Reconsidering the Revolution? Australian Public Sector Administration in 2000

While the year 2000 was memorable for public administration in Australia it was notable mainly for the unexpected. Success occurred where risk and failure were predicted. Failure emerged where success had been talked-up. Notable examples include the so-called Y2K problem, management of the Olympic Games, the introduction of the GST, and the outsourcing of government services (especially Information Technology (IT)). Also memorable were important shifts in the policy fields of defence and welfare. The Howard government ended the year in decision-making and largese mode—setting the agenda for the following election year. The events of 2000 invite reconsideration of the merits of the traditional bureaucratic model and those of the emerging post bureaucratic models of service provision.     

Is Public Management Neglecting the State?

Public management is a domain of research that is now roughly three decades old. Researchers in this area have made important advances in understanding about the performance of public organizations. But questions have been raised about the scope and methods of public management research (PMR). Does it neglect important questions about the development of major institutions of the modern state? Has it focused unduly on problems of the advanced democracies? Has it made itself irrelevant to public debates about the role and design of government, and the capacity of public institutions to deal with emerging challenges? This set of eight short essays were prepared for a roundtable held at the research conference of the PMR Association at the University of Aarhus in June 2016. Contributors were asked to consider the question: Is PMR neglecting the state?     

We Need to Compare,but How? Measurement Equivalence in Comparative Public Administration

In addition to public administrations and public managers, there is increasing interest in studying citizens’ interactions with and views toward government from a comparative perspective in order to put theories to the test using cross‐national surveys. However, this will only succeed if we adequately deal with the diverse ways in which respondents in different countries and regions perceive and respond to survey measures. This article examines the concept of cross‐national measurement equivalence in public administration research and explores methods for establishing equivalence. Two methodologies are examined that test and correct for measurement nonequivalence: multiple‐group confirmatory factor analysis and multilevel mixture item response theory. These techniques are used to test and establish the cross‐national measurement equivalence of two popular measurement constructs: citizen satisfaction with public services and trust in public institutions. Results show that appropriately dealing with nonequivalence accounts for different forms of biases that otherwise would be undetected. The article contributes to the methodological advancement in studying public administration beyond domestic borders.     

American Indian Tribal Governance and Management: Public Administration Promise or Pretense?

Research on tribal governance in the United States is scarce within modern public administration scholarship. Nonetheless, tribal governance is a pre‐Columbian practice that predates the U.S. Constitution and federal law. Drawing from several disciplines, John C. Ronquillo of the University of Georgia demonstrates that interdisciplinary sources offer rich information for present‐day public administration research about Native American tribes. Tribal governance literature is definitely not “missing,” but instead is moderately “unassembled” as a subfield of public administration. Building on what is available, the author suggests several key issues within tribal governance in need of urgent academic attention.     

The Profession of Public Administration: An Ethics Edge in Introductory Textbooks?

Given the substantial interest in public service ethics, this study examines its foundations as reflected in paradigmatic textbooks—a unit of analysis that informs both theory and practice in the field. The interpretative framework employed evaluates the context (the amount and placement of the topic, the use of graphics, and sources cited) as well as the content (conceptualization of management ethics and inclusion of implementation issues) of ethics found in the publications. A limited definition of a professional—one in possession of largely technical skills—is reflected in the textbooks. The implications of the findings are explored.     

The Future of Leadership in Public Universities: Is Shared Leadership the Answer?

Leadership of public universities has come under fire—from scandals, from funding, from students, from every direction. Top‐down leadership of institutions of higher education has been described as a “disease.” Shared governance—a mechanism of faculty representation in the leadership and decision‐making processes—a seeming alternative, has been described as “a recipe for paralysis.” In this article, the authors proffer shared leadership as a potential elixir for leading public institutions of higher learning, unleashing creative potential, focusing on pressing strategic imperatives, and enabling sustainable systems that leverage true talent to maximum effect. It is time to move beyond the moribund myth of top‐down heroic leadership and beyond the bureaucratic, political quagmire of the current state of affairs in shared governance. Is shared leadership the answer?      

Blogging and Environmental Advocacy: A New Way to Engage the Public?

While there is a growing literature on weblogs (or “blogs”), most studies focus on a few high profile blogs, or on blogs written by individuals. This study assesses the little‐researched area of organizational blogging through a content analysis of blogs by 40 national‐level environmental organizations. I examine the general purposes that these blogs serve and the extent to which organizational blogs differ from traditional websites. Additionally, I explore two blog features—interactivity and personalized content—that offer the potential to strengthen the connections between group leaders and their supporters. I find that groups use their blogs primarily to inform readers about policy developments and news headlines, but that the level of interactivity between blog authors and readers is low. Thus, while the potential exists for blogs to enhance grassroots support for environmental groups, that potential is far from being realized.     

Repositioning American Public Administration? Citizen Estrangement,Administrative Reform,and the Disarticulated State

Levels of citizen estrangement from government in the United States have risen rather consistently since the late 1960s and have reached all‐time highs in recent years. Evidence is accumulating in political science research to suggest that public administrative theory may have contributed to this trend since the Progressive Era in the early 1900s. The authors develop this thesis by arguing that administrative theory in the United States has persistently portrayed public managers as “bridge builders” who link an expertise‐challenged citizenry to government in ways that emphasize bureaucratic over democratic administration. Moreover, despite claims of yet another “new” paradigmatic shift for the field, collaborative governance scholarship to date exhibits similar tendencies. To support this argument, the authors assess the common citizen‐marginalizing tendencies of three sets of administrative reforms in American public administration: the progressive, associationalist, and polycentric heritages. They offer counterarguments to this thesis and call for critical self‐reflection by the field and a more empirically robust research agenda on this topic.     

Who Are the Keepers of the Code? Articulating and Upholding Ethical Standards in the Field of Public Administration

Establishing a code of ethics has been a challenge in public administration. Ethics is central to the practice of administration, but the broad field of public administration has had difficulty articulating clear and meaningful standards of behavior and developing a means of upholding a code of ethics. Although a number of specialized professional associations in public service adopted codes, starting with the International City/County Management Association in 1924 and others after 1960, the full range of public administrators did not have an association to represent them until the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) was founded in 1939. Despite early calls for a code of ethics in ASPA, the first code was adopted in 1984, with revisions in 1994, but neither code had a process for enforcement. A new code approved in 2013 builds on the earlier codes and increases the prospects for ASPA to work with other professional associations to broaden awareness of the ethical responsibilities to society of all public administrators.