Impossible Jobs in Public Management

Impossible Jobs in Public Management PDF Author: Erwin C. Hargrove
Publisher: Studies in Government and Public Policy
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
If you think your job is hopelessly difficult, you may be right. Particularly if your job is public administration. Those who study or practice public management know full well the difficulties faced by administrators of complex bureaucratic systems. What they don't know is why some jobs in the public sector are harder than others and how good managers cope with those jobs. Drawing on leadership theory and social psychology, Erwin Hargrove and John Glidewell provide the first systematic analysis of the factors that determine the inherent difficulty of public management jobs and of the coping strategies employed by successful managers. To test their argument, Hargrove and Glidewell focus on those jobs fraught with extreme difficulties—"impossible" jobs. What differentiates impossible from possible jobs are (1) the publicly perceived legitimacy of the commissioner's clientele; (2) the intensity of the conflict among the agency's constituencies; (3) the public's confidence in the authority of the commissioner's profession; and (4) the strength of the agency's "myth," or long-term, idealistic goal. Hargrove and Glidewell flesh out their analysis with six case studies that focus on the roles played by leaders of specific agencies. Each essay summarizes the institutional strengths and weaknesses, specifies what makes the job impossible, and then compares the skills and strategies that incumbents have employed in coping with such jobs. Readers will come away with a thorough understanding of the conflicting social, psychological, and political forces that act on commissioners in impossible jobs.

Impossible Jobs in Public Management

Impossible Jobs in Public Management PDF Author: Erwin C. Hargrove
Publisher: Studies in Government and Public Policy
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 228

Get Book Here

Book Description
If you think your job is hopelessly difficult, you may be right. Particularly if your job is public administration. Those who study or practice public management know full well the difficulties faced by administrators of complex bureaucratic systems. What they don't know is why some jobs in the public sector are harder than others and how good managers cope with those jobs. Drawing on leadership theory and social psychology, Erwin Hargrove and John Glidewell provide the first systematic analysis of the factors that determine the inherent difficulty of public management jobs and of the coping strategies employed by successful managers. To test their argument, Hargrove and Glidewell focus on those jobs fraught with extreme difficulties—"impossible" jobs. What differentiates impossible from possible jobs are (1) the publicly perceived legitimacy of the commissioner's clientele; (2) the intensity of the conflict among the agency's constituencies; (3) the public's confidence in the authority of the commissioner's profession; and (4) the strength of the agency's "myth," or long-term, idealistic goal. Hargrove and Glidewell flesh out their analysis with six case studies that focus on the roles played by leaders of specific agencies. Each essay summarizes the institutional strengths and weaknesses, specifies what makes the job impossible, and then compares the skills and strategies that incumbents have employed in coping with such jobs. Readers will come away with a thorough understanding of the conflicting social, psychological, and political forces that act on commissioners in impossible jobs.

Policing and Public Management

Policing and Public Management PDF Author: Kevin Morrell
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351698230
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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Book Description
Policing and Public Management takes a new perspective on the challenges and problems facing the governance of police forces across the UK and the developed world. Complementing existing texts in criminology and police studies, Morrell and Bradford draw on ideas from the neighbouring fields of public management and virtue ethics to open the field up to a broader audience. This forms the basis for an imaginative reframing of policing as something that either enhances or diminishes "the public good" in society. The text focuses on two cross-cutting aspects of the relationship between the police and the public: public confidence and public order. Extending award-winning work in public management, and drawing on extensive and varied data sources, Policing and Public Management offers new ways of seeing the police and of understanding police governance. This text will be valuable supplementary reading for students of public management, policing and criminology, as well as others who want to be better informed about contemporary policing.

Public Management

Public Management PDF Author: Carolyn J. Hill
Publisher: CQ Press
ISBN: 1506316298
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 529

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Book Description
Managing in the public sector requires an understanding of the interaction between three distinct dimensions—administrative structures, organizational cultures, and the skills of individual managers. Public managers must produce results that citizens and their representatives expect from their government while fulfilling their constitutional responsibilities. In Public Management: Thinking and Acting in Three Dimensions, authors Carolyn J. Hill and Laurence E. Lynn, Jr. argue that one-size-fits-all approaches are inadequate for dealing with the distinctive challenges that public managers face. Drawing on both theory and detailed case studies of actual practice, the authors show how public management that is based on applying a three-dimensional analytic framework—structure, culture, and craft—to specific management problems is the most effective way to improve the performance of America’s unique scheme of governance in accordance with the rule of law. The book educates readers to be informed citizens and prepares students to participate as professionals in the world of public management.

Understanding and Improving Public Management Reforms

Understanding and Improving Public Management Reforms PDF Author: Thomas Elston
Publisher: Policy Press
ISBN: 1447360885
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
Why do top-down reforms to public services so often over-promise and under-deliver? Using five concepts from psychology, economics and organisational sociology, Thomas Elston addresses this pressing question of good governance. Focusing on the practical challenge of how to undertake better public management reforms, he questions the assumption that failure typically occurs because of poor reform implementation. Instead, he shows how reforms are often badly designed from the outset, being fashion-led, more focused more on fixing errors than exploiting opportunities and ignoring implicit costs of change. This concise, practically-orientated work employs diverse examples to propose ways to improve the design of public sector reform programmes -- and the services that citizens receive.

Understanding and Managing Public Organizations

Understanding and Managing Public Organizations PDF Author: Hal G. Rainey
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0787980005
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 508

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Book Description
In the third edition of his award-winning book, Hal G. Rainey provides a comprehensive, up-to-date analysis of research on public organizations and management. Drawing on a review of the most current research about government organizations and managers— and about effective and ineffective practices in government— this important resource offers specific suggestions for managing these challenges in today's public organizations. Using illustrative, real-life vignettes and examples, the book provides expert analysis of organizational design, goals, power, effectiveness, leadership, motivation and work attitudes, decisionmaking, and more.

Handbook of Public Personnel Administration

Handbook of Public Personnel Administration PDF Author: Jack Rabin
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 9780824792312
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 750

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Book Description
Offers in-depth analyses spanning the entire field of public personnel administration--from a history of the American civil service as characterized by competing perspectives to the contemporary application of total quality management by human resources practitioners. Addresses the major laws that regulate worker compensation.

The Dynamics of Performance Management

The Dynamics of Performance Management PDF Author: Donald P. Moynihan
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
ISBN: 1589014359
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
Efficiency. Innovation. Results. Accountability. These, advocates claim, are the fruits of performance management. In recent decades government organizations have eagerly embraced the performance model—but the rush to reform has not delivered as promised. Drawing on research from state and federal levels, Moynihan illustrates how governments have emphasized some aspects of performance management—such as building measurement systems to acquire more performance data—but have neglected wider organizational change that would facilitate the use of such information. In his analysis of why and how governments in the United States have made the move to performance systems, Moynihan identifies agency leadership, culture, and resources as keys to better implementation, goal-based learning, and improved outcomes. How do governments use the performance information generated under performance systems? Moynihan develops a model of interactive dialogue to highlight how performance data, which promised to optimize decision making and policy change for the public's benefit, has often been used selectively to serve the interests of particular agencies and individuals, undermining attempts at interagency problem solving and reform. A valuable resource for public administration scholars and administrators, The Dynamics of Performance Management offers fresh insight into how government organizations can better achieve their public service goals.

Public Leadership

Public Leadership PDF Author: Paul 't Hart
Publisher: ANU E Press
ISBN: 1921536314
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
'Leadership' is routinely admired, vilified, ridiculed, invoked, trivialised, explained and speculated about in the media and in everyday conversation. Despite all this talk, there is surprisingly little consensus about how to answer basic questions about the nature, place, role and impact of leadership in contemporary society. This book brings together academics from a broad array of social science disciplines who are interested in contemporary understandings of leadership in the public domain. Their work on political, administrative and civil society leadership represents a stock-take of what we need to know and offers original examples of what we do know about public leadership. Although this volume connects scholars living in, and mostly working on, public leadership in Australia and New Zealand, their contributions have a much broader scope and relevance.

Crafting Public Institutions

Crafting Public Institutions PDF Author: Arjen Boin
Publisher: Lynne Rienner Publishers
ISBN: 9781588260093
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Through case studies of two prison systems -- the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons and the Dutch prison system -- the book identifies the challenges and opportunities that confront public managers who want to reorient correctional policy and make prisons more effective. The book describes how focused leadership -- or its absence -- can make a major difference in the character and performance of public organizations. The author concludes that the ability of leaders to shape an organization's mission and motivate public servants in accordance with policy goals lies at the heart of making institutions work.

Theory and Practice of Public Sector Reform

Theory and Practice of Public Sector Reform PDF Author: Steven Van de Walle
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317500113
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Theory and Practice of Public Sector Reform offers readers differing theoretical perspectives to help examine the process of public sector reform, combined with an overview of major trends in the core areas of the functioning of the public sector. The book consists of three parts, the first addresses a number of conceptual and theoretical perspectives on public sector reform. It shows how different ways of looking at reform reveal very different things. The second part addresses major changes in specific areas of public sectors – 'objects of reform.’ Part three focuses on the study of public sector reform. Aimed at academics, researchers and advanced students; this edited collection brings together many of the most eminent academics in the area of Public Policy and Management seeking to link to theory in part one and insights into specific thematic areas in part two, offering readers a display of theoretical perspectives to look at public sector reform.