2019, Vol.29, No.4

Korean Society and Public Administration 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 1.89

pISSN : 1225-8652
https://journal.kci.go.kr/kspa

This paper aims to analyze the indigenization process of the team system introduced by the Roh Moo-hyun administration and explain the cause of the failure of the team system to root in terms of the path dependency of the system. The team system, which was fully introduced to all ministries and municipalities at the time of the Roh Moo-hyun administration in 2005, was applied in the Korean context, not in the original meaning of the team system, due to the lack of related system. As a result, it was impossible to operate the horizontal team in the original meaning, so the middle managerial reemergence was experienced. Since the introduction of the team system was conducted in a coercive manner, there was no strong consensus on the necessity of the team system. In the end, the political support for the team system was lost and the team system was quickly abolished. From the present point of view ten years after the abolition of the team system, If it is selectively applied according to the task not the old one, the team system will be useful again.

Executive Agency(EA hereafter) is an institution that allows a manager to operate implementation work of government affairs and take full responsibility for the performances with publicness being maintained. EA was launched in 1988 in the UK when the Next Steps Reform began. Korea began to prepare to import the institution from 1997, legislated related laws in 1999, and have enforced EA since 2000. The Kim Young-Sam and Kim Dae-Jung governments imported EA to get legitimacy from foreign and domestic environments in order to confront OECD entry and foreign exchange crisis, but at the same time distorted EA away from its original intent. Then the third parties such as public administration scholars raised many critics against the distortions and the successive governments revised and indigenized EA towards its original intent. Right after the importation, the appearance was close to UK EA but the level of autonomy of its manager was very low. These kinds of distortions were caused by authoritarian and hierarchical Korean organizational culture, the then contingencies that lacked budget, government personnel, and rules right after the foreign exchange crisis, and the incongruity between political and symbolic purposes of the then ruling politicians and the original intent of the institution. In the stage of indigenization, however, the autonomy of its manager or the institution was partially strengthened to become a little bit closer to its original UK institution because the critics raised by the third parties were partially accepted. The number of entities that were designated as EA also increased and the autonomy of the institution or its manager was improved. Nevertheless, there is still significant gap between UK EA and Korean EA.

Gender budget i.e. gender sensible budget means considering gender impacts throughout the entire fiscal management process such as budgeting, implementation, and settlement, which is not limited to the budget of individual business units for women support or gender equality but also has a meaning as a system for overall fiscal management. The indigenization of the gender budget system in Korea is explained as follows. First, it was introduced by voluntary imitation of foreign institutions. Second, there was not enough resources for the setting of gender budget format, gender equality target system, the selection of business for gender budget, gender budget analysis, gender impact assessment, the improvement of implementation system, and the education of public officials. Third, women's organizations and female lawmakers played very significant roles in the introduction process. Fourth, after the introduction, the institution was repaired and the legal bases of the system was strengthened to expand the scope of the project. The gender budget system in Korea has been very distorted away from the original one, so it is recognized as a financial system for the parties concerned and has not affected the improvement of gender equality. The reasons are the apathy of lawmakers, the low status of the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family in charge of the issue, the lack of the education for public officials and the development of gender analysis techniques, and the weak awareness of the Korean society of the need to improve gender equality.