Functionalization Without Instruments: How Local Bureaucrats Make Sense of Unfinished Reform While Managing Public Services

Abstract

This study examines how bureaucrats enact functionalization reform under conditions of unfinished reform, conceptualized as instrumental incompleteness in which structural change outpaces the development of operational HR infrastructures. Drawing on a comparative qualitative case study across four Indonesian local government jurisdictions, the study identifies a common mechanism through which an HR-instrument void generates operational ambiguity, prompting collective sensemaking and adaptive coordination. Cross-case comparison shows that these mechanisms follow different reform trajectories according to organizational support conditions, comprising fiscal capacity, administrative support, and reform facilitation. Rather than fiscal capacity alone, the combined configuration of these conditions explains why some jurisdictions move toward partial formalization of functional roles while others continue to rely on hierarchical coordination. The study contributes by conceptualizing unfinished reform as instrumental incompleteness and by integrating structural reform, operational HR infrastructures, and bureaucratic sensemaking into a comparative mechanism-based explanation of reform enactment in decentralized public administration.