The Blame Game

The Blame Game PDF Author: Christopher Hood
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691162123
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
The blame game, with its finger-pointing and mutual buck-passing, is a familiar feature of politics and organizational life, and blame avoidance pervades government and public organizations at every level. Political and bureaucratic blame games and blame avoidance are more often condemned than analyzed. In The Blame Game, Christopher Hood takes a different approach by showing how blame avoidance shapes the workings of government and public services. Arguing that the blaming phenomenon is not all bad, Hood demonstrates that it can actually help to pin down responsibility, and he examines different kinds of blame avoidance, both positive and negative. Hood traces how the main forms of blame avoidance manifest themselves in presentational and "spin" activity, the architecture of organizations, and the shaping of standard operating routines. He analyzes the scope and limits of blame avoidance, and he considers how it plays out in old and new areas, such as those offered by the digital age of websites and e-mail. Hood assesses the effects of this behavior, from high-level problems of democratic accountability trails going cold to the frustrations of dealing with organizations whose procedures seem to ensure that no one is responsible for anything. Delving into the inner workings of complex institutions, The Blame Game proves how a better understanding of blame avoidance can improve the quality of modern governance, management, and organizational design.

The Blame Game

The Blame Game PDF Author: Christopher Hood
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691162123
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 239

Get Book Here

Book Description
The blame game, with its finger-pointing and mutual buck-passing, is a familiar feature of politics and organizational life, and blame avoidance pervades government and public organizations at every level. Political and bureaucratic blame games and blame avoidance are more often condemned than analyzed. In The Blame Game, Christopher Hood takes a different approach by showing how blame avoidance shapes the workings of government and public services. Arguing that the blaming phenomenon is not all bad, Hood demonstrates that it can actually help to pin down responsibility, and he examines different kinds of blame avoidance, both positive and negative. Hood traces how the main forms of blame avoidance manifest themselves in presentational and "spin" activity, the architecture of organizations, and the shaping of standard operating routines. He analyzes the scope and limits of blame avoidance, and he considers how it plays out in old and new areas, such as those offered by the digital age of websites and e-mail. Hood assesses the effects of this behavior, from high-level problems of democratic accountability trails going cold to the frustrations of dealing with organizations whose procedures seem to ensure that no one is responsible for anything. Delving into the inner workings of complex institutions, The Blame Game proves how a better understanding of blame avoidance can improve the quality of modern governance, management, and organizational design.

Moral Mazes

Moral Mazes PDF Author: Robert Jackall
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199729883
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
This updated edition of a classic study of ethics in business presents an eye-opening account of how corporate managers think the world works, and how big organizations shape moral consciousness. Robert Jackall takes the reader inside a topsy-turvy world where hard work does not necessarily lead to success, but sharp talk, self-promotion, powerful patrons, and sheer luck might. This edition includes a new foreword linking the themes of Moral Mazes to the financial tsunami that engulfed the world economy in 2008.

Big Business and Dictatorships in Latin America

Big Business and Dictatorships in Latin America PDF Author: Victoria Basualdo
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030439259
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
This edited volume studies the relationship between big business and the Latin American dictatorial regimes during the Cold War. The first section provides a general background about the contemporary history of business corporations and dictatorships in the twentieth century at the international level. The second section comprises chapters that analyze five national cases (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay and Peru), as well as a comparative analysis of the banking sector in the Southern Cone (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay). The third section presents six case studies of large companies in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Central America. This book is crucial reading because it provides the first comprehensive analysis of a key yet understudied topic in Cold War history in Latin America.

The Federal Civil Service System and the Problem of Bureaucracy

The Federal Civil Service System and the Problem of Bureaucracy PDF Author: Ronald N. Johnson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226401706
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
The call to "reinvent government"—to reform the government bureaucracy of the United States—resonates as loudly from elected officials as from the public. Examining the political and economic forces that have shaped the American civil service system from its beginnings in 1883 through today, the authors of this volume explain why, despite attempts at an overhaul, significant change in the bureaucracy remains a formidable challenge.

Bending the Rules

Bending the Rules PDF Author: Rachel Augustine Potter
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022662188X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
Who determines the fuel standards for our cars? What about whether Plan B, the morning-after pill, is sold at the local pharmacy? Many people assume such important and controversial policy decisions originate in the halls of Congress. But the choreographed actions of Congress and the president account for only a small portion of the laws created in the United States. By some estimates, more than ninety percent of law is created by administrative rules issued by federal agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Health and Human Services, where unelected bureaucrats with particular policy goals and preferences respond to the incentives created by a complex, procedure-bound rulemaking process. With Bending the Rules, Rachel Augustine Potter shows that rulemaking is not the rote administrative activity it is commonly imagined to be but rather an intensely political activity in its own right. Because rulemaking occurs in a separation of powers system, bureaucrats are not free to implement their preferred policies unimpeded: the president, Congress, and the courts can all get involved in the process, often at the bidding of affected interest groups. However, rather than capitulating to demands, bureaucrats routinely employ “procedural politicking,” using their deep knowledge of the process to strategically insulate their proposals from political scrutiny and interference. Tracing the rulemaking process from when an agency first begins working on a rule to when it completes that regulatory action, Potter shows how bureaucrats use procedures to resist interference from Congress, the President, and the courts at each stage of the process. This exercise reveals that unelected bureaucrats wield considerable influence over the direction of public policy in the United States.

Bureaucratic Justice

Bureaucratic Justice PDF Author: Jerry L. Mashaw
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300034035
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
Anyone interested in 'good government' should read Jerry Mashaw's new book on how the social Security Administration implements congressionally mandated policy for controlled consistent distribution of disability benefits. . . . He offers an important perspective on bureaucracy that must be considered when devising procedures for not only disability determinations but also other forms of administrative adjudication.--Linda A. O'Hare, American Bar Association Journal A major contribution to the ongoing debate about administrative law and mass justice.--Lance Liebman and Richard B. Stewart, Harvard Law Review Profound implications for the future of democratic government. . . . Practical, analytical policymaking for a complex decision system of great significance to many Americans.--Paul R. Verkuil, Yale Law Journal An exceptionally valuable book for anyone who is concerned about the role of law in the administrative state. Mashaw manages to range broadly without becoming superficial, and to present a coherent and challenging theory in lively, readable prose. Bureaucratic Justice seems certain to become a standard reference work for administrative lawyers, and for anyone else who seeks the elusive goal of developing more humane and more effective public bureaucracies.--Barry Boyer, Michigan Law Review Strongly recommended for use in graduate seminars in public policy or law. . . . If we are to develop a positive model of bureaucratic competence, we must answer the insightful questions rased in this cogent book.--David L. Martin, American Political Science Review Mashaw provides an excellent analysis of middle range processes of decision making.--Gerald Turkel, Qualitative Sociology Stimulating and provocative and . . . makes a contribution to the ongoing dialogue about due process in public administration.... It is tightly organized, cogently argued, and full of pithy historical illustrations. . . . One of the best such works in many years. --Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science A thoughtful, challenging, and very useful book.--Choice Inspires a new direction in administrative law scholarship.--A.I. Ogus, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies

Bureaucracy

Bureaucracy PDF Author: Ludwig Von Mises
Publisher: Dead Authors Society
ISBN: 9781773230467
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
Author Ludwig von Mises was concerned with the spread of socialist ideals and the increasing bureaucratization of economic life. While he does not deny the necessity of certain bureaucratic structures for the smooth operation of any civilized state, he disagrees with the extent to which it has come to dominate the public life of European countries and the United States. The author's purpose is to demonstrate that the negative aspects of bureaucracy are not so much a result of bad policies or corruption as the public tends to think but are the bureaucratic structures due to the very tasks these structures have to deal with. The main body of the book is therefore devoted to a comparison between private enterprise on the one hand and bureaucratic agencies/public enterprise on the other.

Decadent Developmentalism

Decadent Developmentalism PDF Author: Matthew M. Taylor
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108842283
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
Complementarities between political and economic institutions have kept Brazil in a low-level economic equilibrium since 1985.

Managers of Global Change

Managers of Global Change PDF Author: Lydia Andler
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 026201274X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 383

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Book Description
This title is an examination of the role and relevance of international bureaucracies in global environmental governance. After a discussion of theoretical context, reaserch design, and empiral methodology, the book presents nine in-depth case studies of bureaucracies.

The Utopia of Rules

The Utopia of Rules PDF Author: David Graeber
Publisher: Melville House
ISBN: 1612193757
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
From the author of the international bestseller Debt: The First 5,000 Years comes a revelatory account of the way bureaucracy rules our lives Where does the desire for endless rules, regulations, and bureaucracy come from? How did we come to spend so much of our time filling out forms? And is it really a cipher for state violence? To answer these questions, the anthropologist David Graeber—one of our most important and provocative thinkers—traces the peculiar and unexpected ways we relate to bureaucracy today, and reveals how it shapes our lives in ways we may not even notice…though he also suggests that there may be something perversely appealing—even romantic—about bureaucracy. Leaping from the ascendance of right-wing economics to the hidden meanings behind Sherlock Holmes and Batman, The Utopia of Rules is at once a powerful work of social theory in the tradition of Foucault and Marx, and an entertaining reckoning with popular culture that calls to mind Slavoj Zizek at his most accessible. An essential book for our times, The Utopia of Rules is sure to start a million conversations about the institutions that rule over us—and the better, freer world we should, perhaps, begin to imagine for ourselves.