Public Administration Review articles from July 1998

Public Administration Review archives from July 1998

Are Large Public Organizations Manageable?
July 1, 1998... Americans like many big things: cars, open spaces, movies. But we don't like big bureaucracies. Americans think that large government organizations are too complex, too impersonal, too inefficient, and cost too much. They are partly right. But at...

The Legitimacy Crisis and the New Progressivism
July 1, 1998... Those of us who educate for public service need to understand the indirect role we have played in fueling the present governmental legitimacy crisis. As an antidote, I urge here a regrounding and rethinking of the enlightenment agenda of human...

The Determinants of Success in Implementing an Expert System in State Government
July 1, 1998... There are few tasks that managers dread as much as employee discipline. Except for cases in which the offense is severe enough to warrant termination, a manager must continue to interact daily with the employee after a punishment has been...

The Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA): Hydra-Headed Monster or Flexible Management Tool?
July 1, 1998... A simple reading of the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) suggests that this legislation is fairly straightforward and responds to many of the recommendations that have come from students of public management over the years. Written in...

The Question of Participation: Toward Authentic Public Participation in Public Administration
July 1, 1998... The appropriate role of the public in public administration has been an active and ongoing area of inquiry, experimentation, revolution, and controversy since the birth of this nation. The contemporary movement to examine the role of the public in...

What Do Administrators Think Citizens Think? Administrator Predictions as an Adjunct to Citizen Surveys
July 1, 1998... Public administrators, especially in local government, work every day to serve the citizenry, presumably acting in part on the basis of what they think citizens want of them as administrators. How those administrators feel about their jobs and...

A "Smarter, Better, Faster, and Cheaper" Government: Contracting and Geographic Information Systems
July 1, 1998... With a fervent aspiration to "make government work better and cost less," the Clinton-Gore National Performance Review offers numerous suggestions to push governments to do "everything smarter, better, faster, and cheaper" (Gore, 1993, 66). While...

Responsible Risk-Taking
July 1, 1998... Current management reforms require increased risk-taking by managers. Today's managers must rely more on their own judgment and less on rules and regulations in their efforts to improve government services (Altschuler and Behn, 1997; Gore, 1994;...

State Strategic Planning: Suggestions from the Oregon Experience
July 1, 1998... Strategic planning "is, very simply, a method for aligning an organization with its environment," according to Meising and Andersen (1991). It is a management tool that has been used in the private sector for years as a systematic process for...

The International Encyclopedia of Public Policy and Administration.
July 1, 1998... Jay M. Shafritz, Editor in Chief, The International Encyclopedia of Public Policy and Administration (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998), 4 vols., 2504 pp.; $495.00 cloth. Encyclopedias are commonly viewed as documents of their times....

Continuity and Disruption: Essays in Public Administration.
July 1, 1998... Matthew Holden, Jr. (1996). Continuity and Disruption: Essays in Public Administration. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh; $19.95, paper; $45.00, hard cover; 291 pages. Matthew Holden, Jr. is a scholar-practitioner of public...

Refounding Democratic Public Administration: Modern Paradoxes, Postmodern Challenges.
July 1, 1998... Gary L. Walmsley and James F. Wolf (eds.) (1996). Refunding Democratic Public Administration: Modern Paradoxes, Postmodern Challenges. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 404 pages; $52.00 cloth, $24.95 paper. This is a very important book for...

Representative Bureaucracy Recast
July 1, 1998... Norma M. Riccucci and Judith R. Saidel's "The Representativeness of State-Level Bureaucratic Leaders: A Missing Piece of the Representative Bureaucracy Puzzle" in the September/October issue of PAR performs a service to the profession both by...