Empowering Public Administrators

Public administrators need to be empowered to make difficult decisions. Acting in the public interest often means doing what is ethical even when it is an unpopular choice. Yet, too often, public servants at the local, state, and federal levels internalize the notion that their hands are tied and that they are limited in their ability to effect change. Empowering Public Administrators: Ethics and Public Service Values provides a much-needed antidote to inaction, offering a new lens for viewing administrative decision-making and behavior. This book makes a case for bringing historically significant theories to the forefront of public service ethics by applying them to a series of current ethical challenges in practice. Exploring administrative discretion as modern bureaucrats govern public affairs in a political context, this collection builds on the normative foundations of public administration and provides readers with a scaffold for understanding and practicing public service values. Questions for discussion and applications to practice are included in each chapter making this collection of interest to public affairs master’s and doctoral students as well as public service practitioners.

The concept of community development is often misunderstood, holding different meanings across different academic disciplines. Moreover, the concept of community development has been historically abstracted, not only in the way the concept has been conceptualized in academic studies, but also by the way in which practitioners use the term in the vernacular. Departing from traditional definitions of community development, this volume applies the New Public Service (NPS) perspective of Public Administration to community development to illustrate how public administrators and public managers can engage in community development planning and implementation that results in more equitable and sustainable long-term outcomes. This book will be of interest to practitioners and researchers in public administration/management, public administration theory, community development, economic development, urban sociology, urban politics, and urban planning.

Well over two million very qualified individuals mediate between high-level managers and other members of public agencies. These grossly under-utilized "intermediary professionals" must become truly empowered to reduce waste, malfeasance and other costly errors. Balk proposes an applied theory of public agency democracy designed to liberate the potential of its highly trained experts. The book begins by discussing professionals as power intermediaries and their necessary tensions with authority around matters of reform. Recognized dilemmas in the field of public administration are reviewed to demonstrate the need to resolve issues concerning public agency democracy. A model is then developed to incorporate democratic action with responses ranging from routine to whistle-blowing activities. The second part of the book shows why existing management orientations are not receptive to the need for agency democracy. Conventional orientations reject the paradoxical realities of government environments. Therefore highly ingrained beliefs about effectiveness and management authority are at times inappropriate; management approaches to public service motivation lack sophistication. Four final chapters are devoted to techniques and approaches on the part of professionals to initiate change. Ways are proposed for professionals and others to institutionalize public agency democracy in government environments.

Louis Brownlow, one of public administration's historical thinkers, once argued that "the principal requirement of a good administrator is an insatiable curiosity." This book is rooted in the notion that public administrators must practice insatiable curiosity to be effective, fair, and democratic. By seeking to uncover how the world works, and therefore practicing curiosity, public administrators may be more likely to move toward evidence-based decisions, improving the efficacy and efficiency of public service. Curiosity encourages public administrators to seek answers in a caring manner, and in doing so empathize with the communities that they serve. First, the book incorporates the concept of curiosity into the field of public administration. Scholarship in philosophy, business administration, social science, and other scholarly fields address curiosity, but public administration has yet to examine this concept in detail. This book fills that hole in the literature. Second, the book presents novel primary data on curiosity in public agencies by examining curious organizations and surveying local government officers. Third, the book presents novel primary data on how public affairs faculty view curiosity and incorporate the concept in their research and the classroom. Lastly, author William Hatcher integrates this information in the book's final chapter to present a model of administrative curiosity, focusing on creating a guide for future research and teaching. Thus, this book serves as a roadmap for developing a new doctrine of curiosity in public administration theory and practice, and it will be of enormous interest to students enrolled in public affairs courses as well as practicing public administrators and nonprofit managers.

This cutting-edge new casebook challenges the dominant White-centric narrative of public administration, offering a fresh array of perspectives, with the lofty aim of ending the marginalization of communities in public policy implementation. Contributors adopt a liberatory framework to examine street-level public administrators (e.g., teachers, security officers, policy analysts, and human resource experts) most responsible for implementing public policy in the United States, including and amplifying previously unrecognized narratives on the front lines of public administration. Case studies explore real-life public servants, not traditionally heard of, offering counter-narratives. Each chapter concludes with an empowerment exercise and assignment for faculty to adopt in their classroom. This edited volume, a first of its kind, is written by experts in public policy and administration, bringing together top and emerging scholars in one volume to amplify underrepresented voices in public administration and policy. Chapters are rooted in qualitative approaches and center the narratives of marginalized communities, including women, People of Color, and LGBTQIA+ public servants. Street-Level Public Servants offers a much-needed casebook for public administration and public policy courses in the twenty-first century.

C. Everett Koop, William D. Ruckelshaus, Marie Ragghianti, Elsa Porter, George C. Marshall--what do these and other exemplary public administrators have to teach us? Through their life and work they have set high standards of conduct in public service, and offer models of character and leadership at work in government. An exploration and analysis of how the qualities of leadership and character are manifested in the public workplace, this book provides a set of concrete examples of how such virtues as integrity, fortitude, dedication to service, and concern for the public welfare are lived out on the job. Embodied in the daily activities of public servants, the authors reveal, are examples of both brief, highly dramatic acts of courage--whistle blowing, the refusal to go along with an unethical or illegal command--and the more routine, even plodding, expressions of inconspicuous virtue which establish a pattern of integrity in the ongoing work of public administration. The authors present eleven case studies of public administrators which illustrate how today's managers can provide models and systems that promote ethical conduct in public service.

This is a complete and up-to-date revision of the classic text for public administration, implementing the rule of law as a fundamental issue in American democracy in pursuit of the common interest. It presents public administration as a tension between the necessary exercise of power and the search for responsiveness to achieve maximum accountability from public servants. The authors have initiated a new approach to the study of public administration by focusing on middle- and lower-level managers. These are positions that most public servants will occupy for the bulk of their professional careers. The book recognizes that most of the administration is in field offices, in state and local government, and in cooperation with the private and nonprofit sectors. It then focuses on power and its potential for influencing the behavior of the bureaucracy to perform its goal-oriented and balancing functions in a pluralistic open system. This leads to the relationship between theories about administration and the actual practice and how best results (imperative of accountability) are achieved in the increasingly globalized environment.

In addition to addressing the basics, American Public Administration: Public Service for the 21st Century stands out from other books in the market by offering a broader context in which to understand public administration and by devoting comprehensive coverage to current topics and trends, many of which are given chapter-length treatment (e.g., civil society, privatization, management information systems, and ethics). The most recent and compelling research is woven throughout every chapter to give students a useful, in-depth understanding of the field today. Real-world case studies and vignettes, helpful chapter pedagogy, an abundance of charts and graphs, and numerous Web listings help students learn and engage them in the text.

Offering strategies for a new generation of administrative systems, this book explores the impact of recent managerial reforms and shifting societal values on the stability, legitimacy, and progress of democratic governments. The chapters highlight innovations in consumer communication management and marketing, evolving methods of policy planning, formation, and implementation, and the role of high-information/high-technology in public agencies. Providing insight into the changing environment present in most governing structures, the book covers ethical dilemmas in public service, the definition of work for public sector employees, and population behavior during mass disasters.

With the fields of public administration and public management suffering a crisis of relevance, Alasdair Roberts offers a provocative assessment of their shortfalls. The two fields, he finds, no longer address urgent questions of governance in a turbulent and dangerous world. Strategies for Governing offers a new path forward for research, teaching, and practice. Leaders of states, Roberts writes, are constantly reinventing strategies for governing. Experts in public administration must give advice on the design as well as execution of strategies that effective, robust, and principled. Strategies for Governing challenges us to reinvigorate public administration and public management, preparing the fields for the challenges of the twenty-first century.