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1.
If you were to writing a book on the general topic of management, what chapters
would you include? How would a book on public management differ?
2.
3.
The author notes the dilemma in balancing legitimate skepticism about public
organizations and the recognition that public organizations are indispensable.
Explain this statement. Provide examples in the context of a government department
or agency with which you are familiar; discuss its value to citizens and criticisms
that may surround it.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Theories often reflect socioeconomic conditions at the time. Discuss and explain the basic
tenets and assumptions of the classic school in relation to the times in which it became
widely accepted.
Describe the general evolution in management thought and organizational theory across
this century.
What would a federal agency or department look like if it were run by Frederick Taylor?
Max Weber?
On what grounds did Herbert Simon refute the tenets of classical organization theory? Do
you agree or disagree with his critique?
Discuss studies in organization that were done in the 1960s and their contribution to
adaptive and contingency theories. How did these studies add to and refine earlier thought?
Youve been hired as a consultant to improve the Department of Motor Vehicles. As a first
step, you have decided to survey the employees, including management at the local and
regional offices. After reading much literature, youve decided that the human relations
school offers the most guidance for understanding and reforming organizations. What
questions would you ask in your survey if you anticipate making changes along the lines of
the human relations school?
Commonweal organizations
Enterprises
Publicness
1. What is meant by the blurring of the sectors? In what ways does this occur?
2. What distinction did Dahl and Lindblom make between markets and polyarchies?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of each? What are the reasons for the
existence of government, from an economic and a political point of view?
3. How did Dahl and Lindblom distinguish between agencies and enterprises?
4. How do Wamsley and Zald employ ownership and funding in making a distinction
between public and private organizations?
5. What does Bozeman mean by publicness, and how does he employ this concept?
1. Consider a local public department with which you have recently interacted. List
and discuss the nature of services they provide. What groups do they serve? Do you
consider the department effective or ineffective? Explain. To what standards should
they be held? Explain.
2. Consider any government agency with which you have interacted. What laws, rules,
and regulations are relevant to the particular services they provide? Describe the
political environment of the agency. How might the department, its structure, tasks,
and clientele change if the political environment changes? How does the economic
environment affect the department? What job competencies should be required of
the employees? What type of training should they have?
3. What are some major problems and approaches to analyzing the distinction between
public and private organizations?
4. What are the common assertions about the distinctive nature of public organizations
and management? Describe two that you consider accurate and two you consider
inaccurate or overblown.
5. What is the generic tradition in organization and management theory, and what are
its implications for the public-private distinction? What have been the research
findings supporting this generic position?
6. How do externalities affect the role of the public sector?
Population ecology
The population ecology perspective analyzes how
populations of organizations go through processes of variation, selection, and
retention.
Variation involves the continuing appearance of new forms of organization,
both planned and unplanned. Then the selection process determines which
forms of organization will survive and prosper, based on their fit with the
environment
or their capacity to fill an environmental niche. A niche is a distinct combination
of resources and constraints that supports the particular form of
organization. Retention processes serve to continue the form through such
environmental
influences as pressures on the organizations to maintain past practices,
and through such internal processes as employees developing common outlooks.
Resource dependency theory
Resource-dependence theories analyze how organizational managers try to obtain
crucial resources from their environment, such as materials, money, people, support
services, and technological knowledge. Organizations can adapt their structures
in response to their environment, or they can change their niches. They can
try to change the environment by creating demand or seeking government actions
that can help them. They can try to manipulate the way the environment is perceived
by the people in the organization and those outside it. In these and other
ways, they can pursue essential resources. These theorists stress the importance of
internal and external political processes in the quest for resources
Transaction cost theory
Transaction-costs theories analyze managerial decisions to purchase a needed
good or service from outside, as opposed to producing it within the organization
Analyzing the Environment of Public Organizations 87
(Williamson, 1975, 1981). Transactions with other organizations and people become
more costly as contracts become harder to write and supervise. The organization
may need a service particular to itself, or it may have problems supervising
contractors. Managers may try to hold down such costs under certain conditions
by merging with another organization or permanently hiring a person with whom
they had been contracting
Institution, institutionalization
Public and nonprofit managers encounter many instances where new procedures
or schemes, such as a new budgeting technique, become widely implemented as
88 Understanding and Managing Public Organizations
the latest, best approachwhether or not anyone can prove that it is. In addition,
some of the research mentioned earlier shows how external institutions such as
government impose structures and procedures on organizations. Some of these
theorists disagreed among themselves over these different views of institutionalization
whether it results from the spread of beliefs and myths or from the influence
of external institutions such as government (Scott, 1987)
Isomorphism
refers to organizations
Performance criteria
Values and performance criteria for government organizations
Competence
Efficiency
Effectiveness
Timeliness
Reliability
Reasonableness
Responsiveness
Accountability, legality, responsiveness to rule of law and governmental authorities,
responsiveness to public demands
Adherence to ethical standards
Fairness, equal treatment, impartiality
Openness to external scrutiny and criticism
Criterion of competence
Criterion of responsiveness
Criterion of representativeness
Criterion of timeliness
Criterion of reasonableness
internal and external political processes in the quest for resources. Chapter Six
discusses how their analysis of resources in connection with internal power
relationships
applies to public organizations (Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978, pp. 277278;
Daft, 2001).
8. Describe the population ecology perspective on organization survival.
Population ecology theorists, for example, analyze the origin, development, and
decline of populations of organizations using biological concepts (Hannan and
Freeman, 1989). Just as biologists analyze how certain populations of organisms
develop to take advantage of a particular ecological niche, population ecologists
analyze the development of populations of organizations
within certain niches (characterized by their unique combinations of available
resources and constraints)
9. What does a resource dependency theorist say about organization survival?
Resource-dependence theories analyze how organizational managers try to obtain
crucial resources from their environment, such as materials, money, people, support
services, and technological knowledge. Organizations can adapt their structures
in response to their environment, or they can change their niches. They can
try to change the environment by creating demand or seeking government actions
that can help them. They can try to manipulate the way the environment is
perceived
by the people in the organization and those outside it. In these and other
ways, they can pursue essential resources. These theorists stress the importance of
internal and external political processes in the quest for resources. Chapter Six
discusses how their analysis of resources in connection with internal power
relationships
applies to public organizations (Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978, pp. 277278;
Daft, 2001).
10. What general effects does uncertainty have on the organization?
11. What are the important components and dimensions of the political and
economic environments of public organizations?
Technological conditions: the general level of knowledge and capability in science,
engineering, medicine, and other substantive areas; general capacities for communication,
transportation, information processing, medical services, military
weaponry, environmental analysis, production and manufacturing processes, and
agricultural production.
Legal conditions: laws, regulations, legal procedures, court decisions; characteristics
of legal institutions and values, such as provisions for individual rights and jury trials
as well as the general institutionalization and stability of legal processes.
Political conditions: characteristics of the political processes and institutions in a
society, such as the general form of government (socialism, communism, capitalism,
and so on; degree of centralization, fragmentation, or federalism) and the degree
of political stability (Carroll, Delacroix, and Goodstein, 1988). More direct and
specific conditions include electoral outcomes, political party alignments and success,
and policy initiatives within regimes.
Economic conditions: levels of prosperity, inflation, interest rates, and tax rates;
characteristics
of labor, capital, and economic markets within and between nations.
Demographic conditions: characteristics of the population such as age, gender, race,
religion, and ethnic categories.
Ecological conditions: characteristics of the physical environment, including climate,
geographical characteristics, pollution, natural resources, and the nature and density
of organizational populations.
Cultural conditions: predominant values, attitudes, beliefs, social customs, and
socialization processes concerning such things as sex roles, family structure, work
orientation, and religious and political practices.
12. How do general values and institutions of the political economy, such as provision
of the U.S. Constitution, influence management and organizations in government?
13. What are competence and responsiveness values, and what are their implications for
public management?
Mass publics
Interest groups
Privatization
Garbage can model of decision making
Attentive publics
Policy instruments
1. Describe how the following entities can influence public managers and public
organizations. What formal and informal authority do they have that enables them to
exert such influence?
a. Public opinion
b. The media
c. Interest groups, clients, and constituents
d. Legislative bodies
e. Chief executive
f. The courts
g. Other agencies and other levels of government
h. The public policy process
2. Name and describe two theories of the policy process.
3. What key authors are associated with literature on the policy process?
4. What key authors are associated with the role of interest groups and other main
actors involved in the policy process?
5. What is a policy instrument, and how is it used?
1. What is meant by the terms hollow state and networks? How do they complicate the
lines of authority and accountability in a public organization? Give examples.
2. Choose a policy example and its associated influences. What main actors are closely
involved with the policy? Who are the major stakeholders? Which term more
accurately reflects the influences, iron triangle or issue network? How would you
describe the relationships and influences of all the parties involved?
3. Most public agencies have websites that describe their work. Likewise, many
nonprofits have mission statements that are published. Describe ways in which
formal political authority might affect the goals or missions of each organization. In
which case are political influences more pervasive?
4. Chapter 5 makes clear that there is no neat way to package the policy process. In
fact, it can be complex, nonlinear, and unpredictable. In what ways does Kingdons
theory try to make sense of the policy process? What other theories of the policy
process have currency in public administration and management literature?
5. What should a public manager know about policy instruments?