Experiences of a learning organization in the public sector

This article explores the experience of a municipal government agency as it confronts the challenges and opportunities of meeting seemingly unlimited demands with limited resources. The City of Scottsdale, Arizona, enjoys a national reputation for innovative approaches to public policy issues. This article examines Scottsdale's efforts to create a learning organization, through a Venture Team which represents a core strategy for continuous improvement and lifelong learning.     

Symposium: public policy and organization termination

This symposium has three objectives: first, to define the terminology of policy and organization termination and provide a review of literature that will identify current theories and frameworks of termination; second, to publish new studies that test and evaluate the usefulness of these theories and frameworks; and third, to encourage further testing and study of theories and frameworks that have proven so far to be useful in explaining termination.     

The information-based organization: new dimensions for the public manager

Public management education should reflect the tremendous organizational changes brought about by information technologies and their applications. Increasing penetration of information technologies and the need for well-considered approaches to use those technologies will pose new opportunities and obstacles for public managers. This paper describes three key skill areas for curriculum consideration: information technology management, information management, and human resource management.     

Understanding employee commitment in the public organization: a study of the juvenile detention center

This study examined the relationship between organizational commitment and several personal, role, professional, job and organizational factors among juvenile detention workers. The study revealed that (1) commitment is significantly correlated to role ambiguity, supervisor trust, rile matment-oriented attitude toward the detainee, job satisfaction, job involvement, and organizational trust, and (2) organizational trust, the treatment attitude. role ambiguity, and job involvement are major predictors of employee commitment to the detention center. Implications concerning the results of this study are discussed.     

Criteria for developing performance measurement systems in the public sector

The United States Government is placing increased emphasis on the development of financial measures, and measures of program effectiveness. The authors discuss government efforts in these areas. Various approaches and criteria are presented for the development of performance measurement systems, as well as generic criteria for selecting performance indicators, and obstacles to the process. Experience indicates that development of a performance measurement system is best served by a strategic planning approach with top management support, active management participation in goal setting, a small manageable number of goals, a strong link with the budget process, and an independent evaluation process.     

Implementing pay reform in the public sector: Different approaches to flexible pay in sweden and the united states

A set of implementation criteria drawn from the United States experience provide a framework for examining pay reform in the Swedish public sector. The study finds that the Swedish approach is quite distinct and this may be attributable to unique features in the Swedish labor market. The reform toward flexible or individualized pay in government agencies appears to be based on an assumption of greater cost efficiency in human resource management and a broad unwillingness to employ objective measures of individual or organizational productivity. Consequently the study calls into question the utility of an analytical framework based on the Anglo-American experience for examining the Swedish case.     

Implementing sunshine and the public records laws in dade county,florida: problems and prescriptions for reform

Open meetings and public records laws are designed to make the process and product of governmental decision making more accessible to the general public. The objective of this study is to identify problems that are associated with Florida's open meetings (sunshine) and public records laws in relation to the administrative and decision making processes of local governments. The results indicate that smaller municipalities are adversely effected by advertising costs for open meetings and for unreimbursed research costs related to public records requests. A number of suggestions are proposed to remedy the identified deficiencies.     

Overview of administrative reform and implementation in italy: organization,personnel,procedures and delivery of public services

In the early nineties Italy as well as many industrialized countries embarked on a wide governmental reform. Important measures were undertaken by Amato Cabinet in 1991-1992 and Ciampi Cabinet 1993-1994. Later, the Prodi Cabinet has drawn up a comprehensive government reform and modernization plan. This plan deals more courageously and with greater determination with the difficult issue of rethinking the whole Italian administrative system: its institutional architecture, its mission, its rules, its organizational and management models, the patterns of behavior of its managers and employees and its way of dealing with individual citizens and businesses.     

The role(s) of accounting and performance measurement systems in contemporary public administration

The spate of public sector reforms which have taken place in recent decades has triggered the development of a new body of research around public sector accounting and performance measurement both in public administration as well as in the (public sector) accounting literature. However, studies in accounting and public administration have at times ignored each other, proceeding in parallel. This symposium encourages the adoption of interdisciplinary perspectives in exploring the myriad roles played by accounting and performance measurement systems in contemporary public administration. Emphasizing that accounting and performance measurement systems are socially, politically, culturally constructed and, in turn, are implicated in the creation of organizations, society and political values, this symposium aims to extend the dialogue between accounting and public administration scholars in exploring how accounting, accountability and performance measurement considerations are connected to policy-making, public services and, more generally, the building and maintenance of modern states and democracies.     

Roward a public philosophy of public administration: a civic perspective of the public

The thesis of this article is that a publicphilosophy of public administration needs to be formulated. It must not be based upon romantic and technocratic approaches as past efforts have been. It must rest instead upon a revitalized concept of the public that stresses the importance of public interdependency, public learning, public language, and a critical evaluation of the relationship between the role of the state and public administration. This emphasis has important implications for the respective responsibilities of both academicians and practicing administrators.     

Teaching public policy in a public administration program

An overlooked aspect of academic concern in public administration is the realm of public policy. Policy intrudes into administration at a number of crucial points; administration influences the direction and emphasis of policy in various ways. These interrelationships warrant more attention in the training of public administrators. Regrettably, they have remained largely off-limits in the training of public administrators. Why and how we should proceed to alter this state of affairs is the essence of the symposium that follows.     

The new public personnel and the new public service

The New Public Administration sought a public service whose legitimacy would be based, in part, on its promotion of “social equity.” Since 1968, several personnel changes congruent with the New Public Administration have occurred: traditional managerial authority over public employees has been reduced through collective bargaining and changes in constitutional doctrines; the public service has become more socially representative; establishing a representative bureaucracy has become an important policy goal; more emphasis is now placed on employee participation in the work place; and legal changes regarding public administrators’ liability have promoted an “inner check” on their behavior. At the same time, however, broad systemic changes involving decentralization and the relationship between political officials and career civil servants have tended to undercut the impact of those changes in personnel. The theories of Minnowbrook I, therefore, have proven insufficient as a foundation for a new public service. Grounding the public service's legitimacy in the U.S. Constitution is a more promising alternative and is strongly recommended.

The New Public Administration, like other historical calls for drastic administrative change in the United States, sought to develop a new basis for public administrative legitimacy. Earlier successful movements grounded the legitimacy of the public service in high social standing and leadership, representativeness and close relationship to political parties, or in putative political neutrality and scientific managerial and technical expertise. To these bases, the New Public Administration sought to add “social equity.” As George Frederickson explained, “Administrators are not neutral. They should be committed to both good management and social equity as values, things to be achieved, or rationales. “⁽¹⁾ Social equity was defined as “includ[ing] activities designed to enhance the political power and economic well being of … [disadvantaged] minorities.” It was necessary because “the procedures of representative democracy presently operate in a way that either fails or only very gradually attempts to reverse systematic discrimination against” these groups.⁽²⁾

Like the Federalists, the Jacksonians, and the civil service reformers and progressives before it, the New Public Administration focused upon administrative reform as a means of redistributing political power.⁽³⁾ Also, like these earlier movements, the New Public Administration included a model of a new type of public servant. This article sets forth that new model and considers the extent to which the major changes that have actually taken place in public personnel administration since 1968 are congruent with it. We find that while contemporary public personnel reflects many of the values and concerns advanced by the New Public Administration, substantial changes in the political environment of public administration have frustrated the development of a new public service that would encompass the larger goals and ideals expressed at Minnowbrook I. Building on the trends of the past two decades, this article also speculates about the future. Our conclusion is that ultimately the public service's legitimacy must be grounded in the Constitution. Although its focus is on macro-level political and administrative developments, the broad changes it discusses provide the framework from which many contemporary personnel work-life issues, such as pay equity and flexitime, have emerged.     

Modernizing the public service in latin america: faradoxes of latin american public administration

This article presents impediments to the moderization of the public bureacracy in the Latin American region. These impediments are presented as paradoxes in order to emphasize both the contradications found in, and the America. The article presents examples from various cases it central and South America in order to show the lack of a public service tradition, the obstacles of patronage and corruption, the Opportunity costs of bureacratic development, the difficulty of reform, and the drawbacks of professionalization. It concludes with some suggestions, groped under the general strategies of insulation and fortification, about how to evercome these impeciments.     

Implementing Privatization Policies in 'Next Steps' Agencies

This article examines the implementation of privatization policies in two 'Next Steps' agencies. This is discussed with reference to the broader theoretical and empirical questions of how do institutions change and when are political actors constrained in implementing their policy choices. Cortell and Peterson's framework for explaining institutional change, and the concept of intra-state policy networks are used to analyse the cases. The differential outcomes identified illustrate how constraints operate and how these may be overcome by strategic actors to produce change. Constraints in these cases arose from fragmentation and dependence in central government, from differing institutionalized beliefs and from the development of intra-state networks between the departments and agencies. The paper concludes by suggesting that the type of intra-state networks created through agencification can be seen to have an effect on policy outcomes and are worthy of more detailed research.     

Disinvesting in the administrative capacity for public action

Recurring cutbacks in the public sector have received extensiveattention. Most of the emphasis has been on how to adjust to declinein support for public programs. Cutback Management andcon-tracting-out are examples of this approach. This article focuseson the negative consequence of cutbacks. It suggests that inadequateattention is being given to the decrease in the capacity of agenciesto act. An administrative disinvestment is occurring in much the sameway as it has for roads, bridges and other parts of our public infrastructure. Now, we are disinvesting in another critical social asset--our public bureau-cracies. The nature and implictions ofadminis-trative disinvestment are explord.