posc 430 – fundamentals of public administration

POSC 430 – Fundamentals of Public Administration

Public Administration and the Public

The Public’s Interaction with Public Administration

Every person in the United States is affected by some public administrative actions all of the time. Six main overlapping categories:

Clients and customers – over half of the population has had one direct contact with the government on employment, job training, worker’s compensation, unemployment compensation, public assistance, hospital/ medical care, or retirement benefits.

The Public’s Interaction with Public Administration

Regulatees – vehicular licenses, traffic violations, income taxes, and police matters the four most common.

Participants – Direct public participation.

Litigants – lawsuits against public administrators.

Street-level encounters – Direct interaction with public administrators (police discretion, for example).

The Individual in the Administrative State

Public administration thoroughly permeates American society. Administrative controls have replaced more traditional social controls.

Public administration has tended to be bureaucratically organized despite the NPM’s successes in changing this to some extent.


Bureaucracy is at odds with society because it relies on “rationally organized action,” rather than “social action.

Bureaucracy vs. SocietyPrecision.Stability.Discipline.Reliability.Calculability of results.Formal rationality.Formalistic impersonality.Formal equality of treatment.

Justice.Freedom.Violence.Oppression.Happiness.Gratification.Poverty.Illness.Death.Victory.Love and hate.Salvation and damnation.


Public administration, bureaucratically organized, tends to be in tension or conflict with society in terms of styles of action, emotional feelings, and overriding concerns.The differences between societal and bureaucratic values are social interaction versus administrative action; feeling versus doing; and belief, randomness, and emotionalism versus specialized expertise, systemization, and impersonality.


The problem arises when administrative values replace societal values in so many public functions.

The Individual in the Political System

The individual’s role in the political system also undergoes major transformation with the rise of the administrative state.

The difficulty elected officials have controlling and holding accountable administrative agencies.

Popular sovereignty is compromised by the tendency of the public to become subjects of the administrative state.

Democracy and bureaucracy clash.

Democracy versus BureaucracyEquality.

Rotation in office.

Freedom.

Pluralism.

Citizen participation.

Openness.

Community.

Legitimacy based on election.

Hierarchy.Seniority.Command.Unity.Participation based on enterprise.Secrecy.Impersonality.Legitimacy based on expertise.

The Individual in the EconomyThe contemporary administrative state also changes the individual’s place in the economic system.Government inevitably gains greater control over the nation’s economic resources.Makes individuals dependent on government for their well-being.The accumulation of wealth in government’s hands gives government more leverage over the individual.

The Public’s Evaluation of Public Administration


Clients and customers are satisfied.Surveys are unreliable.Negative experience lowers expectations, but positive is considered accident.General taps ideology, specific taps pragmatism.

Regulation is opposed.Contractors are conflicted.

Public Administrative Perspectives on the Public

Traditional managerial approach.Maximization efficiency, effectiveness, and economy. Result: depersonalization.

Ombudsman.

Cost effectiveness of public-administrator interaction.

Avoid burden shift of costs to public.


NPM approach.Public as customers.

• Surveys and benchmarking from private sector.

• Downplays utility of traditional political channels. Clients may not have same preferences as whole public. Political systems have barriers to majority preferences.

• How do you identify which customers to satisfy?

• Identifying customers can be thorny issue.


NPM (New Public Management) approach.Contractors as partners in service and goods delivery.

• Shift regulations from rules to guiding principles.

• Out-sourcing.


Political approach to the public.Emphasizes values of representation, responsiveness, and accountability.Premium on participation.

• Lack of participation reduces responsiveness and representativeness.

• Nonparticipation reduces civic obligation.• Nonparticipation produces ignorance.• Nonparticipation increases alienation.• Participation promotes community.• Participation promotes legitimacy.


Political approach to the public.Direct participation.

• Public school governance.• Agricultural administration.• Environmental administration.

Client-centered administration.• Advocates for their clients.

Coproduction• Joint provision of services by agency and client.


Political approach to the public.Public interest groups.

• Seeking public goods.


Legal approach to the public.Seeks to assure individual’s constitutional and statutory rights.

• Administrative hearings.

• Street-level contacts.

• Judicial oversight.

Synthesis

Service.Transformation from clients to customers.

Therapy.Requires a more client-oriented, participatory approach.

Regulation.Traditional managerial perspective influenced by legalistic considerations.

Synthesis

Litigation and street-level encounters.Informed by values of the legal approach.

Participation.Dominated by political perspective with some overlay from service and therapy.

Readings:

Richard J. Stillman, Public Administration, Concepts and Cases, 9th edition

Coursepack, POSC 430 – available at www.csulb.edu/~cdennis (click on “Courses”)

http://www.csulb.edu/~cdennis

Grading

Each of the following:

1 – a series of unannounced quizzes over the readings;

2 – your cumulative score on all facets of the term paper;

3 – a comprehensive final exam.

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Political Definitions of Public Administration

Public administration is what government does.As a profession, public administration has developed values and ethical standards, but as an activity it merely reflects the cultural norms, beliefs, and power realities of its society.

Public administration is the totality of the working day activities of all the world’s bureaucrats – whether they are legal or illegal, competent or incompetent, decent or despicable.


Public administration is both direct and indirect.

Direct – provision of services like mortgage insurance, mail delivery, and electricity.

Indirect – when the government pays private contractors to provide goods and services to citizens (space shuttle, dams).


Public administration is a phase in the policy-making cycle.

Decisions and nondecisions are public policy.

Administration does not end with implementation because someone will always think it can be done better.


Public administration is implementing the public interest.

The public interest is the universal label in which political actors wrap the policies and programs that they advocate.

The public interest is a commonly accepted good.

The rise of administrative discretion in the face of legislative vagueness means that the job of the anonymous administrator is to define the public interest.


Public administration is doing collectively that which cannot be done so well individually.

The legitimate object of government [is] to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but cannot do, at all, or cannot, so well do, for themselves – in their separate, and individual capacities – Abraham Lincoln.

Twentieth century communications has given rise to “a revolution of rising expectations.”

Legal Definitions of Public Administration

Because public administration is what a state does, it is both created and bound by an instrument of the law.Public administration is the law in action.

Public administration is inherently the execution of a public law.Every application of a general law is necessarily an act of administration.In the United States, the Constitution of 1787 is the law of the land. All legislation must conform.


Public administration is regulation.It is government telling citizens and businesses what they may or may not do.Regulation is one of the oldest functions of government. Code of Hammurabi – “The mason who builds a house which falls down and kills the inmate shall be put to death.” Driving to McDonald’s – regulation.


Public administration is the king’s largesse.

It is whatever goods, services, or honors the ruling authority decides to bestow (monarchy). Plaques and political machines.


Public administration is theft.The primary culprit is redistribution.

Ayn Rand – the only proper function of the government of a free country is to act as an agency which protects the individual’s rights.

John Kenneth Galbraith – It is a simple matter of arithmetic that change may be costly to the man who has something; it cannot be so to the man who has nothing.

Managerial Definitions of Public Administration

Public administration is so much a branch of management that many graduate schools of management (or business or administration) are divided into public and private – and now increasingly nonprofit – programs.


Public administration is the executive function of government.

Government agencies put into practice legislative acts that represent the will of the people.


Public administration is a management specialty.

Top managers make the big decisions and are responsible for the overall success of the organization.

Public administrators are found in middle management, the group responsible for the execution and interpretation of top management policies and the day-to-day operation of an organizational unit.


Anything that requires considerable effort with few results.

Often used to mean “red tape”, excessive formality and attention to routine. Red ribbon that official used to use to tie up public documents.

• Use because they promote efficiency and equity overall, although not always in individual cases.


Public administration is art, not science – or vice versa.

Public administration is actually both.• It requires judgment, panache, and common sense.

• It also requires technical skills that allow for the digestion and transference of information.

Just because you have the academic credentials does not mean that you can function as a high level administrator.

Occupational Definitions of Public Administration

Public administration is an occupational category.

It is whatever public employees in the world do.

• Most of the 18,000,000 public employees in the U.S. would not describe themselves as administrators, but they are.


Public administration is an essay contest.

People in bureaucratic careers tend to rise and fall on how well they can write. In a game of shuffling paper, the person whose memorandum ends up on top wins.

Oral presentations are also useful, but writing is more decisive.


Public administration is idealism in action.

Many people enter public service careers because they are idealists; they believe in and seek to advance noble principles.Idealism draws people into public administration because it provides them with worthwhile and exciting things to do with their lives.


Public administration is an academic field.The study of the art and science of management and incorporates as its subject matter all of the political, social, cultural, and legal environments that affect the running of public institutions.

Cross-disciplinary – political science, sociology, business administration, psychology, law, anthropology, medicine, forestry, and so on.


Public administration is a profession.A body of academic and practical knowledge that is applied to the service of society.A standard of success theoretically measured by serving the needs of society rather than seeking purely personal gain.A system of control over the professional practice that regulates the education of new members and maintains both a code of ethics and appropriate sanctions.

The Evolution of Public Administration

The core contentOrganization theory.Bureaucratic behavior.Personnel management.Public finance and budgeting.Policy analysis.Program evaluation.Administrative ethics.

Case Study: Government Response to the

Destruction of the World Trade Center

September 11, 2001American Airlines Flight 11(8:46 a.m., One World Trade Center) and United Airlines Flight 175 (9:03 a.m., Two World Trade Center).Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.Richard Sheirer, Director, New York City Office of Emergency Services.

Activated Emergency Operations Center, 7 World Trade Center.Closed all roads below Canal Street and all tunnels and bridges.

September 11, 2001Destruction of Emergency Operations Center by second crash.Sheirer closes New York Harbor and ask Pentagon to close New York air space.Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik spearheaded movement of personnel to “hot zone”.

Sporadic communication, but established Condition Omega.

Command post at 75 Barclay Street.

September 11, 2001NYPD Emergency Service Units and FDNY arrived four minutes after first plane crash.

Began task of evacuating 25,000 people.500 firefighters and 200 Port Authority Police.FDNY Commissioner Thomas Von Essen.

Collapse of South Tower damaged 75 Barclay Street.

Response team moved to library of Police Academy.Operated there for 48 hours.

September 11, 2001Transportation Commissioner Iris Weinshall.

Isolated in Washington Heights, but set up a system of ferries and express and franchise buses.Watercraft of all types escorted 500,000 people out of Manhattan.

PATH deputy director Victoria Cross Kelly (on the concourse of World Trade Center station).

September 11, 2001

City Council member and mayoral candidate Peter Vallone.

Food and water, 59th Street Bridge.

By noon, securing New York City was a local, state, and federal job.

Significant help from Governor George Pataki.

Mayor Giuliani served as primary spokesperson.

Government Response after 9/11

FEMA.National Guard.NYPD.Pier 92 command center.

FEMA – Door-to-door alerts on aid.Ground Zero task force. Congressman Jerrold Nadler. 25,000 residents of lower Manhattan.

Hilary Clinton and Chuck Schumer $20 billion aid package.

Analysis

Skill and intensity of government’s response to the emergency.

Planning for emergencies was clearly present and helped mitigate the tasks.Daily, high-level coordination meeting proved beneficial.

Emergency workers should possess most modern communications equipment.

Analysis

Firefighter should reexamine their own standard operating procedures.Decentralization of administration worked in the city’s favor.City demonstrated depth of leadership.Wartime mobilization temporarily eliminated political differences.

Lessons Learned

Emergency response planning is essential.

Emergency response institutions, procedures, and resources must be retained, even when threats seem distant.

Lessons Learned

Communications systems must be made more redundant.

Emergency response procedures must assume communications breakdowns and allow for decentralized decision-making.

There is no substitute for inspiring leadership during a crisis.

The Evolution of Management and

Organization Theory

The Origins of Public Management

The key to the city – harks back to an era when the only way into a city was through a locked gate.The profession of management began and developed as the profession of arms.

War is not possible without an effective system of public administration.Military officers were the first public administrators.


The profession of management began and developed as the profession of arms.

First armies were mobs with managers.Gradually developed hierarchy, line and staff personnel, logistics and communications.

The continuing influence of ancient Rome.The transfer of managerial control from those of wealth and power to those with professional expertise first happened in the Roman army.The power of technical expertise would not be seen again until Napoleon.


The continuing influence of ancient Rome.Origins of merit system.

Origins of civil service (to regulate pay).

The core features of modern public administration were first found in the Roman Empire.

Depersonalization, separation of public and private funds, hierarchy, functional specialization.

The virtue of military service (as training in administration).


The military heritage of public administration.The history of the world can be viewed as the rise and fall of public administrative institutions.

Rome was effective because the army’s organizational doctrine made it superior to its competitors and because it was backed up by a sophisticated administrative system of supply backed by taxes.


The military heritage of public administration.

The Roman empire only fell when its legions degenerated into corps of mercenaries and when its supply and tax bases were corrupted.

Both victorious soldiers and successful managers tend to be inordinately admired and rewarded as risk takers.

The Significance of Administrative Doctrine

All organizations are guided by a doctrine of management that reflects basic values.The first administrative doctrine (military): Do this or die!Modern example (Henry Ford): All that we ask of men is that they do the work which is set before them. (Implication: or be fired! Better than being shot.)


More sophisticated doctrines are needed when meaningful and fulfilling work for its employees is the central goal of an organization.

These doctrines are generally more conducive to long-term organizational effectiveness and productivity.


Doctrine and attitudes affect morale and performance and more importantly organizational culture.

Organizational culture affects the overall competence or incompetence of the organization.


Each organization’s doctrine remains in place until technological and situational changes make the organization’s adaptations less useful and render the organization incompetent.

Every major political revolution can be said to be caused by the same thing – poor public administration.


The evolution of management principles.Authoritarian or traditional management is the classical model of military governance applied to civilian purposes.Managers under an authoritarian doctrine value order, precision, consistency, and obedience.This authoritarian model has been gradually been replaced with less centralized, more participatory models.Why? Because they work better with sophisticated workers.


Comparing military and civilian principles.No royal road to administrative wisdom. No hard and fast principles. But:

Nine principles of war (U.S. Army).• Objective: Direct every, military operation toward a

clearly defined, decisive and attainable objective.

• Offensive: Seize, retain, and exploit the intiative.

• Mass: Concentrate combat power at the decisive place and time.


Comparing military and civilian principles (contd.)

Nine principles of war (contd.)• Economy of force: Allocate minimum essential

combat power to secondary efforts.• Maneuver: Place the enemy in a position of

disadvantage through the flexible application of combat power.

• Unity of command: For every objective, insure unity of effort under one responsible commander.



Nine principles of war (contd.)• Security: Never permit the enemy to acquire an

advantage.• Surprise: Strike the enemy at a time and/ or place

and in a manner for which he is unprepared.• Simplicity: Prepare clear, uncomplicated plans and

clear, concise orders to ensure thorough undestanding.



Catheryn Seckler-Hudson’s 12 principles of management.

• Policy should be defined and imparted to those who are responsible for its achievement.

• Work should be subdivided, systematically planned, and programmed.

• Tasks and responsibilities should be specifically assigned and understood.




• Appropriate methods and procedures should be developed and utilized by those responsible for policy achievement.

• Appropriate resources in terms of availability and priority should be equitably allocated.

• Authority commensurate with responsibility should be delegated and located as close as possible to the point where operations occur and decisions need to be made.




• Adequate structural relationships through which to operate should be established.

• Effective and qualified leadership should head each organization and each subdivision of the organization.

• Unity of command and purpose should permeate the organization.




• Continuous accountability for utilization of resources and for the production of results should be required.

• Effective coordination of all individual and group efforts within the organization should be achieved.

• Continuous reconsideration of all matters pertaining to the organization should be a part of regular operations.



The military list is more policy oriented, more leadership directed, than the civilian list.

The military approach underlies the reinventing government movement.

What Is Organization Theory?

A proposition or set of propositions that attempts to explain or predict how groups and individuals behave in differing organizational arrangements.


Classic organizational theory.Organizations exist to accomplish production-related and economic goals.

There is one best way to organize for production, and that way can be found through systematic, scientific inquiry.

Production is maximized through specialization and division of labor.

People and organizations act in accordance with rational economic principles.


Theory derived from organizational structures and procedures during the industrial revolution.

Adam Smith and the pin factory.The Wealth of Nations, 1776.

• Laissez-faire.

Economic rationale for the factory system.

All formal organizations are force multipliers.

The Origins of Scientific Management

The basic problem with the traditional hierarchical organization was that it was dependent upon the proper enculturation of individual supervisors at every level for its success.

Changes in the environment can make hierarchical organizations less competent.


Origin of the staff concept to overcome limitations of a single mind and fleeting time.

The general staff concept has been adopted by industrial and governmental organizations.


The influence of Frederick W. Taylor (1911).Father of the scientific management movement.Scientific management principles.

• Replacing traditional, rule of thumb methods of work accomplishment with systematic, more scientific methods of measuring and managing individual work elements;

• The scientific study of the selection and sequential development of workers to ensure optimal placement of works into work roles;

• Obtaining the cooperation of workers to ensure full application of scientific principles; And.

• Establishing logical divisions within work roles and responsibilities between workers and management.


Henri Fayol’s general theory of management (six principles, 1916, 1949).

Technical (production of goods)

Commercial (buying, selling, exchange).

Financial (raising and using capital).

Security (protection of property and people).

Accounting.

Managerial (coordination, control, organization, planning and command of people).


Fayol (contd.).Dominant principle was management.

• Division of work.

• Authority and responsibility.

• Discipline.

• Unity of command.

• Unity of direction.

• Subordination of individual interest to general interest.

• Remuneration of personnel.


Fayol (contd.).Dominant principle was management (contd.).

• Centralization.• Scalar chains (supervisors).• Order.• Equity.• Stability of personnel tenure.• Initiative, and.• Esprit de corps.

The Period of Orthodoxy

Interwar period a period of orthodoxy in public administration.

Work of government could be divided between decision-making and execution.

Administration was a science with discoverable principles.

The Period of OrthodoxyPaul Appleby’s polemic.

Politics and administration inextricably entwined.

Luther Gulick (1937, POSDCORB).Planning (outline and methods).Organizing (structure).Staffing (personnel).Directing (decision-making).Coordinating (task management).Reporting (communication and record-keeping).Budgeting (fiscal planning, accounting, and control).

The Many Meanings of Bureaucracy

First, “the bureaucracy is the totality of government offices or bureaus that constitute the permanent government of the state.

Second, “the bureaucracy” refers to all of the public officials of a government, both high and low, elected and appointed.

Third, bureaucracy is often used as a general invective to refer to any inefficient organization encumbered by red tape.


Fourth, bureaucracy refers to a specific set of structural arrangements (Max Weber).

Bureaucrats are free as individuals, but not as employees.

Hierarchy.

Clearly specified functions.

Freedom of hiring.

Appointment by merit.


Fourth, bureaucracy refers to a specific set of structural arrangements.

Due compensation and due process.

Sole occupation.

Advancement by merit or seniority.

Non-proprietary rights in position.

Strict controls.

Neoclassical Organization Theory

The neoclassical theorists gained their reputation by attacking the classical theories.

Important source of the power and politics, organizational culture, and systems theory.

Herbert Simon.Bounded rationality and satisficing.

Programmed and unprogrammed decision-making.

Management information systems.

Neoclassical Organization Theory

The impact of sociology.Philip Selznick – Organizations are made up of individuals whose goals and aspirations may not coincide with the organization’s.

Modern Structural Organization Theory

Basic assumptionsOrganizations are rational institutions whose primary purpose is to accomplish established objectives through control and coordination.

There is a “best” structure for any organization in light of objectives, environment, products or services, and the technology of the production process.

Specialization and division of labor increase the quality and quantity of production.

Most problems result from structural flaws.

Modern Structural Organization Theory

Mechanistic and organization systems.Mechanistic – traditional bureaucracy, best in stable conditions.

Organic – less rigidity, more participation, and more reliance on workers, best in dynamic conditions.

Systems Theory

Systems theory views an organization as a complex set of dynamically intertwined and interconnected elements, including inputs, processes, outputs, feedback loops, and the environment. Any change in one element causes changes in other elements.

Systems Theory

Cybernetics – Norbert Wiener (1948).

Systems Theory

The learning organization.Built on the doctrines of participation

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

New component technologies (the five disciplines).• Personal mastery.

• Mental models.

• Building shared vision.

• Team learning.

• Systems thinking.

POSC 430 – Fundamentals of Public Administration

Public Financial Management

The Importance of Public Financial Management

The flow and management of funds is the lifeblood of our system of public administration.Many aspects of the design of the American system of public financial management go back to our deepest political traditions and compacts.Others, like the idea of the welfare state, go back only a few generations.Still others, such as the concept of “user pays,” are at their height.

The Importance of Public Financial Management

Think of the system as rather like a huge irrigation system, one which gathers rainfall in large dams, and distributes the flow of water through large and small pipes to many disparate communities, to commercial users, schools and hospitals, to parklands and charities, to businesses and individuals, to seaside areas and deserts.

Six PrinciplesBoston Tea Party.

No taxation without representation.

Principles.Democratic consent.

Equity.

Transparency.

Probity.

Prudence.

Accountability.

Balanced BudgetsA balanced budget is a budget in which receipts are equal to or greater than outlays.A government that has one is financially healthy.There are advantages to an unbalanced budget.

Extra spending can stimulate the economy.But large deficits can devalue the currency, kindle inflation and crowd out capital markets.

All states have balanced budget requirements. The federal government does not.

The Fiscal Year“Fiscal” deals with taxation, public revenues, or public debt.The fiscal year is a 12-month accounting period without regard to a calendar year.The federal government’s fiscal year starts on October 1 and ends September 30. The current federal fiscal year is FY 2008.California’s fiscal year starts on July 1 and ends June 30. The current state fiscal year is FY 2008.

The Budget GameIn the United States, the budget game is a major preoccupation in politics, occupying the time and energies of thousands of lobbyists, politicians, and officials in the national capital, and fewer but similarly motivated categories of people in state capitals.

Why? The budget is the biggest game in town.

The Politics of the Budgetary Process

The emphasis on the “horse trading” nature of the budgetary process is the counterpart of Lindblom’s emphasis on the incremental nature of decision-making.


A process that concentrates on the increment is preferable to one that attempts to review the whole budget because it moderates conflict, reduces search costs, stabilizes budgetary roles and expectations, reduces the amount of time that busy officials must spend on budgeting, and increases the likelihood that important political values will be taken into account.

Allen Schick.


Table S–1. U.S. Budget Totals

(Dollar amounts in billions) 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

Budget Totals:

Receipts 2,154 2,285 2,416 2,590 2,714 2,878 3,035

Outlays 2,472 2,709 2,770 2,814 2,922 3,061 3,240

Deficit −318 −423 −354 −223 −208 −183 −205

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) 12,290 13,030 13,761 14,521 15,296 16,102 16,955

Budget Totals as a Percent of GDP:

Receipts 17.5% 17.5% 17.6% 17.8% 17.7% 17.9% 17.9%

Outlays 20.1% 20.8% 20.1% 19.4% 19.1% 19.0% 19.1%

Deficit −2.6% −3.2% −2.6% −1.5% −1.4% −1.1% −1.2%

The Politics of the Budgetary Process (California)

Figure-SUM-022007-08 Revenue Sources(Dollars in Millions)

General Special Change

Fund Funds From

2006-07

Personal Income Tax $55,236 $1,589 $56,825 $3,160

Sales Tax 28,820 5,757 34,577 1,572

Corporation Tax 11,055 - 11,055 338

Highway Users Taxes - 3,546 3,546 60

Motor Vehicle Fees 26 5,506 5,532 278

Insurance Tax 2,181 - 2,181 15

Liquor Tax 324 - 324 3

Tobacco Taxes 120 981 1,101 11

Other 3,477 9,437 12,914 2,052

Total $101,239 $26,816 $128,055 $7,489

Note: Numbers may not add due to rounding.

Total

Figure-SUM-032007-08 Total Expenditures by Agency(Dollars in Millions)

General Special Bond

Fund Funds Funds

Legislative, Judicial, Executive $3,792 $2,045 $427 $6,264

State and Consumer Services 577 806 24 1,407

Business, Transportation & Housing 1,567 8,640 3,078 13,285

Resources 1,674 2,060 1,790 5,524

Environmental Protection 90 1,046 696 1,832

Health and Human Services 29,719 8,130 158 38,007

Corrections and Rehabilitation 9,836 22 - 9,858

K-12 Education 41,341 93 3,990 45,424

Higher Education 11,980 42 2,957 14,979

Labor and Workforce Development 103 321 - 424

General Government 1,579 6,008 952 8,539

Total $102,258 $29,213 $14,072 $145,543

Note: Numbers may not add due to rounding.

Totals


The danger in elevating horse trading to an art and a science is the loss of direction.Three conditions are essential for incremental policy-making to be adequate:

The results of present policies must in the mean be adequate.There must be a high degree of continuity in the nature of problems.There must be a high degree of continuity in the available means for dealing with problems.


Developing countries cannot pursue incremental policies, nor should the U.S. when changes in values make formerly acceptable policies untenable.

Washington gridlock is certainly one outcome.


Budget process resembles riverboat poker game.Administrative agencies at one table pursuing zero-sum game.Congress people at another table watching the other table and their backs.Lobbyists linger in background signing up members of Congress for persuasion and deals.Press corps at the bar.Think tanks outside on the deck.Academic theorists in steerage.

Budget Maximizing BureaucratBluff and overstatement are key tactical tools of departments and spending advocates during budget processes.Aware that their bids will be subject to some degree of cutback, bidders build in a protect buffer to allow for it.There are rules in budget preparation including allowable inflation indices, appropriate cost estimates, and appropriate program documentation.

Budget Maximizing BureaucratNo limits on the ambitions of bureaucrats who wish to maximize their agency’s budgets and their program’s importance.

“Mine is bigger than yours.”

The misrepresentation of budget estimates is a tool used by both program advocates and program opponents. That is why Congress prepares its own version of the budget.

Budget Maximizing Bureaucrat

The budget game consists of two fields of play:

Defending your clientele against revenue hikes such as tax increases.Seeking to attract government spending programs that will benefit your clientele.

Game so skillful that sometimes difficult to categorize action as revenue or expenditure.

Budget Maximizing BureaucratExample: government housing assistance to low-paid workers is an expenditure.Housing assistance to high-paid workers is a revenue exemption or tax expenditure.The interplay between the President and the Congress represents the ultimate showdown in the budget game.The budget game should never be ignored or underestimated by public administrators.

Budgeting Theory and PracticeBudgeting is the single most important decision making process in public institutions.

The budget is a jurisdiction’s most important reference document.

Budgets simultaneously record policy decision outcomes, cite policy priorities and program objectives, and delineate a government’s total service effort.

Budgeting Theory and PracticeA public budget has four basic dimensions:

A political instrument that allocates scarce public resources among the social and economic needs of a jurisdiction.A budget is a managerial or administrative instrument.

• It specifies the ways and means of providing public programs and services.

• It establishes the costs of programs and the criteria by which these programs are evaluated for efficiency and effectiveness.

• It ensures that programs will be reviewed or evaluated at least once during the budget year or budget cycle.

Budgeting Theory and Practice

A public budget has four basic dimensions (contd.):

A budget is an economic instrument that can direct a jurisdiction’s economic growth and development.A budget is an accounting instrument that holds government officials responsible for the expenditure of the funds with which they have been entrusted.

Budgeting Theory and Practice

U.S. Budget, FY 2008.http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2008/.

California Budget, FY 2008.

http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/.

Kern County Budget, FY 2008.http://www.co.kern.ca.us/cao/budget/fy0708/rec/.

City of Bakersfield Budget, FY 2008.http://www.ci.bakersfield.ca.us/administration/citymanager/budget/index.htm.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2008/

http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/

http://www.co.kern.ca.us/cao/budget/fy0708/rec/

http://www.ci.bakersfield.ca.us/administration/citymanager/budget/index.htm

http://www.ci.bakersfield.ca.us/administration/citymanager/budget/index.htm

The Taft Commission

Prior to 1900, the processes of public financial management in America lacked overall objectives.

In 1912, the Taft Commission recommended a national budgeting system to deal with the increasing complexity of the budget process.

The Taft Commission

William F. Willoughby (1918) argued that budget reform at the state level would involve three trends.

How budgets would advance and provide for popular control.How budgets would enhance legislative and executive cooperation.How budgets would ensure administrative and management efficiency.

The Taft Commission

The Budget and Accounting Act (1921).Bureau of the Budget – In Treasury.The General Accounting Office.

Initially, budgetary and compliance procedures remained simple using line-item budgeting. Compliance focused on whether expenditures matched allocations.Budgetary theory remained inadequate.

The Influence of KeynesJohn Maynard Keynes (1883-1946).

Demonstrated how government spending could be critical to managing the economy by stimulating demand when resources were underutilized and unemployment was high.

Created notion of budgetary policy as an instrument by which a nation could execute macroeconomic policy.

Justification for deficit spending to stimulate the economy.

The Influence of Keynes

Aaron Wildavsky (1930-1993) highlighted the extent to which budgeting was a political and economic rather than a mechanical process.

The Objectives of Budgeting and Revenue Generation

Allocation – ensuring that an appropriate level of funding flows into sectors of the economy where it is required;

Distribution – ensuring that the balance in public funding between regions, between classes of people in society, between public and private sectors, and between government and business reflects public policy;


Stabilization – using public spending to stabilize the macroeconomy (or in some cases part of it) as prescribe by Keynes; and.

Growth – using the power of government spending to facilitate economic growth and wealth creation.


Of course, the objectives are often not clear or agree upon.

Supply side economics.

Two Types of BudgetMost common – operating budget.

Short-term plan for managing the resources necessary to carry out a program.

Usually developed each fiscal year.

Capital budget.Planning for large expenditures for capital items.

Usually cover five- to ten-year periods.

Federal government has never used.

Waves of Innovation in Budget Making

The structure and format of government budgets have been the subject of successive waves of innovation throughout the twentieth century.

Why? The budget is the focal point of public administration.

Executive Budget

The first conceptual breakthrough was the conception that there should be a government budget at all.Legislative budgeting largely ad hoc.A lot of room for incompetence and corruption.An executive budget is both a technical process and a physical thing.

Executive Budget

Human Resource Management

Lecture 10 – Administrative Processes in Government

Keynote: The Adventures of a Young Man as a Personnel Technician

Read Jay Shafritz’s story.Librarian.

Personnel technician.

Recruitment and examination technician.

Graduate assistant.

Assistant professor of public administration.

The Personnel Function

The function of a personnel staff, or even an entire personnel agency, is service to line management.

Typical services include recruiting, selection, training, evaluation, compensation, discipline, and termination.

Personnel is a collective term for all of the employees in an organization. Word is of military origin.

The Personnel FunctionPersonnel is also commonly used to refer to the personnel management function or the organizational unit responsible for administering personnel programs.Personnel administration – technical aspects of maintaining a full complement of employees within an organization.Personnel management – also concerns itself with how motivated and productive the personnel are.

The Personnel Function

The personnel function is currently evolving from a clerical function into an in-house consultant to management on labor relations, job redesign, EEO provisions, organization development, productivity measurement, and other pressing concerns.

In the majority of U.S. jurisdictions this transformation is only just underway.

The Personnel FunctionThe key problem for personnel management is the balancing of several contradictory values.

Merit or neutral competence, executive leadership, political accountability, managerial flexibility, representativeness.

Maximizing some of these values requires arrangements poorly suited for other values.These matters are further complicated by the rise of public-sector collective bargaining, which emphasizes employer-employee codetermination of personnel policy.

Recruitment.Recruitment is the process of advertising job openings and encouraging candidates to apply.Designed to provide organizations with an adequate number of viable candidates to make a selection.The main objective: the generation of an adequate number of qualified candidates.Not all positions are open to entry-level applicants.

Merit selection.Selection is the oldest function of public personnel administration.Pendleton Act mandated that all examinations for merit be practical in character.Primacy of practicality often breached in practice but reaffirmed in Griggs v. Duke Power Company (1971). “Test must measure the person for the job, not the job for the person.” Extended to public sector in Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972.

Merit selection (contd.).Job relatedness is now the paramount consideration in developing a selection device.The legality of any test hinges on its capability in predicting job success.Validation is the process of demonstrating how well the testing device actually can predict success on the job.In the United States, every important public issue becomes a legal problem.

Position Classification and PayExample: A large municipal hospital on the East Cost of the United States once employed a janitor to perform brain surgery. Moral: position classification systems can create much dysfunctional and sometimes silly activity.Position classifications are formal job descriptions that organize all jobs in a civil service merit system into classes on the basis of duties and responsibilities, for the purposes of delineating authority, establishing chains of command, and providing equitable salary scales.

Position Classification and Pay

Position classification principles.Positions and not individuals should be classified.

The duties and responsibilities pertaining to a position constitute the outstanding characteristics that distinguish it from, or mark its similarity to, other positions.

Qualifications with respect to education, experience, knowledge, and skill necessary for the performance of certain duties are determined by the nature of those duties.

Position Classification and Pay

Position classification principles.The individual characteristics of an employee occupying a position should have no bearing on the classification of the position.

Persons holding positions in the same class should be considered equally qualified for any other position in that class.

Position Classification and PayPrinciples and practices of position classification go back to the scientific management movement before World War I. They have not been adapted since.A classification plan is nothing more than a time and motion study for the governmental function.Duties divided into positions to prevent duplication and promote efficiency.Position is simply a set of duties and responsibilities, not a person.

Position Classification and PayBasic doctrines established before World War II. Current management science and theory ignored.Workforce no longer the same.Most of labor force are highly skilled technical and professional personnel whose duties do not fit in a classification.Even people at the bottom of the organizational hierarchy now have enough education and training to resist being treated like interchangeable parts.

Performance Appraisal

Performance appraisal is the title usually given to the formal method by which an organization documents the work performance of its employees.

Most performance evaluation systems fail because of inherent subjectivity.

Performance AppraisalFive functions.

Changing or modifying dysfunctional work behavior;Communicating to employees managerial perceptions of the quality and quantity of their work;Assessing the future potential of an employee to recommend appropriate training or developmental assignments;Assessing whether the present duties of an employee’s position have an appropriate compensation level; andProviding a documented record for disciplinary and separation actions.

Performance AppraisalFive basic types of appraisal.

Supervisory ratings: most common, supervisor evaluates performance of subordinates.Self-ratings: individuals rate themselves using a standard form, narrative report, or work product.Peer ratings: each individual rates every employee in his or her division or office at a parallel level in the organization.Subordinate ratings: subordinates rate the performance of a supervisor.Group ratings: an independent rater, usually an expert, rates the performance of the entire work unit based on selected interviews or on-the-job visitations.

Performance Appraisal

The problem arises in the varying standards of supervisors. The good ones will do their subordinates a disservice by being honest.

Seldom an adequate incentive in a public system for supervisor to be honest.

Result: inflated ratings.

Training

Training has frequently been the victim of organizational neglect.

In a budget squeeze, training funds are cut in favor of mandated examination and training functions.

Government Employees Training Act not passed until 1958.

Most training programs skimp on evaluation. To properly evaluate, standards for performance have to be set prior to training.

Training

The essential question is whether or not a training effort has met its objective.

Training system.Training needs assessment.

Training program design.

Training program delivery.

Training program evaluation.

Training

Training formats.Skills training.

Coaching.

Formal or informal classroom instruction.

Sensitivity or “T-group” training.

Job rotation.

Special conferences and seminars.

Modeling, games, and seminars.

Exchange and sabbatical programs.

Training

All forms of training are limited by the availability of funding.

Remember, no statement of training accomplishment in an annual report can honestly be made unless it is supported by a sophisticated measure of evaluation.

Management Development

Management development is a hybrid of training and selection.

Any conscious effort on the part of an organization to provide a manager with the skills needed for future duties such as rotational assignments or formal education experiences constitute management development.


The secondary focus of management development is selection.

The range of experiences, both on or off the job, that managers are expose to over the years leaves records in terms of specific scores or subjective evaluations upon which future advancements may be based.


How does an organization establish criteria for selected inexperienced managers for development?

Assessment centers. Management simulations and stress situations.

The Bittersweet Heritage of Civil Service Reform

The perversion of most civil service merit systems for private, administrative, and partisan ends is one of the worst kept, yet least written about, secrets in government.

Oddly, the perversion of merit systems is a normal, even healthy, condition. The perversion may be essential if actual merit is to be rewarded.

Netherworld of Public Personnel Administration

Public personnel merit systems operate at three levels.

Formal system where most employees enter, perform, and advance on the basis of merit and the design of the system.

Political rewards system.

Scrupulous abuse to increase managerial flexibility.

From Spoils to Merit

Civil service reform movement.Jefferson and philosophically hostile bureaucracy. Generally refused to remove appointees except for “malconduct”.

Jackson and the spoils system.

Advent of modern merit systems at once, a political, economic, and moral development.

The Pendleton ActPassage of the Act aided by assassination of Garfield and Republican losses in 1882 election.The Act created the Civil Service Commission as the personnel management arm of the U.S. government. Subject to the administrative discretion of the president.Open competitive exams, probationary periods, and protection from political pressures.Not a total victory for reformers. Initially only covered 10 percent of positions. Gradual incremental increase in coverage.

The Pendleton Act

State and Local Reform

Influenced by Pendleton Act, state and local governments began to institute merit systems.

But, a very slow process. First two adoptions (New York and Massachusetts occurred) within two years, but it was 20 years before another state did it.

It was not until well after World War II that most states installed merit systems.

State and Local Reform

City adoption also gradual. Now covers 88 percent of cities, 90 percent of counties.

But on the books does not necessarily mean effective implementation.

Rise and Fall of the Civil Service Commission

Bipartisan commissions became common.At local level, commission became politically and administratively independent of the executive.

Goal: defeating influence of partisan spoils.

City manager movement challenged rationale for the commission.But not all cities adopted city manager form of government.

Rise and Fall of the Civil Service Commission

Merit system has taken hold in most jurisdictions because:

Complexity of modern local government increased requirements for greater technical training.

Federal government threw its weight behind the development of forceful merit systems.

Problem: Modern elected executives and public managers need more flexibility than is provided by an independent civil service commission.

Civil Service Reform Act of 1978

Jimmy Carter.Office of Personnel Management.

Merit Systems Protection Board.

Senior Executive Service.

Changes more cosmetic than real.

Civil Service Reform Act of 1978

Reinventing Public Personnel Administration

Reinventing government.Deregulated personnel policy by eliminating the Federal Personnel Manual.Given all departments and agencies authority to conduct their own recruiting and examinations.Dramatically simplified classification system.Allowed agencies to design own performance management and reward systems.Sought to reduce by half the time required to terminate federal managers and employees for cause.

Patronage Appointments

The Plum Book.Presidential appointments at his or her discretion. 40,000 resumes every four years. Most thrown out. Positions require “patron.”

Patronage Appointments

Constitutionality of patronage.Patronage unconstitutional (Rutan v. the Republican Party 1990). Reality: Still exists.

Veteran’s preferences.First Act 1865, disability.

Superceded in 1919, honorably discharged.

1944, five point bonus on exams.

Labor Relations


Public Sector Labor Relations

Unions are groups of employees who create a formal organization (the union) to represent their interests before management.

Labor relations is the term for all of the interactions between the union leaders (representing the employees) and management (representing the corporation or jurisdiction).


Reasonable people might be both optimistic and pessimistic about the role of public employee unions.

Pessimistic because of the skill of public employee unions to get crippling pay raises without tradeoff increases in productivity.

Optimistic because unions offer hope of replacing civil service commissions as an instrument for reform of merit and source of leadership in the fight for increased productivity.


Why have the unions been so successful?

They have been better politicians than elected political executives.

Acceptance of a militant postures arose directly out of civil rights movements and civil disobedience.

The AFL-CIO

The American Federation of Labor – Congress of Industrial Organizations is a voluntary federation of over a hundred national and international labor unions.

A union of unions.

Created by merger of AFL and CIO in 1955.

The AFL-CIO

Each member union remains autonomous, conducting its own affairs in the manner determined by its own members.

Although voluntary, AFL-CIO plays a role in establishing overall labor policy.

Administrative AgenciesIn the context of labor relations, an administrative agency is any impartial private or government organization that oversees or facilitates the labor relations process.Generally headed by a board of three to five members.Boards make rulings on unfair labor practices, the appropriateness of bargaining units, the proper interpretation of a contract, or the legitimacy of the scope of bargaining.

Administrative Agencies

Administrative agencies also oversee authorization elections and certify the winners as the exclusive bargaining agents for all of the employees in a bargaining unit.

Private sector – National Labor Relations Board (1935).

Administrative Agencies

Federal government – Federal Labor Relations Authority (1978).

State government – Public Employment Relations Boards.

In the public sector, binding arbitration more likely to be used than strikes.

Collective Bargaining

Collective bargaining is bargaining on behalf of a group of employees as opposed to individual bargaining where each worker only represents him- or herself.

Term covers the negotiating process that leads to a contract as well as the subsequent administration and interpretation of the contract.


Four basic stages to collective bargaining.The establishment of organizations for bargaining;

The formulation of demands;

The negotiation of demands; and

The administration of the labor agreement.


The predominant public sector labor relations model comes from the private sector.

But the fit far from perfect.

The process uses the adversarial model, which assumes that someone must win and someone lose.

Collective BargainingOperates on the assumption that the outcome of bargaining will reflect the relative bargaining strength of the two parties.Rules established and enforced by NLRB.Workers retain the right to strike and to bargain as equals with management.Assumes that the free market imposes ultimate harmony of interest. Neither party wants the demise of the employer.


Model problematic for public sector.Unions not the equal of governments.

Public sector negotiations must restrict the scope of bargaining.

Outcomes not based on relative strengths.

Strikes occur for largely political reasons.

Public sector fragmented with regard to models of collective bargaining.

Impasse Resolution

An impasse is a condition that exists during labor-management negotiations when either party feels that no further progress can be made toward a settlement.

Impasse Resolution

The most techniques for breaking the impasse are mediation, fact-finding, and arbitration.Mediation or conciliation is any attempt by an impartial third party to help settle disputes.

Mediator has no power but persuasion. Conciliation is more passive, mediation more active.

Impasse Resolution

Fact-finding is an impartial review of the issues in a labor dispute by a specially appointed third party, whether a single individual, panel, or board.

Fact finder holds formal or informal hearings and submits a report, which may contain recommendations.

Impasse ResolutionArbitration –method of dispute settlement by having an impartial third party (arbitrator) hold a formal hearing and render a decision that may or may not binding on both parties.

Arbitrator may be an individual or uneven numbered board. May contain representatives of disputants.Compulsory arbitration is arbitration under a legal requirement.Final or last offer arbitration.Binding arbitration frequently used in public sector collective bargaining in place of a strike, but can create problems.

Strikes

A strike is a mutual agreement among workers to a temporary work stoppage to obtain – or to resist – a change in their working conditions.Considered an essential element in the collective bargaining process.The use of strikes has declined. Concerns about impact on unstable economy.

Why Strikes OccurWorkers will not work after a contract has expired.Union leader is often in a complicated political position. Expectation gap.A strike may be used as a political weapon against public officials.Management’s efforts to provoke strikes at a time when unions are relatively weak.Economic positions of the two sides.

Two Famous Public Strikes

Boston police strike of 1919. Higher wages and right to form a union affiliated with AFL. Public opposition to compromising public safety sank the strike and set back public sector unionization.

Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (1981). (95% went on strike). Cripple air travel. President Reagan fired all 11,000 controllers. Strike broken by only president who was a labor union leader.

Leadership


The Functions of Leadership in Organization

“Leadership is a process of social influence in which one person is able to enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task.”Key points:

Leadership is a group activity.Leadership is based on social influence.Leadership revolves around a common task.

The Functions of Leadership in Organization

The specification seems simple, but the reality of leadership is complex.

Intrapersonal factors (i.e., thoughts and emotions) interact with;

Interpersonal processes (i.e., attraction, communication, influence) to have effects on;

A dynamic external environment.

Organizational Functions

Groups and organizations are by nature inefficient.

If one person could accomplish a job, the creation or assignment of a group would not be warranted.

Groups require coordination of the efforts of their members.

Organizational FunctionsThe time and energy spent in that coordination are diverted from productive activity.Organizations, which are groups of groups, demand even greater resources applied to coordination.But, most of the productive activities in society cannot be accomplished by individuals.Organizations are essential to the realization of the goals of productive endeavor, and leaders are essential to organizational coordination.

The Organizational Functions of Leadership

Leadership is a process of social influence through which one person is able to enlist the aid of others in reaching a goal.


In an orderly, structured, and well-understood environment, the primary responsibilities are guidance and motivation.

Assign people to tasks or responsibilities, to outline what is expected, and to facilitate and encourage goal attainment.


In a less orderly environment calling for external adaptability, the crucial functions are problem solving and innovation.

The leader must create the kind of atmosphere that encourages sensitivity, flexibility, and creativity.

The leader must be a change agent.

Leading for Performance

Political context, governance arrangements, strategic thinking, culture all impact performance.But, in practice, these are parts of the context in which the public sector manager has to operate.Performance management begins with leadership.


Defining leadership.The job of the leader of any organization is to get people to do things they have not done before, to do things that are not routine, and to take risks for the common good.The most basic task of the leader is to create organization out of disorder, to make people more capable as a cohesive group than they are as unorganized individuals.

Leading for PerformanceDefining leadership.

Leadership is the exercise of authority, whether formal or informal, in directing and coordinating the work of others.The best leaders use both formal and informal authority.Five major bases of power:

• Expert power – knowledge.• Referent power – identification.• Reward power – exchange.• Legitimate power – authority.• Coercive power – punishment.


Leadership and management.Management involves power (usually formal authority) bestowed on the occupant of a position by a higher organizational authority.

• Responsibility and accountability.

Leadership cannot be bestowed, it can only be demonstrated.

Leading for PerformanceLeadership and management.

Legitimacy arises from position in an organization and most frequently describes managers.Charisma arises from personality and most frequently describes leaders.The three essential functions of leaders (Chester Barnard).

• To provide a system of communication;• To promote the securing of essential efforts; and• To formulate and define the purposes and goals of an

organization (Vision).

Leading for Peformance

Trait theories.Assumption: leaders possess traits that are fundamentally different from followers.

Trait theory has largely fallen out of favor.

Leadership may be modified by type of interaction and by situation.

Biggest criticism was the inability to identify the traits of “born” leaders.

Leading for PerformanceTrait Theory

Traits of successful leaders.• Adaptable to situations • Alert to social environment • Ambitious and achievement-orientated • Assertive • Cooperative • Decisive • Dependable • Dominant (desire to influence others) • Energetic (high activity level) • Persistent • Self-confident • Tolerant of stress • Willing to assume responsibility

Leading for PeformanceTrait theory.

Skills of successful leaders.• Clever (intelligent) • Conceptually skilled • Creative • Diplomatic and tactful • Fluent in speaking • Knowledgeable about group task • Organized (administrative ability) • Persuasive • Socially skilled


Transactional leadership (Exchange).How is leadership established and exerted?

Transactional leadership occurs when the leaders rewards or disciplines the follower based on the adequacy of the follower’s performance (Burns and Bass).

• Contingent reward.

• Management-by-exception.

Leading for PerformanceSubject Leader Manager

Essence Change Stability

Focus Leading people Managing work

Have Followers Subordinates

Seeks Vision Objectives

Detail Sets direction Plans detail

Power Personal charisma Formal authority

Appeal to Heart Head

Energy Passion Control

Dynamic Proactive Reactive

Persuasion Sell Tell

Style Transformational Transactional

Exchange Excitement for work Money for work

Risk Takes risks Minimises risks

Rules Breaks rules Makes rules

Conflict Uses conflict Avoids conflict

Direction New roads Existing roads

Blame Takes blame Blames others

http://changingminds.org/disciplines/leadership/styles/transformational_leadership.htm

http://changingminds.org/disciplines/leadership/styles/transactional_leadership.htm


Contingency Theory.Many factors may influence a leader’s style.

• The type, structure, size, and purpose of the organization;

• The external environment in which the organization functions;

• The orientation, values, goals, and expectations of the leader, his superiors, and subordinates; and

• The expert or professional knowledge required for the position.


Contingency theory.Different leadership styles will differ in their effects in different situations.

The situation, not traits or styles, determines whether a particular leaders or style will be effective.

The debate is over whether you change the leader or the situation.


Transformational leadership.A transformational leader is one with the ability to change an imbedded organizational culture by creating a new vision for the organization and marshalling the appropriate support to make that vision the new reality.

George Patton (General), Lee Iacocca (CEO), Edward G. Rendell (Mayor)


Transformational leadership.Characteristics (Bass).

• Charismatic leadership.

• Inspirational motivation.

• Intellectual stimulation.

• Individualized consideration.

Ironically, a lot like trait theories.

Too Much Leadership

Structural rigidity often causes managers to overmanage – to lead too much.

“Micromanage” is the pejorative term for supervising too closely.

Too Much Leadership

Any manager may be guilty of micromanagement for refusing to allow subordinates to have any real authority or responsibility.Managers then have no time to develop long-term strategy or overall vision.Legislators are particularly guilty of micromanagement.

Too Much Leadership

Micromanagement will not make a competent employee more competent; it only makes things worse by wasting time, damaging interpersonal relationships, by demonstrating the incompetence of the supervisors, and by distracting managers from activities to improve efficiency.

Too many managers for the nature of the organization or the task can lead to micromanagement.

Moral Leadership

“If the leader is just an expediter of what other people want, a resource for their use, the people are not being led but service” – Garry Wills.

Moving people in new directions – taking them places where they did not know they wanted or needed to go – that is the essence of leadership.

Moral Leadership

The Bully Pulpit.Great presidents have traditionally used their bully pulpit as “leaders of thought at time times when certain historic ideas in the life of the nation had to be clarified.” – FDR.

Rhetorical leadership.Today’s presidents use speech-making to exhort the public to support policies to move public opinion.

Moral Leadership

The Execucrats.Career executives/ bureaucrats who are neither elected nor appointed to office.

Essential element in the policy process.• Technical expertise is greater.

• Managers who must implement.

Because of inherent disinterestedness, nonpartisanship, and technical authority, they often have more moral authority than elected or appointed officials.

Moral Leadership

The Execucrats.A function of their political and leadership skills interacting with a specific situation that their technical expertise and personality can influence.

INST 275 – Administrative Processes

in Government

Lecture 9 – Leadership and Decision Making

Introduction

Leaders of governments, major business corporations, and other large organizations typically make policy decisions with the expectation that the outcomes will be sufficiently successful to achieve fairly well the objectives they have in mind.

But, all too often they are bitterly disappointed.

Introduction

Models of decision-making.Rational model.

Political model.

Process model.

Garbage can model.

Rational ModelGrounded in goals/objectives, alternatives, consequences, and optimality.Assumptions.

Complete information.One correct conception of the problem.

Steps.Define problem.Determine goals and objectives.Identify all alternatives.Identify consequences of alternatives.Weigh the costs and benefits of each consequence.Select the alternative that produces the most optimal outcome.

Advantage – Logical, sequential approach.Disadvantage – Assumes no intrinsic biases.

Political ModelConsiders preconceived notions that decision-makers bring to the table.Assumes decision-makers are motivated by and act on their own needs and perceptions.Decision-making involves a cycle of bargaining as each decision-maker attempts to get his or her approach adopted. Attempt to sway powerful stakeholders.Assumes incomplete information and does not focus on optimal outcome.Advantages – represents subjective nature of decision-making and may minimize conflict.Disadvantage – does not necessarily produce the best solution, only the most political acceptable one.

Process ModelDecisions are made on the basis of standard operating procedures or pre-established guidelines within the organization.The organization of past, present, and future events.Key value is conformity. If in doubt, conform to pre-existing standard.Advantages – Adds predictability to decision-making process.Disadvantages – Sacrifices flexibility to predictability, can leave the organization vulnerable to rapid external change.

Garbage Can ModelMost appropriate where technologies are unclear, participant involvement fluctuates, and choices are inconsistent and not well-defined. (Ill-structured problems).Decision opportunity is a garbage can into which many types of problems and solutions are dropped independently.Linkages among problems, solutions, and decision-makers are often determined by both chance and necessity.Advantages – Real world representation of non-rational manner in which decisions are often made.Disadvantages – Not the most efficient way to make a decision.

IntroductionSeveral different causes contribute to unsuccessful outcomes.

Unforeseeable obstacles to effective implementation (countermoves) and uncontrollable events.Leader’s oversimplified beliefs and ideological stereotypes.Ambiguity of available evidence.Misleading information.Bad luck.

Introduction

But one of the key factors: poor quality of the decision making procedures used either to arrive at a new policy or to reaffirm the existing policy.

Defective procedures do not guarantee a bad outcome, but the likelihood is substantially less if sound procedures of information search, appraisal, and planning are used.

IntroductionAmong the defective pathways that lead to disastrous policy decisions are those that fail to correct avoidable errors – rectifiable misperceptions, refutable false assumptions, resolvable ignorance, and remediable lapses in judgment concerning the probability or magnitude of expected costs or benefits.An organization’s success or failure, indeed its very survival, depends in large part on the leadership it is able to attract.

Introduction

IntroductionKey assumptions of the decision-making model.

The quality of decision procedures used to arrive at a fundamental policy decision is one of the major determinants of a successful outcome.Most top-level leaders are capable of carrying-out the procedures that are essential for high-quality policymaking.Policymakers generally make no effort to use high-quality procedures for arriving at a policy decision if they regard the issue as unimportant.If one of the constraints is critical, policymakers will give the constraint priority even if the issue is very important.

IntroductionProcedural criteria for effective decision-making

Surveys a wide range of objectives.Canvasses a wide range of alternatives.Intensively searchers for new information relevant to the alternatives.Correctly assimilates and takes account of new information or expert judgments.Reconsiders the positive and negative consequences of alternatives originally regarded as unacceptable.Carefully examines costs and risks of negative consequences.Makes detailed provisions for implementation and monitoring.

IntroductionSymptoms of poor decision-making.

Gross omissions in surveying objectives.Gross omissions in surveying alternatives.Poor information search.Selective bias in processing information at hand.Failure to reconsider originally rejected alternatives.Failure to examine major costs and risks of the preferred choice.Failure to work out detailed implementation, monitoring and contingency plans.

Vigilant problem solving

Vigilant Problem Solving


Challenge: Threat or opportunity.(e.g., crisis posing threat to vital interests)

Vigilant Problem SolvingStep 1: Formulating the problem.

Q.1 What requirements should be met:• Dangers to be averted.• Gains to be attained.• Costs to be kept to tolerable levels?

Q. 2 What seems to be the best direction of solution?• Top-of-the-head survey of alternatives.


Step 2. Using informational resources:Q.3 What prior information can be recalled or retrieved?Q.4 What new information should be obtained?

• Expert’s forecasts.• Intelligence reports, etc.


Step 3. Analyzing and reformulating:Q.5 Any additions or changes in the requirements?

Q. 6 Any additional alternatives?

Q. 7 What additional information might reduce uncertainties?


Step 4. Evaluating and selecting:Q. 8 What are the pros and cons for each alternative?

Q. 9 Which alternative appears to be best?

Q. 10 Any requirements unmet?• If so, can they be relaxed or changed? If not, might a

modification be better?


Step 4: Evaluating and selecting (contd.):Q.11 How can potential costs and risks be minimized?

Q. 12 What additional plans are needed for implementation, monitoring, and contingencies?


Steps 1 through 4 are cyclical. Information feeds back and forth through all of the steps.

The cycling should also lead to reconsider previous rejected alternatives to make sure you are not missing something critical.

Vigilant Problem SolvingDeciding after adequate search, appraisal, and planning – manifested by absence of the following defects in decision-making procedures:

Gross omissions in surveying objectives.Gross omissions in surveying alternatives.Poor information search.Selective bias in processing information at hand.Failure to reconsider originally rejected alternatives.Failure to examine major costs and risks of the preferred choice.Failure to work out detailed implementation, monitoring and contingency plans.


ClosureInternal consolidation of the choice.

• Bolstering it by playing up the advantages and playing down the disadvantages.

• Soliciting supportive information.• Refuting unwelcome information about drawbacks.


Closure.Social commitment to the choice:

• Announcing it to interested parties.

• Promoting it, especially among implementers and policy evaluators who are unenthusiastic.

Decision constraints

Cognitive ConstraintsLimited time.Perceived limitations of available resources for information search and appraisal.Multiple tasks.Perplexing complexity of the issue.Perceived lack of dependable knowledge.Ideological commitments.

Cognitive Decision Rules

Availability.

Satisficing.

Analogizing.

Nutshell briefing.

Operational code (standard operating procecures).

Affiliative ConstraintsNeed to maintain:

Power.Status.Compensation.Social support.

Need for acceptability of new policy within the organization.

Affiliative Decision Rules

Avoid punishment.

“Rig” acceptance.

Exercise one-upmanship in the power struggle.

Groupthink: preserve group harmony.

Egocentric (Self-Serving and Emotive Constraints)

Strong personal motive:Greed, desire for fame, etc.

Arousal of an emotional need: e.g., anger, elation.

Emotional stress of decisional conflict.

Egocentric (Self-Serving and Emotive Decision Rules)

Personal aggrandizement: “What’s in it for me?”Angry retaliation.Audacity: “Can do!”Elated choice: “Wow! Grab it!”Defensive avoidance: procrastinate, pass-the-buck, or bolster.Hypervigilant escape: “Get the hell out fast!”

Policy Analysis and Program Evaluation


Stages of the Policy Process

Problem Definition and Agenda Setting.Key actors: policy entrepreneurs, elected executives, interest groups

Secondary actors: public administrators, legislators

Policy Formulation.Key actors: Public administrators, policy experts, legislators

Secondary actors: Elected executive and legislative staff.

Stages of the Policy Process

Policy legitimation.Key Actors: Legislators, elected executives, judges.

Policy implementation.Key actors: Public administrators.

Secondary actors: Elected executives, legislators, interest groups.

Policy evaluation.Key actors: Policy experts, public administrators.

Secondary actors: elected officials.

Agenda Setting

Key questions:What is the agenda setting process like?

What is the role of the public administrator in this set of decisions?

What can and should that role be?

Agenda Setting

What is the agenda-setting process like?The list of issues up for public consideration at a particular time.

Not that neat. Actually an array of agendas crosscut by separation of powers and federalism.

Systemic versus routine agendas.• Systemic – list of larger concerns of society.

• Routine – ideas and procedures of government itself.

Agenda Setting

What roles do public administrators play?Administrators do not dominate the process at every stage or from beginning to end.At the level of the systemic agenda as society considers various problems and issues, administrators play a secondary role.At the level of the routine agenda as society focuses on technical matters, administrators play a more prominent role.

Agenda Setting

What roles do public administrators play?Phases of the process: at the stage where issues are placed on the agenda, administrators play a secondary role.

Phases of the process: at the stage where alternatives are developed, administrators play a more significant role.

But, you cannot assume sharp distinctions.

Policy process more like a garbage can: the process is haphazard.

Agenda Setting

Summary: The agenda setting process is really a set of processes, and the administrative role is actually an amalgam of varying and complex roles.

Agenda Setting: Guidelines for Effective Practice

Effective administrative participation in agenda setting varies with context.

Public administrator should be prepared to play major roles in routine agenda setting.

While administrators are unlikely to be the main actors on the systemic agenda, they can fulfill important roles by stimulating and managing creativity in administrative institutions (diversity, external interaction, providing structures for “voice”, avoiding reactive policy, and acting as policy entrepreneurs.


Effective administrative participation in agenda setting varies with context.

Administrative roles and their effectiveness differ by time, jurisdiction and substantive issue. Administrators should be sensitive to these variations and adopt appropriate strategies and tactics.

• Timing – Realignment periods.

• Jurisdiction – Lower more influence.

• Issue definition. – Level of political conflict affects administrative influence.


Despite variations, public administrators generally can enhance their role in agenda setting by doing the following things.

They can develop and refine problem-finding routines.

They can develop systematic efforts to identify and articulate, in policy circles, the concerns and issues of the public.


Despite variations, public administrators generally can enhance their role in agenda setting by doing the following things (contd.)

They can create and refine contacts with groups of specialists external to the agency.They can retain in-house research and policy monitoring instead of contracting it out.They can concentrate agenda-setting efforts in substantive specialties close to the administrator’s (and agency’s) legitimate jurisdiction and demonstrated achievement.


Despite variations, public administrators generally can enhance their role in agenda setting by doing the following things (contd.)

They can time agenda-setting efforts wisely.They can iron out differences within the policy or the professional community before seeking agenda status at some broader level.They can administer the preparation and maintenance of feasible options for possible adoption.They can perform the function of policy entrepreneur within their own specialties.


Through all of these efforts at effective participation in the process, administrators should remain acutely aware of the normative issues at stake.

Administrators have a positive duty not only to be obey and defend the rules, but to work on behalf of democratic politics and the cause of effective public policy.


In general, administrators should become more active in agenda setting:

The more biased or skewed the existing governmental agenda is vis-à-vis the systemic agenda.

The more the issues seem to be generated by the routine bureaucratic functions of government.


In general, administrators should become more active in agenda setting (contd.):

The less the administrator disguises his or her activities behind a veneer of ministerial behavior.The more that debate about key issues or alternatives is based on demonstrably false or dubious “facts”.The fewer the alternative channels are available to those who are concerned about the issue and are seeking access.The more powerless are those who seek such access.

Effective Policy Analysis

Policy analysis can be defined as simply an estimate of what would happen if some governmental procedure were changed.

Most new policy analysts do not appreciate the interaction of the political process with factual information and quantitative analysis.

The Politics of Policy Analysis

For the most part, policy analysis is a discretionary commodity. Some political executives like a lot of it. Some (usually ideologues) don’t use it at all. Policy staff often have to demonstrate their utility to each new administration.


The theoretical model of policy analysis uses review and evaluation of factual information provided by totally objective, apolitical, expert professionals to provide a firmer basis for political actions.


Once the results are available, they are considered in the context of a political template provided by elected and appointed officials and producing a set of alternatives with different physical, social, economic, and political costs and benefits.


After a decision is made, the time comes to close ranks, cease internal debate, and provide a united front on the wisdom of the decision, with the policy analysts prudently keeping their opinions to themselves.

There are two judges for the suitability of a politician’s decisions: the press and the public.


Policy analysts who wish to survive their politician’s administration must appear to be as factual, objective, balanced, and value-free as possible.

The skill to balance an objective analysis with the production of politically motivated public documents for the policy-maker is one of the toughest balancing acts for an analyst.


On occasion, the policy analyst may provide advice on politically relevant aspects of the analysis.


During a crisis, the duty of the analyst is to place the emergent issue in a context meaningful to the decision level: how the issue surfaced, who else cares, what everyone else is doing, and what the organization has done in the past.

The hardest single part of the interaction between the analyst and the executive is the precise definition of the question to be addressed.

The Politics of Policy AnalysisThe political context of public sector decisions is constantly changing and the analyst must frequently reevaluate the stakeholders (the people and groups affected).Specification of the criteria for evaluation of policy alternative should be done jointly with the policy officials.The real output of policy analysis is not tidy options on paper, but increased understanding of and confidence in decisions.

Characteristics of a Successful Policy Analyst

Technical skills – quantitative techniques not used in most analyses, but should be understood by analyst.Multidisciplinarity – knowledge from many different disciplines.Creativity – Analysts must be able to frame issues quickly into fundamental questions, explore related information from all conceivable sources, and provide at least some useful insights in very little time.

Characteristics of a Successful Policy Analyst

Clarity – The model must get the point across clearly and quickly.Poise – Policy analysis is part of an adversarial process. Instant analysis and intense debate is the rule.Expertise – Analysts should understand the issue under consideration. Competence affects credibility.Political savvy – Policy analysis must be politically sensitive.

Technical Sophistication

Widespread use of computer technology is a reality, but the technology does not trump the politics.

Efficient Use of Technical Analysis

Analyst must perform triage to determine when technical analysis is mandatory, potentially helpful, or irrelevant.

Once a decision is made to do an analysis, the scope must be determined. This will be affected by resources and complexity.

The quality and depth of the analysis will be affected by how high on the decision chain it must go.

Implementing Public Programs

What happens after a decision is made?Key questions.

Does the policy get put in place as desired by the legislators or the agency head?If not, what has occurred to block or modify the desired change.If successful, what factors in the institutional process were important in bringing about the desired change.

Implementing Public ProgramsKey steps for individual projects.

Keep projects relatively simple, and seek relevant models.Plan ahead, but not beyond the available data, and involve key actors.Error correction and flexibility are keys to implementation.Get the right information and get it quickly.Never forget that serving target groups is your main objective.

Implementing Public Programs

Key steps for cross-government programs.Avoid a compliance mentality (don’t push rules and regulations).

Stress staff competence.

Get good information.

In the agency management strategy for grants-in-aid, have as a central objective increasing state and local commitment to agency goals and capacity to provide particular services and make needed discretionary judgments.

Evaluating Public Programs

Program evaluation is a way of bringing to public decision-makers the available knowledge about a problem, about the relative effectiveness of past and current strategies for addressing or reducing that problem, and about the observed effectiveness of particular programs.

Administrative Purposes for Evaluation

Policy formulation – to assess or justify the need for a new program and to design it optimally on the basis of past experience.

Information on the problem addressed by the program: how big is it? What is its frequency and direction? How is it changing?Information on the results of past programs that dealt with the problem: were those programs feasible? Were they successful? What difficulties did they encounter?Information allowing the selection of one program over another: what are the comparative costs and benefits? What kinds of growth records were experienced?


Policy execution – to ensure that a program is implemented in the most cost-effective and technically competent way.

Information on program implementation: how operational is the program? How similar is it across sites? Does it conform to the policies and expectations formulated? How much does it cost? How do stakeholders feel about it? Are there delivery problems or error, fraud, and abuse?


Policy execution – to ensure that a program is implemented in the most cost-effective and technically competent way.

Information on program management: what degree of control exists over expenditures? What are the qualifications and credentials of the personnel? What is the allocation of resources? How is program information used in decision making?Ongoing information on the current state of the problem or threat addressed in the program: is the problem growing? Is it diminishing? Is it diminishing enough so that the program is no longer needed? Is it changing in terms of its significant characteristics.


Accountability in public decision making – to determine the effectiveness of an operating program and the need for its continuation, modification, or termination.

Information on program outcomes or effects: what happened as a result of program implementation?Information on the degree to which the program made or is making a difference: what change in the problem or threat has occurred that can be directly attributed to the program?Information on the unexpected (and expected) effects of the program.

Functions and Roles of Evaluation Sponsors

Executive branch (federal, state, local).Program managers (cost-effectiveness).

Agency heads and top policy makers (need, effectiveness).

Central budget or policy authorities (effectiveness, need).


Legislative branch:Congressional and legislative policy and evaluation offices (all aspects).

Legislative authorization, appropriations, and budget committees (program funding and refunding).

Oversight committees (all aspects).

Regardless of sponsor, evaluators should clearly specify the objectives and limitations of each evaluation.


As a general rule, public administrators should expect their work on program effectiveness and feasibility to be of more general use than their work on implementation, which will be of most use to program managers and agency heads.

Information needs will be larger for large programs than small, new programs over old.

Evaluation Approaches

Front-end analysis – evaluative work conducted before a decision to move ahead with a program.

Evaluability assessment – reasonableness of assumptions and objectives, comparison of objectives to program activities, feasibility of full-scale evaluation.


Process evaluation – describe and analyze the processes of implemented program activities – management strategies, operations, costs, interactions, etc.

Effectiveness or impact evaluation – how well has a program been working? Are the changes the result of the program?


Program and problem monitoring – continuous rather than snapshot – inform on problem characteristics or track program or problem progress in several areas.

Metaevaluation or evaluation synthesis – reanalyzes findings from several analyses to determine what has been learned.

INST 275 – Administrative Processes in Government

Lecture 4b – Developing Policy Arguments

Introduction

Policy argumentation is central to policy analysis and the policy-making process.

The analysis and evaluation of policy argumentation are central to the process of critical thinking.

The Structure of Policy Arguments

A policy argument is the product of argumentation, which is the process.

In real-life policy settings, arguments are complex and prone to misunderstanding.

To minimize misunderstanding, we use the structural model of argument developed by Stephen Toulmin, which is designed to investigate structures and processes of practical reasoning.


The conclusions of practical arguments are always uncertain, as are the reasons and evidence that lead to these conclusions.


Types of knowledge claims.A knowledge claim is the conclusion of a policy argument.Three types of knowledge claims:

• Designative: questions of fact. What are the observed outcomes of a policy and why did they occur?

• Evaluative: questions of value. Was the policy worthwhile?

• Advocative: questions of right action. Which policy should be adopted?


Types of knowledge claims (contd.).Policy arguments contain six elements:

• Information (I), Claim (C), Warrant (W), Backing (B), Rebuttal (R), Qualifier (Q).

The first four of these elements are present in every policy argument.The claim C is the conclusion or output of an argument, which is supported by policy-relevant information I, which is the beginning or input of the argument.The warrant W is the justification, or reason, for concluding C from I.The qualifier Q indicates that C has a given truth or plausibility.


Example:The Senator supports the privatization of the federal highway system, which have significant gains in efficiency and a reduction in taxes. Considering that the privatization of public services has been successful in other areas, this is definitely a “no brainer”. Besides this is the same conclusion as a panel of experts on privatization.


The underdetermination of conclusions by information.

Policy-relevant information does not fully determine the conclusions of policy arguments. “Information does not speak for itself.”

Identical information can and often does lead to different conclusions, which we call policy claims to emphasize the fallible and indeterminate character of arguments.


Example: Policy-relevant information from the Coleman Report “Black students attending primarily black schools had lower achievement test scores than black students attending primarily white schools.”

Designative claim and qualifier: “Since schools in large urban areas are primarily black, the hopes of blacks for higher education achievement [simply] cannot be realized.”Evaluative claim and qualifier: “The Coleman Report is [clearly] a racist document based on ethnically biased achievement tests.”Advocative claim and qualifier: “[There is no question] that a national policy of compulsory school busing ought to be adopted to achieve integrated schools.”


Warrants and rebuttals.Although each of the claims about the Coleman report begins with the same information, very different conclusions are drawn.Differences are due not to the information, but to the role of the warrants in justifying (plausibility or implausibility) the claims on the basis of the information supplied.

Modes of Policy ArgumentationModes of policy argumentation are the characteristic routes followed by information as it is transformed into policy claims.The several different modes of argument involve reasoning from authority, method, generalization, classification, intuition, cause, sign, motivation, analogy, parallel case, and ethics.Each of the eleven modes of argument has a different type of warrant, and multiple modes can be found in any policy argument.The warrants are the reasons offered by the proponent or opponent of a policy to justify a claim, or inference, based on the information supplied.

Argumentation from Authority

Argumentation from Method

Argumentation from Generalization

Argumentation from Classification

Argumentation from Cause

Argumentation from Sign

Argumentation from Motivation

Argumentation from Intuition

Argumentation from Analogy

Argumentation from Parallel Case

Ethical Argumentation

Systems of ArgumentationCompleteness. Elements of an argument should comprise a genuine whole that encompasses all appropriate considerations. For example, the plausibility of arguments about the effects of a policy depends on whether such arguments encompass a full range of plausible rival explanations similar in form and content to classes of rival hypotheses (threats to validity) developed in the tradition of quasi-experimentation.

Systems of Argumentation

Consonance. Elements of an argument should be internally consistent and compatible. For example, ethical arguments concerning the justice or fairness of a policy are plausible to the degree that they incorporate a system of internally and externally consistent ethical hypotheses.


Cohesiveness. Elements of an argument should be operationally connected. For example, the plausibility of an ethical argument depends on whether responses to several levels of descriptive and valuative questions – levels ranging from verification and validation to vindication – are operationally linked.


Functional regularity. Elements of an argument should conform to an expected pattern. For example, statistical arguments that offer estimates of parameters of unobserved (and often unobservable) populations are plausible to the degree that patterns in the sample and the population from which it is drawn are functionally regular or uniform, not irregular, based on sample data and background knowledge.

Social Equity


What Is Social Equity?

Social equity is fairness in the delivery of public services; It is egalitarianism in action – the principle that each citizen regardless of economic resources or personal traits deserves and has a right to be given equal treatment by the political system.

What Is Social Equity?

Jean-Jacques Rousseau – “It is precisely because the force of circumstances tends always to destroy equality that the force of legislation must always tend to maintain it.”

Government organizations have a special obligation to be fair – to pursue social equity both with their employees and the public – because they represent the citizenry.

Mandating Social Equity

There is a long tradition of government forcing private organizations to better treat their employees.

Better treatment was inhibited by social Darwinism – the concept of biological evolution applied by others to the development of human social organization and economic policy.


Provided justification for child labor. As a result, it took one hundred years for federal and state government to outlaw child labor altogether.


The whole thrust of the labor and women’s movements that began in the nineteenth century and the post-World War II civil rights movement was to obtain legislation that would equalize the employment and social prospects of unions, women, and minority group members.

The fine tuning of these public policies is an ongoing process.

The New Public AdministrationBy the late 1960s, serious questions were being raised about the state of the discipline and profession of public administration.Minnowbrook conference.H. George Frederickson called for social equity in the performance and delivery of social services.Although mostly pushed by writing rather than action, the principle now dominates public administration actions.

The Challenge of Equality

Equality is an American ideal. In 1776 the Declaration of Independence proclaimed that “all men are create equal.” Derived from natural rights which cannot be taken away. John Locke.

But, both the Declaration and Constitution denied rights to large segments of the population.

RacismRace can be defined as large group of people with common characteristics that are presumably transmitted genetically.

Physical characteristicsMore controversially, emotions and aptitudes.

Up to the middle of the 20th century, race was used as a method of distinguishing among national groups.Began as language distinction, but became a source of ranking and discrimination.

Race

A racist can be defined as any person or organization that either consciously or unconsciously practices racial discrimination against a person on the basis of race (or ethnicity) or supports the supremacy of one race over others.

“Stealth racism.” – Department store security, racial profiling.

The Bitter Heritage of SlaveryWhat distinguishes African-Americans from other ethnic groups is the fact that they are the only group brought to the U.S. as slaves.Constitution

Article I, section 2 – three-fifths rule.• Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states which may

be included within this union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.

Article I, section 9 – slave trade (1808).• The migration or importation of such persons as any of the states now existing shall think

proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each person.

Article IV, section 2 – runaway slaves.• No person held to service or labor in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into

another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.

The Bitter Heritage of Slavery

Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857).

Civil War.

Emancipation Proclamation.

Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution.

Reconstruction (1865-1876).

Jim Crow laws.

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).


Second reconstruction (1954-1970).

Brown v. Board of Education (1954).

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (1964).


Ethnic and racial reporting.White, not Hispanic (EEO-1).

Black, not Hispanic (EEO-1).

Hispanic (EEO-1).

American Indian or Alaskan Native (EEO-1).

Asian or Pacific Islander (EEO-1).

Jewish (Shaare Tefila Congregation v. Cobb, 1987).

Arabic (Saint Francis College v. Al-Khazraji, 1987).


Employment advantages, and set asides.

The use of set asides upheld in several cases, restricted in later cases, and abandoned by Clinton Administration.

Equal Employment OpportunityEqual employment opportunity (EEO) is a concept fraught with political, cultural, and emotional overtones.Generally, it applies to a set of employment procedures and practices that effectively prevent any individual from being adversely excluded from employment opportunities on the basis of race, color, sex, religion, age, national origin, or other factors that cannot lawfully be used to make employment decisions.

Equal Employment Opportunity

The ideal is an employment system devoid of intentional and unintentional discrimination, but it may be a political impossibility to achieve because of disagreement about definitions.EEO exists to remedy real problems.The problem is discrimination – the failure to treat equals equally.

Origins of Affirmative Action

Kennedy Administration – Executive Order 10925 of March 6, 1961 required that “affirmative action” be used to implement the policy of nondiscrimination in employment by the federal government and its contractors.

Meant initially the removal of artificial employment barriers for women and minorities.


Johnson Administration.Civil Rights Act of 1964 – It shall be the policy of the United States to ensure equal employment opportunities for Federal employees.Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to combat discrimination in the private sector. Civil Service Commission for the public sector.


Nixon Administration – Executive order requiring agency heads to “establish and maintain an affirmative action program of equal employment opportunity.”

Federal courts began to equate affirmative action with goals and timetables for minority hiring.

The Case for Affirmative ActionStatistically-based. Lower median income, lower life expectancy, lower status occupations.Disparities exist because of continuing patterns of discrimination.Vigorous affirmative action program only way to get beyond adverse impact of systemic discrimination.Affirmative action increases tolerance among individuals and productivity in organizations.

The Case Against Affirmative Action

Simply stated: It is unfair. Racial and sexual preferences violate the Civil Rights Act of 1964 just as much racial and sexual barriers.

Affirmative action programs also have the effect of stigmatizing minority workers, who may have received the job on merit, but will be perceived as receiving it to meet a quota.

Compensatory benefits should be based on class, not race.

Representative Bureaucracy

J. Donald Kingsley (1944).

Samuel Krislov (1967, 1974).

How could any bureaucracy have legitimacy and public credibility if it did not represent all sectors of its society?

Modern theoretical basis for EEO and affirmative action.

Reverse Discrimination

Reverse discrimination is a practice generally understood to mean discrimination against white males in conjunction with preferential treatment for women and minorities.

Practice has no legal standing.

Yet, affirmative action programs do necessarily put white males at a disadvantage.


Court cases.DeFunis v. Odegaard, 1974 – Law school – Admitted – Moot.

Regents of the University of California v. Allan Bakke, 1978 – upheld Bakke’s claim that he was denied equal protection because he was refused admission to UC Davis Medical School because of 16 minority set asides. But school could take race into account. UC ultimately abandoned affirmative action in 1997.


Court cases.United Steelworkers of America v. Weber, et al., 1979 – Court upheld an affirmative action program giving blacks preferences in the selection of employees for a training program.Johnson v. Santa Clara County, 1987, - upheld an affirmative action program that promoted a woman ahead of objectively more qualified men.


Race has always been a hot button topic in American politics, but affirmative action worked as long as it had broad public support.

But, beginning in 1990 with the election between Jesse Helms and Harvey Gantt, a sea change in opinion occurred.


Most (white) elected politicians now actively campaign against affirmative action.

Support for affirmative action has fallen to 25 percent among whites, 22 percent among Hispanics, and 18 percent among Asians.

California Proposition 209 (1996).http://vote96.ss.ca.gov/Vote96/html/BP/209.htm.

http://vote96.ss.ca.gov/Vote96/html/BP/209.htm

Sex Discrimination

Any disparate or unfavorable treatment of a person in a employment situation because of his or her gender. Prohibited by Civil Rights Act of 1964, except as a bona fide occupational qualification.

Not a significant concern of original supports of Civil Rights Act.

Sex Discrimination

Actually added as bill killer by Congressman Howard Smith (VA), Chair of Rules Committee.

Passed anyway. Became major component and most successful provision of Act.

Today, for all legal purposes, sex discrimination includes sexual harassment.

Sexual Harassment

The action of an individual in a position to control or influence the job, career, or grade of another person and who uses such power to gain sexual favors or punish the refusal of such favors. Varies from inappropriate sexual innuendo to coerced sexual relations.

Courts have only gradually developed standards.

First of several law suits – Paulette Barnes in EPA, 1974.

Sexual HarassmentEEOC guidelines.

Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical contact of a sexual nature constitute sexual harassment when:

• Submission to such conduct is made either explicitly or implicitly a term or condition of an individual’s employment;

• Submission to or rejection of such conduct by an individual is used as the basis for employment decisions affecting such individual; or.

• Such conduct has the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with an individual’s work performance or creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive work environment.

Sexual Harassment

First U.S. Supreme Court case – Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson, 1986.

Sexual harassment is a violation of Title VII of Civil Rights Act of 1964 on basis of EEOC categories.

Sexual harassment remains a continuing problem.

Pregnancy Discrimination

1978 amendment to Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of pregnancy, childbirth, or related condition.

Cannot exclude people on the basis of pregnancy.

Disabilities caused by pregnancy will be treated like other disabilities.

Age DiscriminationAgeism is discrimination against those who are considered old.Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 as amended. Prohibits age discrimination and in most cases mandatory retirement.

Applies to all public employers, all private employers of 20 people or over, employment agencies serving covered employers, and labor unions with 25 people or over.

May not use age in advertisements.

Disabilities Discrimination

Disabled veterans after Civil War, wives of disable veterans after World War I.

Vocational Rehabilitation Act of 1973 – federal contractors and subcontractors had to make affirmative action to seek out qualified handicapped individuals.

Disabilities DiscriminationDefinition of handicapped: Any person who

1. Has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more of such person’s major life activities;2. Has a record of such an impairment; or3. Is regarded as having such an impairment.

A qualified handicapped individual with respect to employment is one who with reasonable accommodation can perform the essential functions of a job in question.

Disabilities DiscriminationAmericans with Disabilities Act of 1990.

Comprehensive federal law to ban discrimination against physically and mentally handicapped individuals in employment, transportation, telecommunications, and public accommodations.No covered entity shall discriminate against a qualified individual with a disability because of the disability of such individual in regard to job application procedures, the hiring, advancement, or discharge of employees, employee compensation, and other terms, conditions and privileges of employment.


Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.Covers all employers with 15 or more employees, new buses and trains, telephone companies, renovated or new hotels, stores, and restaurants, removal of existing barriers.Accommodations that are too costly or disruptive excluded.Disability includes alcoholism and drug abuse if under treatment.


Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.Also may include infectious diseases.

Employers may not ask about the existence, nature, or severity of a disability nor require a medical examination until an conditional offer of employment has been made.

Employers must demonstrate that rejection is job-related and that the essential functions of the job cannot be performed with reasonable accommodation.

Public Administration and Social Equity

All public administrators have an obvious obligation to advance social equity, but it can be done in several ways.

Administer laws in a fair manner.

Seek to hire and advance a varied workforce.

Moral leadership.

Strategic Management in the Public Sector


Keynote: The Truman Doctrine As Strategic Vision

Strategic management – the achievement of long-term organizational goals – is not a tidy business.The “plan” may only be a vague document or unwritten philosophy.The most significant single strategic plan in the 20th century was the Truman Doctrine.

The policy of President Harry S. Truman’s administration of extending military and economic aid to those countries seeking to resist “totalitarian aggression”.


Strategic vision.At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one. One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guaranties of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression. The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio, fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms.


Strategic vision (contd.).I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way. I believe that our help should be primarily through economic and financial aid which is essential to economic stability and orderly political processes.

Harry S. Truman, March 12, 1947.


ImplementationBroad agreement on the operational doctrine of containment (George Kennan).

Differing strategies across administrations.• Massive economic aid to Europe – Truman.

• Massive retaliation – Eisenhower.

• Escalation in Vietnam – Kennedy and Johnson.

• Reliance on allies and détente – Nixon.

• Human rights, then containment – Carter.

• Military intervention – Reagan.


Outcomes.The Truman doctrine provided the vision for all of these strategies.Justification also for domestic policy (Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, National Defense Education Act of 1958).The multitude of spending strategies proved too much for the stability of the Soviet Union.No overarching administration, but all the policies pushed in the same direction.What more can you ask of a plan?

What Is Strategic Management?

Strategy is the employment of, the management of overall resources to gain an objective.

Tactics are the use of a subset of these resources to gain a part of the overall objective.

Strategic management is the modern application of this ancient art to contemporary business and public administration.

What Is Strategic Management?Strategic management is the conscious selection of policies, development of capacity, and interpretation of the environment by managers to focus organizational efforts toward the achievement of preset objectives.Private example: doubling of annual dividends.Nonprofit example: creation of a repertory theater.Public example: reduction in crime rate.


Features of strategic management.Definition of the organizational process within a mission statement;

Identification of objectives in a vision statement to be achieved in the future;

The adoption of a time frame (or “planning horizon”) in which these objectives are to be achieved;

A systematic analysis of the current circumstances of an organization, especially its capabilities;

What Is Strategic Management?Features of strategic management (contd.).

An assessment of the environment surrounding the organization – both now and within the planning horizon.The selection of a strategy for the achievement of desired objectives by a future date often comparing various alternatives;The integration of organizational efforts around this strategy; andThe creation of control and evaluation systems for continuing feedback.


Objectives.Objectives were originally part of military thinking.

• The distinction between a strategic objective and a tactical objective.

The public sector has been slower to adopt strategic management than the private sector because public administration was more concerned about functions and responsibilities rather than objectives.

What Is Strategic Management?Objectives (contd.).

Causes of change from responsibility and function to objectives.

• The first was the popularization of management by objectives by Peter Drucker (measurable goals to be achieved over a set period of time).

• The second was the more rapid pace of change in communities.

• The third was the pervasiveness of strategic management in the private sector.

Public organizations still often separate statements of function and statements of objectives.

What Is Strategic Management?Objectives.

A statement of objectives should be:• Succinct, and limited to organization’s sphere of influence;• Directional, with specific future states to be achieved;• Time limited, with indications when each objective is to be achieved; and• Measurable, so that achievement or progress can be evaluated.

Sample (American Red Cross, United Way, California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, and Department of Homeland Security).

• http://www.redcross.org/services/govrel/0,1082,0_193_,00.html• http://national.unitedway.org/about/missvis.cfm.• http://www.oes.ca.gov/Operational/OESHome.nsf/Content/63427B6DEC

770E6D88256C2A00626DA5?OpenDocument• http://www.dhs.gov/xabout/strategicplan/index.shtm.

http://www.redcross.org/services/govrel/0,1082,0_193_,00.html

http://national.unitedway.org/about/missvis.cfm

http://www.oes.ca.gov/Operational/OESHome.nsf/Content/63427B6DEC770E6D88256C2A00626DA5?OpenDocument

http://www.oes.ca.gov/Operational/OESHome.nsf/Content/63427B6DEC770E6D88256C2A00626DA5?OpenDocument

http://www.dhs.gov/xabout/strategicplan/index.shtm


The planning horizon.It is of the utmost importance to assess whether or not organizations have strategic intent – that is, the will to shape their future, rather than simply reacting to changes driven by others.

Any organization’s planning horizon, the time limit beyond which the future is too uncertain or unimportant to waste time on, is an important factor in assessing its short- as well as long-term viability.

What Is Strategic Management?The planning horizon (contd.).

Severe obstacles exist for public organizations in establishing time horizons.

• Political nature of public administration (election and public opinion cycles).

• The budgeting process (political leverage).

Publicly owned businesses are forced to plan, however.In general, pluralistic (developed) democracies may have the luxury of incremental decision-making. Many developing countries require more rational planning.


Capabilities.Strategic management is a matching process in which variables of strategy, capability, and environment are matched as the organization seeks to manage change through strategy.

As the environment moves from stable to turbulent, capability moves from custodial (unchanging) to entrepreneurial (risk-taking).


Capabilities (contd.).In considering future strategic directions, managers must contemplate whether they have or can obtain the personnel, systems, finance, structure, and other requirements that might be essential to realize their vision.

SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis tests strategic viability.

• Strengths and weaknesses highlight capabilities.

• Opportunities and threats highlight survival.


Environment.An assessment of an organization’s present, currently emerging, and likely future environments is a critical aspect of strategic management.

• Demand forecast – population, economic growth, consumer behavior.

• Futures analysis – Likely scenarios.

Four Strategic Factors

Four factors that affect the use of strategic management in the public nonprofit sector.

The public-private paradox.

The importance of being close to the center.

Organizational language and culture.

Organizational place.

The Public-Private Paradox

The relationship between business and government. Two propositions.

Business and government are ultimately different.

Business and government have very much in common.

The Public-Private ParadoxGovernment is very different from business.

Work of government has the mandate of political legitimacy.The work of government must be fair and defensible since owned by all.Work of government defined by law and implemented by force.Work of government involves accommodation, compromise, and incremental decisions.Bottom-line profit never a test for success.

The Public-Private Paradox

Business is very different from government.Pursue interests of shareholders.

Pursue designated private interest and sometimes ignore public interest.

Focus on product differentiation and market positioning.

Managers have greater flexibility to make unilateral strategic decisions.

The bottom line rules.

The Public-Private ParadoxGovernment and business have very much in common.

Large bureaucracies and small leadership structures.Professional, mass production, and transportation.Culture and decision-making similar.Recruit from same populations.Public sector increasingly focused on competitiveness (same as business).Public sector benefits from private sector experimentation.Technology presents a common language.

The Importance of Being Close to the Center

Steering rather than rowing – Governments should direct their attention more to shaping and ensuring outcomes than delivery.

Problems: federal system, federal planning, state and local rowing.

The Importance of Being Close to the Center

Four reasons why it may be difficult to adopt strategic management in bureaus or departments.

Shared power.

Political environment muddies definitions of performance.

Government managers have less autonomy and control.

Strategic decision-making is more difficult in government.

Organizational Language and Culture

The special language of strategic management does not always fit with the culture of public organizations.Federalism and separation of powers makes the adoption of strategic management difficult.The language of culture of strategic management is easier to adopt if organizations are open to new talent, where staff have post-graduate training in management, and where there is a successful culture of change.

Organizational PlaceThe single most important factor in the effectiveness of public sector strategic management efforts is location.The closer an organization is to the center of national decision-making, the less likely strategic management is to be adopted.

Clinton’s health plan.

Local organizations are much more successful at strategic management.Requires autonomy in decision-making.

Contemporary Strategic Challenges

The challenge of mandate.

The challenge of efficiency.

The challenge of competitiveness.

The challenge of boundaries.

The challenge of service.

The challenge of public interest.

The Challenge of MandateWhy should government carry out this function?

Is the organization a natural monopoly?Are defense and strategic interests critical?Does the organization serve special community or development purposes?Is the organization part of the rule-making process?Does the organization principally produce public goods?Is the body part of the central administrative machinery of the state?

The Challenge of Efficiency

Is the organization efficient by industry standards?

Benchmarking, best practices, and comparative performance can give us a handle.

The Challenge of Competitiveness

Can this organization compete well in its markets?

The Postal Service, for example.

The Challenge of Boundaries

What is the territorial and organizational scope?

All government agencies are define in part by their geographical and organizational boundaries.

Many agencies are now challenging their boundaries.

Technological expertise.

Modern transportation and communication.

The emergence of competition.

The Challenge of ServiceIs the organization effectively consumer oriented?The move toward customer service is a revolutionary change in government thinking.The Citizen’s Charter in Great Britain.

The Service First team has established six service standards for government:

• Answer letters quickly and clearly. • See people within 10 minutes of their appointment time. • Provide clear information about services and at least one telephone number for

inquiries. • Consult users regularly about the service provided and report on the results. • Provide at least one complaint procedure for services provided and send

information about this procedure as requested. • Do everything reasonably possible to make services available to everyone,

including those with disabilities.

The Challenge of the Public Interest

Does the organization clearly serve the public interest?

Designing services to meet the national interest as opposed to sectional, regional, staff, or staff interests is a major strategic challenge.

One useful technique is to prepare a list of an organization’s community service obligations with identification of costs and beneficiaries.

Performance Management

The specification of clear and measurable organizational objectives.The systematic use of performance indicators to assess organizational output.The application of performance appraisal of individual employees to reward exceptional personal efforts toward organizational objectives.

Performance ManagementThe use of performance incentives to reward exceptional personal efforts toward organizational goals.The linking of human and financial resource allocation to an annual management or budget cycle.Regular review at the end of each planning cycle of the extent to which goals have been achieved and the reasons for performance that is better or worse than planned.

Strategic Plan – Department of Homeland Security

www.csub.edu/~rdaniels/DHS_StratPlan_FINAL_spread.pdf.

http://www.csub.edu/~rdaniels/DHS_StratPlan_FINAL_spread.pdf

http://www.csub.edu/~rdaniels/DHS_StratPlan_FINAL_spread.pdf

posc 430 – fundamentals of public administration

Documents

public administrative

administrative values

administrative controls

public assistance

public functions

social interaction

social action

organized action