Abstract:
This study compares autonomous public organizations (APOs) with government departments in Thailand in terms of their autonomy and performance. Community Development Department (CDD) of the Ministry of Interior is chosen to represent a government department. The autonomous public organization chosen for investigation is the Community Organization Development Institute (CODI) of the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security. The research question is: When APOs have more autonomy than government departments, would that result in higher performance on the part of APOs? The study conducted depth interviews with forty-two government officials in both CDD and CODI. Documentary research such as annual reports, government documents, and budgetary documents were also used. The study is divided into two parts. Part 1 analyzes and compares CDD and CODI in terms of their organizational autonomy (operational autonomy, rule making autonomy, financial and budgeting autonomy, human resource management autonomy, and monitoring and evaluating autonomy). Part 2 also compares CDD and CODI in terms of their performance appraisal covering three dimensions: operating quality, financial and budgeting efficiency and performance effectiveness. The study found that CODI has more autonomy than CDD in terms of operational autonomy, rule making autonomy, financial and budgeting autonomy and human resource management autonomy. However, both CODI and CDD have the same level of performance effectiveness. They both do not have financial and budgeting efficiency. The conclusion is that although CODI has more autonomy than CDD, its performance is equivalent to that of the CDD. As a matter of fact, agencification in Thailand has not been so successful at least in the case of the CODI.