to the hiring of an executive, could either work on its own or in tandem with other types of transparency that have received more attention in prior literature, where opaqueness has been linked to diminished levels of trust that may or may not lead to any observed effect on institutional processes and outputs. Public administrators thus need to continue to carefully consider how to balance confidentiality and transparency and justify their rationale for this balance to multiple stakeholder groups.

Footnotes

Appendix

Table A1.

Effect of Structure on Finalist Count, O Logit Models.

Variable	Finalist count, All	Finalist count, Announce = 1
Total enrollment (ln)	−0.411 (0.520)	−1.412⁺ (0.741)
Percent undergraduate enrollment	0.025 (0.037)	0.066 (0.048)
Percent black enrollment	−0.046* (0.016)	−0.042* (0.020)
Percent Hispanic enrollment	−0.019 (0.018)	−0.031 (0.023)
Percent female enrollment	0.080* (0.030)	0.026 (0.056)
Percent part-time enrollment	−0.017 (0.032)	0.032 (0.040)
150% (6 year) graduation rate	−0.009 (0.028)	0.020 (0.035)
State appropriations/FTE (ln)	0.421 (0.466)	2.419⁺ (1.296)
Search committee size	−0.010 (0.029)	0.009 (0.044)
Governing board size	0.038 (0.055)	−0.071 (0.075)
Percent governing board appointed by governor	0.006 (0.007)	−0.015 (0.012)
Governing board system (0/1)	−0.157 (0.416)	−0.194 (0.562)
Barron’s selectivity rating	−0.006 (0.323)	−0.022 (0.419)
Gubernatorial election year (0/1)	0.749 (0.642)	1.107 (0.676)
Percent democratic legislature	0.024⁺ (0.013)	0.018 (0.016)
State sunshine law window (0/1)	−0.720 (0.517)	0.066 (0.786)
Cut 1	−1.966 (6.614)	−7.721 (10.284)
Cut 2	1.628 (6.537)	−7.120 (10.290)
Cut 3	2.100 (6.548)	−5.576 (10.330)
Cut 4	3.649 (6.603)	−4.243 (10.331)
Cut 5	4.835 (6.640)	−2.399 (10.298)
Cut 6	6.432 (6.636)
Cut 7	7.165 (6.568)
N	132	96
Pseudo R²	.09	.13
Year fixed effects	Yes	Yes

Note. Errors clustered by institution. FTE = full-time equivalent.

p < .10. *p < .05.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

G. Breck Wightman

Notes

Author Biographies

Amanda Rutherford is an associate professor in the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University. Her research focuses on organizational accountability and performance, representation and equity, and executive careers and decision-making processes.

G. Breck Wightman is a doctoral candidate in the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University Bloomington. His research focuses on executive succession and personnel processes in public organizations.

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