Measuring organization: Performance in environmental agencies

State environmental agencies have been organized independently with a variety of structural schemes, and are responsible for the bulk of administration of federal environmental policy, such as the Clean Air Act. Using statistical models of air quality outcomes, this research compares three competing typologies for capturing agency differences: Ringquist (1993b), Lester (1990), and Wilson (1989). The findings indicate the most commonly used measure of organization, Ringquist (1993b), may be the weakest in comparison. Additionally, both Lester (1990) and Wilson (1989) show interesting advantages in comparison to each other. The findings provide some interesting insights into the difficult task of measuring organization.