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The article focuses on mobility in temporary society. In the search for the temporary organization, capable of and eager to innovate and adapt, high rates of personnel mobility may work against organizational change. The article discusses a case analysis which is based upon a paper which the author initially prepared for a reunion of current and past faculty members of the Federal Executive Institute (FEI), held in Charlottesville, Virginia, in February 1973. The main theme of the paper on the relationship between personnel and leadership mobility on the one hand and innovation and adaptiveness on the other scented to me a significant challenge to some of the assumptions in the current and predictive literature about organizations, with implications far beyond that altogether unique institution known as the FEI. Several concepts current among public administrators and organizational theorists set the organizational mold for the FEI. Each of these concepts was selected to neutralize what was perceived as dysfunctional aspects of traditional bureaucratic organizations.

Most theory and research on organizations assumes that the great diversity of organizational attributes reflects variation in implementation of a relatively small number of forms. Modern conceptions of organizational form concentrate on discontinuities in distributions of either attributes or relationships with other organizations. We argue that this approach be supplemented with an explicitly dynamic one that focuses on processes that create and erode boundaries in the organizational world. This paper discusses some of the advantages of this approach and specifics a number of processes that create and erode boundaries around organizational populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores ways in which policy makers think about the value of information in the policy process. Close to 200 federal, state, and local policy makers gave us their Judgments about information systems which were mandated by the federal government in elementary and secondary education. We predicted that the value they reported would be influenced by their structural location in the educational policy system and by the policy theories about education which they embraced. These predictions were confirmed. Knowledge of a policy maker's structural location and policy theories facilitates understanding of how much he or she will value federal data on education. The results point toward a clearer understanding of the political context in which federal information systems must operate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article comments on open and closed systems of decision making. This paper analyzes how toxic waste management issues move from a position where they are decided by a small, narrowly constituted elite to one where they are now influenced by a more diverse set of actors. In the U.S., until the mid-1970s the issue of toxic waste sites was not on the systemic or institutional agendas of most local and state governments, nor on the federal government's agenda. Government leaders and the public then became aware of the issue through incidents such as Love Canal, and it was pushed onto the systemic agenda of many local, state, and federal agencies. As more people became concerned about the health and environmental dangers associated with toxic waste dumps, the scope of conflict expanded and the problem began moving from a closed to an open decision-making context, and from a systemic agenda to an institutional one. The problem that public officials now face is how to combine the core democratic values of accountability and representativeness with the tenets of administrative efficiency, e.g., increasing demands for technical expertise, economy, and efficiency.

This paper suggests that the use of rulemaking as an alternative means of implementation can have policy consequences and, as a result, can have significant political implications. In the case of the Federal Trade Commission, the balance of forces in the agency's political environment has proved dominant to determining its willingness to rely on rulemaking. Similarly, the commission's emphasis on rulemaking in recent years has significantly altered its relationships with key members of its environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the strategy literature has largely focused on business firms, public agencies also engage in strategic management, as reflected in a variety of policy- making and administrative activities. This paper extends the emerging literature on strategic management in public organizations by reporting the results of field studies in four Ohio agencies and providing a preliminary classification of public organization strategies. Also, characteristics of four distinct strategies (developmental, transformational, protective, and political) are identified and described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Models of management in public administration are of three dominant types. One, neutral competence, emphasizes neutrality and objectivity. A second, termed responsive competency here, stresses political responsiveness. A third model, which focuses on managerial competence, relies heavily on private sector practices. This paper utilizes data from the Federal Employee Attitude Survey, Phases I and II, and personal interviews with career federal executives to examine the relevance of these models to contemporary management needs. A public service model is proposed as an alternative conceptualization for the practice of federal management. This model calls for informed management skills for both career and political executives. It also emphasizes managing in the public interest and, therefore, the need for widespread commitment to competent and effective management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores statistical models that may be useful to an organization during its formalization and control stage. These models may provide useful information as a part of an organization's management control system. Two essential elements of a management control system are: (I) information about how the organization is operating, and (2) standards against which to compare this information to judge how well the organization is operating. Identifying problem areas requires comparing operations information to standards or benchmarks. Possible sources of such standards for public sector organizations include an organization's goals, objectives, or targets; standards established by relevant professional associations; the performance of similar organizations; the organization's own historical performance record; and optimal or technically efficient performance levels. This paper discusses statistical models that managers can use to develop standards based on three of these sources: the organization's own objectives; the optimal level, given specified environmental and technical constraints; the performance of other organizations. The article presents a model, illustrates its usage with examples for probation agencies, and discusses the model's advantages and disadvantages.

Note has been made about the budgetary impact of judicial decisions. This paper looks at the budgetary effect of federal district court decisions across the states in the area of corrections. The study shows that (a) courts have affected state spending on prisons, (b) the levels of per prisoner spending in states that have had court cases are, in general, lower than in states that have not experienced prisoner rights litigation, (c) the level of per prisoner spending has not been affected by judicially mandated prison reform because of the steady increase in the prison population. The implications of the analysis are discussed. These include: (a) bureaucratic behavior, (b) redistributive aspects of judicial decisions, and (c) the erosion of the budget as a tool of popular control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the development and operation of a policy analysis unit within the central headquarters of the New York City public school system in 1981. The implementation strategy used to establish this unit was informed by the rules of conventional wisdom. The unit in this case study, however, was conceived under a particular set of circumstances with specific goals in mind. The fact of the matter is that the only real constituency for an analytic unit in an agency is that found within the bureaucracy itself.

This article, after considering the need for effective techniques for policy evaluation, develops a model for the evaluation of urban public policy. The model consists of five separate components and includes a time variable. The final section of the paper uses the component model and resulting variables to evaluate two hypothetical urban programs. The problems encountered in single- and multi-program evaluation attempts are discussed. Finally, conclusions are drawn concerning the limitations and utility of evaluation efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Confrontation, accompanied by violence and vandalism, is interfering with the ability of administrators of public institutions to discharge their responsibilities with rationalism and efficiency. Universities, secondary schools, government, and social agencies, in varying forms and degrees, are challenged by the militancy of student, minority, and client activist groups. Some of their demands seem unreasonable and unrealizable, and the methods used appear to leave little room for negotiation or compromise. Under pressure from these militants, and from political and public demands for law and order, public administrators find it difficult to develop a professional, rational, and consistent pattern of response. This paper discusses some of the sociological and psychological effects of organizational conflicts, and suggests some operational principles to guide administrators of public institutions in meeting the confrontation tactics of activist groups.

Understanding the relations between elected and administrative officials in council-manager cities is hampered by inadequate models for assigning responsibility for governmental functions. Practitioners tend to view their roles in terms of the traditional model based on dichotomy of policy and administration and, though aware of exceptions, are uncomfortable with them. Scholars, on the other hand, having rejected this model, see extensive overlap and have difficulty recognizing limits of the policy-making role of the manager. This paper draws on field observa(ions in the five cities in North Carolina with populations of more than 100,000 and a review of the literature to consider a number of "existing" models of the policy-administration relationship and to propose a new formulation that is empirically sound and responsive to practitioners' concern for normative guides to behavior. The proposed model is based on a separation of responsibility for the definition of mission by elected officials and the management of programs by administrative staff. Policy and administration-which fall between mission and management-are viewed as the shared responsibility of elected officials and staff, with each having a legitimate role in both functions. Implications of the model for administrative ethics, council roles, and future research are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the use of information in policy decision making was conducted in an experimental laboratory setting. A general model of decision making and a more specific model of information choice are presented. The article focuses on the choice of computer versus printed information in a policy decision-making environment. Hypotheses on the relationship between information media, information choice, and decision outcome are drawn from the model. To test these propositions, 97 subjects participated in an exercise asking them to decide whether or not flextime should be implemented in a public agency. The subjects chose computer and hard-copy information sets with varying structure and information processing resources to assist them in their decision making. Information processing resources and computer literacy significantly influenced the selection of information media. Information media also affected a person's commitment to a decision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of federal policy involving health, environmental, and safety matters is made through agency rule making. Since the 1960s, the scope of rule making has been expanded to control risks associated with industrial technologies. Control of toxic pollutants in the environment illustrates the complexity of the task: toxics are unusually persistent and often travel from one medium to another. This makes them difficult to control under statutes that were designed to regulate pollutants in a single medium. This article explores the concept of comprehensive rule making—a management strategy for regulating risks under several statutes. It deals with the development of integrated environmental management at the Environmental Protection Agency from 1976 to 1983. Subsequently, former EPA Administrator William Ruckelshaus created a Toxics Integration Task Force composed of senior agency scientists and managers. The group's proposals are now being implemented. They include, among others: the development of risk assessment guidelines; the establishment of an agency-wide risk assessment forum; the convening of an inter-agency risk management council; and an agency report on risk assessment and risk management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines decision support systems (DSS) for disaster management. Definition of a decision support system; Steps in managing a disaster; Use of DSS in disaster management; Examination of the decision support systems of various organizations; future developments in DSS.

Discusses the integration of organizational action in emergency management situations. Making optimal decisions in emergency management; Development of a concurrent information search process into the emergency management cycle; Effect of the concurrent information search process on the organizational and interorganizational design of the emergency management system; Recommendations for implementation of the process.

The article examines the management evaluation of intergovernmental personnel programs in the public administration sector in the U.S. Program performance at all levels of the intergovernmental system would benefit from improved understanding of the variety of indirect management techniques and their associated implications. Perhaps the most realistic and valuable metaphor for the evaluation of intergovernmental programs is that this activity itself become part of a broader societal learning system, rather than a one-shot, clear-cut assessment of success or failure. If this metaphor of learning is appropriate, and if key public officials can be convinced to take it seriously, then program evaluation can become a constructive, long-term catalyst for change.

Since its inception in 1971, Amtrak policy has been an intense area of conflict between advocates of better service and those demand jug reduced deficits or increased profitability. Though the Lines are not always clear, one may distinguish three phases of congressional action and Amtrak response to those actions: (1) political training from 1971 to 3978, (2) managerial training from 1979 to 1980, and (3) training for service and profit from 1981 to the present. The first phase represents a power imbalance in favor of service advocates during which Amtrak used congressional cover to expand its political base of survival without improving service. The second phase represents the ascendancy of profitability guardians and efforts through Congress to impose managerial controls on Amtrak. This era is marked by sophisticated counter-control maneuvers by Amtrak through employment of its considerable technical and financial expertise to delay these control measures. The lengthy experience of conflict between service and profitability advocates evolved into a third stage where policy performance is improved by application of tight fiscal and service controls combined with delegation of important managerial discretion to Amtrak to solidify and diversity its fiscal base. The experience of Amtrak should provide an important lesson for Congress in future application of mixed enterprises for revitalization of decayed U.S. industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is threefold: to enhance appreciation of policy enforcement in the regulatory arena, to do so by applying a decidedly different analytical approach that compensates for the design shortcomings noted above, and to determine if this approach is capable of advancing the predictive power of emerging implementation theory in the regulatory arena. To these ends, the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) highly dissimilar regulatory experiences with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) during EPA's implementation of the Clean Air Act and the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (FWPCA) serve as the analytical focus of the research. Using a comparative case study design, EPA's efforts to apply its sulfur dioxide and thermal pollution control regulations to the power program operations of the TVA during the 1970s are examined. Applying this approach to the EPA/TVA experiences reveals that regulatory policy implementation difficulties are perhaps best anticipated if the interaction patterns of two factors are known: the degree to which the application of a policy directly affects activities central to a regulatory target's mission, and the extent to which the time delay inherent in challenging implementation of a policy is perceived by the target as adversely affecting the realization of that mission.

The recent presidential transition is examined in some detail in two federal agencies, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Mine Safety and Health Administration, using interview, questionnaire, and archival data collected between 1980 and 1983. The transition process is discussed in terms of the conflicting demands of organizational theory and democratic theory. Organizational theory emphasizes the difficulty with which organizations pursue change, their need for relative stability, and their ongoing attempts to adapt to their environments. Democratic theory emphasizes the importance of agency change and responsiveness given the changing desires of the electorate. These two tendencies interacted in the two agencies in different ways and to differing extents during the recent transition. Specifically, the transition produced increased centralization, less communication, and greater distrust between career and political employees. These effects are more pronounced and long-lasting in EPA than in MSHA because EPA's transition is more extreme. Such responses can impair the organization's ability to change, as well as its ability to conduct its more routine business, compromising both democratic and organizational goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyses the increasing participation of economists in government services in the U.S. Most of these economists do technical work such as gathering and interpreting wage statistics in the Labor Department and forecasting future crop prices in the Agriculture Department. It is the work of these economists that is most likely to affect the scope and shape of public programs. Some studies show that, compared to other social scientists, economists are disproportionately represented. It is not clear precisely how many of these economists are involved with analyzing policy, but economists do hold positions which give them the potential to influence public policy decisions. Though economists are well represented in government, it is difficult to know how much influence they have had on public policy. Economics stands more for a particular way of looking at policy alternatives than for particular policies. Whatever the extent of their influence, economists' disproportionate representation in government suggests that those interested in public policy should understand their characteristic mode of thinking.

Educational institutions already recognize the importance of student evaluations of teaching effectiveness. As indicated by the results of this survey, 8.7 per cent of the schools of public administration in the sample carried out formal evaluations of the faculty by students. There is also some recognition, although much less wide- spread, that upward evaluations of administrators can improve the organizational climate and thus facilitate improved organizational functioning. The finding that only 21.7 per cent of the schools of public administration surveyed had formal, periodic upward evaluations of the dean would seem to imply a double standard on the part of many deans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article comments on federal civil service in the U.S. The federal civil service is now experiencing its first major retrenchment in forty years. The active buildup of the Vietnam and Great Society years has been replaced by job freezes and Reductions-in Force. The 1970s have ushered in a change in federal priorities. Whereas the Johnsonian Great Society emphasized social change, equity, responsiveness, and representativeness, President Richard Nixon's New Federalism appears to foreshadow a reduced federal social programming role and an administrative model stressing economy, efficiency, productivity, and executive control. Yet just as the Administration is taking stock of the federal social program inventory and administrative apparatus, so it is important for those committed to a different conception of the rate of federal intervention in promoting social change to look back and assess the federal experience during the last decade in an attempt to help define new and more viable strategies for change.

The article comments on failure of the U.S. Department of Labor's Work Incentive (WIN) program. In one important respect, the Work Incentive (WIN) program is typical of other manpower training efforts and of many government service programs: it is a failure. It was "begun in 1968 as a major effort to restore relief recipients to economic independence and thereby cut the cost of burgeoning welfare rolls. Many factors have contributed to the program's failure; two of the most important are largely beyond the control of program administrators. Clients are often poorly motivated toward employment, and jobs which welfare recipients are qualified to fill are often unavoidable. These two factors, of course interact, for a lack of jobs of the availability of only "dead end" jobs obviously affects client morale and motivation. The problem is endemic to WIN and to many other public programs; it is bureaucratic entanglement and inertia. Regulations are many, performance incentives are few. The WIN teams at the local levels are inundated with regulations from federal, regional, and state offices.

More news emanates from officials than from any other source. Most of it passes routinely through formal channels of "public information" in the government to reporters on newsbeats around Washington. Not all news gathering is routine, however. Some nonroutine news comes from officials who disclose a pertinent piece of information to the press on their own initiative and without specific authorization to do so. The rest reporters piece together by making their rounds, exchanging and cross-checking bits of information with their contacts in the government, and taking educated guesses. In these instances, too, it is officials who provide the information that makes the news. The contrast between the American and British press suggests an explanation. The volume of detailed information on the inner workings of the U.S. government in the press astonishes, and occasionally dismays, foreign observers. The reason for the difference is not so much legal sanction or reportorial aggressiveness as it is bureaucratic need. Getting things done in Washington requires greater use of the press than it does in London.

This article discusses the role of the president of the U.S. The role of the college or university president in modern society has long been recognized as complex, difficult, and crucial. The basic characteristics of the office have not changed, nor have the requirements for coping with its de- mands. The new element is that recent developments on the campus and in the surrounding society have brought an overlay of insistent pressures on the office that, temporarily at least, have drastically altered the role of the president. One of the most obvious facts of life for the president is that he is a target for attack from all sides and that there is no escape from the onslaught. The president has always been a man in the middle, a focus for competing demands that could not possibly be fully satisfied. The most obvious assault force against the university and its presidency is, of course, the activist element in the student body, particularly the more militant groups. Public attention has naturally been centered on the most disruptive tactics.

The development of public administration in the U.S. was the extent to which sociological factors apparently affected the prescriptions and principles of which its literature was composed. Through the early teachings, the successes of the reform movement and the widespread adoption of the city-manager form of government, has been widely distributed both through academia and the general public. Political scientists and sociologists have begun to raise questions about the operation of administrative structures in and on government and society. It seems odd that the field of public administration itself has not evidenced a general awareness of the rumblings of change that are being heard in the public and from some intellectuals. The traditional bureaucratic administrative structure possesses two central characteristics. The more basic of those is the principle of hierarchy, which entails strictly defined roles articulated in terms of layers of authority. Policy is set at the top of the hierarchy and transmitted down through rules and close authoritative supervision, which insures that the rules are followed.

Administration deals with governmental issues. It is praised or condemned for how well it handles the allocation question of who gets what, how, why, when and where in the organizations it governs. The democratic management is currently treated as a psychotherapeutic technique. But if democratic management is anything, it is first a governmental phenomenon. Industrial humanism offers man freedom and self-determination. Management science offers man comfort and organizations rationality. These creeds appear to create totally different kinds of organizational governments. Industrial humanism rests with power-equalization and democracy. Management science stands with an autocracy of the technical elite. Industrial humanism reenforces the technical imperative in the behavioral sphere. While industrial humanism is a checkered picture, much of the humanists' efforts has been aimed at the creation of effective managerial teams, stressing such qualities of behavior as openness, confrontation and authenticity in interpersonal relations.

A program of maximum participation proved to be politically unfeasible, while the very concept of participation displayed a brilliant ambiguity. Maximum feasible participation emerged unclear, unexamined and ununderstood. Because it served many agendas, it enjoyed a vitality, which permitted it to grow in this uncertain terrain. The theme of participation confronts administrators in two basic ways, one is that it focuses attention upon the poor, a group largely neglected by many public bureaucracies and second, it emphasizes degrees of citizen involvement which have not been typical in public bureaucracies. The increasing use of professionals and the redefinition of administration as a professional field has fed the notion that planning is politics-free. Policy involvement in community action planning is propelled by the contention that citizens read poor citizens and thus should have a focal role in developing plans, which affect them. The demand for policy involvement today is different because leaders of the black and the poor recognize the importance of policy involvement and are organizing to see that it becomes reality.

The article presents information on the collective bargaining concepts. Collective bargaining may be defined in a variety of ways, and the definitions which are formulated and adopted are the most critical choices in this period of its adaptation to governments. How collective bargaining is regarded is likely to fix its future practices in the public sector, and the approaches to which different concepts lead will in large measure determine the success or failure of public sector relationships. The available definitions run a gamut, because collective bargaining in private businesses is varied and complex. Collective bargaining is a relationship between management and the representative of organized employees. It is characterized by periodic negotiations resulting in written agreement on a basic rule system to govern the work relationship and organized arrangements for resolving disagreements and problems as they arise day-to-day. That is about as close to an initial definition as it is useful to come. Varied approaches to collective bargaining in private industry tend toward two orientations which merit consideration in lieu of deceptive definitions. As governments adopt collective bargaining, some choice of emphasis between conflict and cooperation may be possible, but experience in private industry indicates that conflict persists even where cooperative efforts prevail. Choice is possible, however, in making use of the dynamic qualities of reasonableness and variety which are defined in American legal and political experience.

The author provides a systematic theoretical statement which attempts a reasonable approximation of the reality of organization and public administration and a helpful outline of various familiar phenomena within that field. The statement formulates a concept of enterprise as a particular activity of a group of persons engaged in providing a product or rendering a service to our society. It is suggested that in the analysis of an enterprise a clear distinction be drawn between its two principal components: operations and administration. The operations of an enterprise entail an output and a work process. Administration encompasses the management of resources and the techniques of direction necessary to insure that the operations of an enterprise realize their intended output. The concepts of authority, responsibility, hierarchy, leadership, and power structure are explained within the framework of this theoretical statement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]