The evolution of planning: Exploring strategic linkages and developing action guidelines for public administrators

The need for public administrators to develop meaningful and implementable planning documents to guide the development of their agencies is increasingly important as society sprints from simple static environments to complex, dynamic environments. This escalation of future uncertainty suggests that the public administrator find an approach to planning that is both conceptually sound and adaptable to the cultural nuances of the organization. Understanding strengths and weaknesses of past approaches to planning and anticipating the next advancement, i.e. “transformational planning” facilitates the effectiveness of the public administrator.     

Organization structure and the effectiveness of public agencies

There is little consensus about the impact of various organization structures on organization effectiveness. The most notable characteristic of empirical research on the purposes of this assessment is to develop some under-standing of the reasons structure/effectiveness research continues to disappoint. The more important barriers to research progress include: (1) a continued reliance on “blackbox empiricism;” (2) underspecified models ; (3) measurement discontinuities ; (4) sampling complexities; (5) conceptual problems pertaining to aggregation; and (6) basic methodological and statistical errors. In addition to reviewing these problems, this study presents a propositional inventory of structure/effectiveness research and assesses the evidence that has accumulated. Special attention is given to problems involved in the application of findings in a public sector setting. Finally, it is argued that a current primitive state-of-the-art is such that the best approach to applied structure/effectiveness research is to temporarily suspend concern about external validity and concentrate on rigorous logitudinal analyses of single organizations.     

Information technology and education for the public service

Nation-wide surveys of graduate programs in public administration/affairs support assertions by critics that most programs do not provide students with adequate preparation for coping with information technology. This paper identifies the computer-related knowledge and skills demanded by the contemporary administrative workplace and, after analyzing the sufficiency of current curricula offerings, proposes three goals for education in the use and management of information technology and suggests curriculum revisions necessary to reach these goals. Finally, implementation problems associated with curricula revisions are identified and discussed.     

Unicor's strategic planning process: a developmental model

In this period of cutback-management, downsizing, and cost-containment in the public sector, everyone has become interested in strategic planning. The academic and management guru tomes on theoretical strategic planning grow both in volume and abstrusness as the years pass. And yet, the really strange thing is that everyone seems to be talking about, intellectualizing about, and philosophizing about strategic planning, while very few organizations are doing it effectively. Surely strategy is a complex and multifaceted concept. It sometimes leads to great confusion, fear, and disorientation for managers, because leaders do not communicate exactly what they mean by the term or the processes of strategic planning. And since many public leaders do not anchor strategic planning into the cultural and contextual bowels of their respective organizations, the result most times ends up in endless debate, academic nonsense, and useless paper-pushing.     

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.     

Strategic communication by regulatory agencies as a form of reputation management: A strategic agenda

This article develops a strategic agenda concerning regulatory agencies' strategic communication in light of the reputation literature. It highlights the main strands in this literature, presents the fundamental findings discovered so far, responds to the critiques that have recently surfaced, and offers guidance about where scholarship on strategic communication might most profitably head. The critiques discussed here centre on two aspects: (i) the claim that an agency's communication choices are to some extent driven by the distinctive logic of the media rather than by reputational concerns, and (ii) the argument that strategic communication provides only short-term solutions to emerging threats and is therefore overemphasized in the literature. Future agendas include, for example, the selection of audience segmentation strategies, and the management of competing and even contradictory communication for segmented audiences when agencies enjoy exclusive jurisdiction, as opposed to cases in which other agencies share the same stage.     

What is public service improvement?

Five conceptual models of public service improvement are derived from the large literature on organizational effectiveness. These are the goal, systems-resource, internal process, competing values and multiple constituency models. The strengths and weaknesses of each of these models is evaluated and a working definition of improvement is proposed. This emphasizes that concepts and measures of public service improvement are political rather than technical, and contingent rather than universal. Conclusions are drawn on the implications for academic research and policy development.     

Intermunicipal cooperation,public spending and service levels

ABSTRACT

Local governments can increase size in particular policy fields through cooperation with other local governments. This is often thought to improve efficiency, but there is little empirical evidence supporting this hypothesis. We study the case of the Netherlands, which has been a veritable laboratory of intermunicipal cooperation (IMC), using panel data for 2005–2013. We find no evidence that IMC reduces total spending of the average municipality. Indeed, IMC seems to increase spending in small and large municipalities, leaving spending in mid-sized municipalities unaffected. In one specific field, tax collection, spending may be reduced through IMC. Spending in this field is low, which may explain why total spending is unaffected. Instead of lowering spending, municipalities may have used possible cost savings as a result of IMC to improve public service levels. We do not find evidence substantiating this hypothesis, however.     

Bridging the gap: An attempt to reconcile strategic planning and very local community-based planning in rural England

This paper reviews briefly the emergence of holistic governance at the strategic and very local levels in rural England before reporting a programme of action research designed to address the need to develop an effective ‘bridge’ between planning activity at those two levels. Attention is focused particularly upon the recent wave of parish and market town plans on the one hand and local strategic partnerships and community strategies on the other. Taking cognisance of relevant contextual literature relating to representative and participative democracy and to top-down and bottom-up planning, it draws conclusions about the challenge of developing a synergistic relationship between strategic and very local planning and about the prospects for reconciling some of the tensions pointed up in those theoretical debates.     

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.     

Measuring public service productivity: case study from thailand

This case study, measuring the productivity of garbage collection and disposal in Thailand, is an example of public service productivity assessment. It suggests that variations in the productivity of garbage services in the localities studied are explained by such factors as local politics and administration, popular participation, service production volume, central control measures, local fiscal stress, local physical conditions and program management. Amongst these factors local politics and administration are the most significant.     

Representative bureaucracy,international organizations and public service bargains

Academic interest in the administrative aspects of international organizations is on the rise. Yet, an issue that has received little attention is bureaucratic representation—the extent to which international bureaucracies are representative of the polity that they serve. The article theorizes the rationales for and forms of representative bureaucracy in international organizations by combining insights from the representative bureaucracy literature with the ‘public service bargains’ framework. It argues that bureaucratic representation is highly relevant in international organizations, given the diverse polity these organizations serve and their precarious legitimacy. It distinguishes three types of representational ‘bargains’ between international organizations and those they serve, centred on power, equal opportunities and diversity, and discusses under which conditions each type of bargain is likely to be struck. The argument contributes to discussions about representative bureaucracy in international organizations and to broader theoretical debates about international public administration.     

Minorities and the public service: a future perspective

This paper analyzes the future prospects of blacks and other minorities in the public service. It examines studies on race/role expectations of minority administrators, tokenism and marginality to discern trends in interethnic relations. It also discusses future demographic projections and their implications for majority/minority relations. Finally, the essay explains why public service careers are particularly significant for blacks and other minorities.     

Inequality,discrimination, and service delivery: A recapitulation for the public administrator

The equitable provision of urban public services has begun to receive increased attention from researchers, administrators, and the courts. Recent research has questioned the view that minority and low-income groups are systematically deprived in the distribution of public services, e.g. police and fire services, libraries, street quality and maintenance, and parks and recreational facilities. This paper reviews empirical studies in urban service distribution and judicial responses to municipal service claims. The research reveals that discimination in service delivery does exist. However, it is difficult to determine empirically in larger cities if a consistent pattern of discrimination exists and whether or not it bears a significant relationship to race or class. Discrimination and inequality on the basis of race has been subject to meticulous judicial prowess benefitting at one time or another the citizen and the municipality. The courts are requiring overwhelming statistical documentation to substantiate racial discrimination in the provision of urban public services.     

Private administration of a public function: The news election service

The United States government has no elections office and does not attempt to administer congressional and presidential elections. The responsibility for the administration of elections and certification of winners in the United States national elections rests with the states. The states divide election administration responsibilities between state and local election officials, whose objective is an efficiently administered honest election, with the ballots correctly tabulated. The formal structure of election administration in the United States is not capable of providing tirely results of the presidential and congressional election. Similar structural difficulties in other policy areas often result in ad hoc operating agreements or informal cooperation among agencies at different levels of the federal system. In the case of election administration, however, the public officials have abdicated responsibility for election night aqgregation of the national Vote totals to a private organization, News Election Service, which is owned by five major news organizations. This private organization performs without a contract, without public compensation, and without supervision by public officials. It makes decisions concerning its duties according to its own criteria. The questions of responsibility and accountability have not arisen in part because of the private organization's performance record and in part because the responsibility was assumed gradually over a lengthy period without ever being evaluated as an item on the public agenda.     

Towards a public service blend of human resource management and TQM

The objective of this paper is to contemplate changes in personnel system infrastructure required to implement Total Quality Management (TQM) in public organizations (perhaps formal organization in general). By infrastructure we mean systems such as those for the design of work and positions, rewards, performance appraisal, selection, etc. We introduced the subject by summarizing many of the concepts from the quality literature which express philosophy, structural aspects and practices. Even the industrial context in which TQM has flowered has not adapted significantly to implications of TQM philosophy and structure. Instead, traditional personnel management systems prevail with some concern for needed specia1 training, and anguish about negative effects of performance appraisal, some reward systems, and work standards.

Because the government context is bound to present difficulties and pitfalls we summarized another body of literature, that of the reasons why the idea probably won't work in government.

Ultimately, we get to the point of the essay: a discussion of contemplated types of personnel system changes that ought to support organizations operating in a quality mode. Changes are considered under the subjects of: work design, recruitment and selection, performance appraisal, training, compensation and labor-management relations. We conclude with a. brief case study on the Pacer Share Project.     

Yours emotionally: How emotional intelligence infuses public service motivation and affects the job outcomes of public personnel

We investigate the role of emotions in the public sector and their relation with work outcomes typical of public arenas. We focus on the emotional intelligence of public healthcare staff and its potential impact on public service motivation, job satisfaction, affective commitment and the quality of service to citizens. Using data from 200 nurses in a large Israeli public hospital, we examine a mixed model of direct and indirect relationships. The findings support direct positive relationships between emotional intelligence, public service motivation and job outcomes, and several indirect relationships: (1) the mediating effect of public service motivation in the relationship between emotional intelligence and affective commitment, and (2) the moderating role of emotional intelligence in the relationship between public service motivation and service quality. The impact of public service motivation on self‐reported service quality is stronger for public employees with more emotional intelligence.