INCREASING PRODUCTIVITY OF GOVERNMENT'S RELIANCE UPON OUTSIDE ORGANIZATIONS TO PROVIDE ANALYSIS AND MANAGEMENT SERVICES

The federal government spends vast sums of money for management and analysis services. The authors contend that the selection process to determine the winners of the awards of contracts to perform these services too often disregards cost competitiveness as a factor in the award. The relative importance of technical proficiency and cost are examined and a model is proposed whereby a high level of technical expertise can be obtained at a more reasonable cost.     

Employment,age, race,and crime: A labor theoretic investigation

The fundamental objective of this paper has been to reinvestigate the relationship between employment and crime, while taking account of deterrence, age and race effects. The data, a sample of Brooklyn arrestees, was collected by the Vera Institute of Justice simply to explore, with individual data, the relationship between employment and crime. In this research, a labor theoretic formulation is used incorporating a model that views the problem as one of rational choice between legitimate work and participation in crime. Factors affecting the diminution of crime participation with age are investigated. Changes at age 18 in economic opportunities and in deterrence effects from moving from juvenile to adult status are found to have a significant impact on crime participation. The results are important because they tend to confirm with official crime report data, results found in earlier studies using self-report data, i.e., (1) when the process is appropriately modeled, previous contacts with police are found to cause some experimenters with crime to become desisters, (2) prior work experience and economic opportunities tend to reinforce this tendency to desist, (3) even though blacks are found to have a greater prevalence of involvement in crime, when the data are standardized for all of the aforementioned factors and educational attainment, there is no significant difference between blacks and whites in their tendency to recidivate.     

The unfulfilled promise of an envisioned jewel: An attempt to transfer technology out of the splintering Soviet Union

This case study is based upon extensive interviews with a Fortune 500 company's new-products manager for Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. It focuses upon the American manager's attempt to establish an agreement to transfer a revolutionary technology out of the Soviet Union. This effort takes place as the Soviet Union is dissolving, adding complexity and uncertainty to an already extraordinarily challenging task. While ultimately unsuccessful, the case provides insight into the importance of risk-taking and the learning that results from failed experiments.He has received numerous teaching awards and has published articles in several academic and professional journals.     

Social learning and adolescent deviance abstention: Toward understanding the reasons for initiating,quitting, and avoiding drugs

Tests of theories that attempt to explain why individuals currently use drugs are widespread; however, the theoretical examinations of abstention from drugs and the cessation of their use are rare. For its part, social learning theory has been supported consistently in its delineation of the process by which substance use is learned. We propose that cessation and abstention are also learned behavior. Using logistic regression analysis, we examine the ability of social learning variables to distinguish among abstainers, current users, and former users of illicit drugs within a sample of 1688 middle- and high-school students in two widely separated nonurban communities. Results indicate that social learning variables clearly distinguish abstainers from current users but are less able to distinguish former users and current users or former users from abstainers. The theoretical, research, and policy implications of these findings are examined in detail.     

Statistical Sampling in Tax Audits

The courts, with some important qualifications, have been reluctant to uphold tax assessments based on a review of only a sample of all transactions. In this article we argue that audit assessments based on appropriately drawn and analyzed statistical samples do not suffer from the defects that the courts have correctly concluded mar assessments based on nonstatistical samples. We do, however, argue that because of the inherent imprecision of assessments based on a less-than-complete review of all records, the calculation of the assessment should include a factor to take into account the risk that the taxpayer has been overassessed. We suggest an assessment rule that does just this and also recommend guidelines for the use of statistical sampling in tax audits.     

Rawlsian difference principles and economic utilitarianism

John Rawls's theory, justice as fairness, constitutes an important alternative to a utilitarian theory of social justice. This essay addresses the relationship between utilitarian choice and the difference principle that is central to Rawls's theory. It argues that the difference principle, if applied to utility, is not supportable in the economic utilitarian framework. The Rawlsian result could be consistent with this framework if expressed with respect to income rather than utility. However, the argument in a utilitarian framework is ad hoc and not compelling. The paper presents conditions under which a utilitarian in an initial position, with some similarity to Rawls's original position, would choose the Rawlsian difference principle. The choices coincide only under the unrealistic assumption that redistribution entails no efficiency loss.     

Public management: What do we know? what should we know? and how will we know it?

The field of public management draws on a rich and varied trove of intellectual resources. Applying scholarship and imagination, its students can recognize, interpret, and predict the reality of managing governmental organizations with considerable acuity. If the field is to advance, however, researchers must do more than reverently assemble and digest practice wisdom. More emphasis must be placed on disciplined, theory-based inquiry.