Administration & Society recent issues

Representing Blue: Representative Bureaucracy and Racial Profiling in the Latino Community

Wilkins, V. M., Williams, B. N. — 2008-12-02

This study examines whether the presence of Latino police officers reduces the racial disparity in traffic stops in divisions in which they work. Specifically, the link between passive and active representation for ethnicity in the context of racial profiling is tested. This context allows one to examine this link within an organization that relies heavily on socialization. It is found that the presence of Latino police officers increases the racial disparity within the division in which they work. This finding seems to suggest that the pressure to "represent blue" weighs heavily on Latino officers and may affect their professional attitudes and behaviors.

Environmental Turbulence, Organizational Stability, and Public Service Performance

Boyne, G. A., Meier, K. J. — 2008-12-02

A turbulent external environment is widely believed to have damaging effects on public service performance. Much less consensus has been reached on whether the best response to turbulence is to retain or alter existing organizational structures. We provide the first comprehensive empirical analysis of these issues by testing the links between turbulence, structural stability, and performance in a large sample of public organizations. Our results show that turbulence has a negative effect on performance, and that this is compounded by internal organizational change. Thus public managers can mitigate the harmful effects of volatility in the external environment by maintaining structural stability.

Latina Administrators in Local Government: The Interplay of Role Orientation and Policy Intentions

Thurlow Brenner, C. — 2008-12-02

Latina administrators in urban municipal bureaucracies experiencing demographic change are continuously constructing their role—at times calling on their ethnic/nationality lens and at other times drawing on their racialized, feminist perspective and always mindful of their institutional context. Personal interviews with 16 Latina administrators provide rich insights into the ways race/ethnicity, gender, and institutional context intertwine in affecting policy outcomes. Three Latina administrator role orientations—activists, bridge builders, and institutionalists—are identified and linked to strength of identity to theoretical bases of representative bureaucracy, Latina critical race theory, new institutionalism, and concepts of legal and cultural abidance.

Enhancing Community Safety and Security Through Understanding Interagency Collaboration in Cyber-Terrorism Exercises

Solansky, S. T., Beck, T. E. — 2008-12-02

The threat of terrorism is at the forefront of security issues in the society. Terrorism must be dealt with through collaboration of multiple types and levels of agencies. Public sector interagency collaboration is explored through collective mind and beliefs of collaboration necessity in terrorism situations. It is found that the presence of a collective mind increases the likelihood that public sector representatives recognize and form beliefs that collaboration is necessary. It is also found that aggregates of representatives were more likely to actually collaborate with one another in addressing these cyber-terrorism threats when more shared the belief of collaboration necessity.

Exploring the Linkage Between Ministerial Leadership and Performance in Korea

Jung, K., Jae Moon, M., Sung Deuk Hahm, — 2008-11-05

The significance and the role of leadership in organizations and institutions have been widely discussed but not well understood. Much of the previous literature is limited to leadership practices and education as well as to the American context. Focusing on the Korean ministerial level, this study examines the ministerial leadership interplaying uniquely between the president (politics) and career civil servants (administration). Extending the typology of transformational and transactional leadership, this study presents five different leadership orientations and investigates their association with ministers' performances. Based on the 2002 Korean Minister Survey, this study shows that the strategic-transformational and external-transformational forms of leadership are the primary determinants of Korean ministers' performance. This study suggests that political appointees like Korean ministers should strike a balance between their political responsiveness as political appointees and their administrative responsibility as department heads.

Profiling Public Affairs Programs: The View From the Top

Koven, S. G., Goetzke, F., Brennan, M. — 2008-11-05

This research updates existing literature that describes the nature of public affairs programs. A profile of the top 50 public affairs programs, according to rankings from U.S. News & World Report, is identified. Programs are differentiated by type (master of public administration, master of public policy, master of public affairs, and other), and comparisons are made regarding total hours, hours in core, number of specializations, capital city location, accreditation, institutional home, required courses within core, numbers of core courses by category per the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration, and variety of specializations within programs. The article statistically explores the relative importance of program characteristics in the status of the top 50 institutions.

Making Matters Worse: An Anatomy of Leadership Failures in Managing Catastrophic Events

Kapucu, N., Van Wart, M. — 2008-11-05

Catastrophic disasters require additional leadership capabilities because extreme events overwhelm local capabilities and damage emergency response systems themselves. Therefore, leaders at all levels must adapt and rebuild the response system, even while they are addressing the pressing needs of the disaster itself. Leaders can minimize or maximize the effects of the trigger event(s) by their actions and competence in dealing with this especially difficult set of overlapping and, frequently, even inconsistent tasks. This case studies the effects of the Katrina—Rita hurricanes on New Orleans and systematically examines how poor leadership—lacking a series of critical competencies required in extreme conditions—can maximize catastrophic events.

Socio-Political Contexts, Identity Formation, and Regulatory Compliance

Lee, E. — 2008-11-05

This article attempts to fill the gaps in traditional compliance theories and argues that the actor's identity formulated by socio-political contexts influences the propensity to move toward or away from compliance. Although regulated entities are sometimes instrumentally rational or norms oriented, they also base their behavioral choices on situated judgments in ways that are more varied and changing than existing compliance theories have suggested. The comparative case studies presented here focus on how the socio-political relations of actors are manifested in identities of self and others in interaction and, in turn, translate into compliance choice making.

Conjuring the Holographic State: Scripting Security Doctrine for a (New) World of Disorder

Witt, M. T., deHaven-Smith, L. — 2008-10-24

No current policy paradigm, however interdisciplinary, provides an adequate and coherent account of post-9/11 security doctrine for "a war with no clear end or scope." Like the hologram, the image of the terrorist constructed by PATRIOT and kindred legislation appears vivid while defying a definitive grasp, just as the holographic image dematerializes on the hand reaching to touch it. This article sketches etiology for a new policy analytic paradigm that is coined here, the Holographic State, and explores its suitability for policy and administrative sense making under conditions where the epistemological and ontological foundations of policy inquiry have been made profoundly unstable.

Trust in Administration: An Integrative Approach to Optimal Trust

Choudhury, E. — 2008-10-24

Although many consider trust as a desirable value in administration, they also find it elusive. The meaning of trust gets more elusive when one seeks to optimize it in administration. The article takes on this quest first by addressing trust as a relational fact, and then, identifying the dynamic conditions of its optimization. Organizational control and organizational learning are discussed as two such conditions—in their embedded as well as enacted forms. Using the contingencies of control and learning, the article delineates a model of optimal trust, where optimality is located in the dynamic interfaces of control and learning that simultaneously maximize the enabling conditions of trust and minimize its disabling conditions.

How Vulnerability and Trust Interact During Extreme Events: Insights for Human Service Agencies and Organizations

Montgomery, K., Jordens, C. F. C., Little, M. — 2008-10-24

The article discusses a theoretical model developed to predict the motivational dynamics of individuals facing extreme events. The model demonstrates how the imposed vulnerability of unexpected harmful events (e.g., natural disasters, accidents, serious illness) creates a second form of vulnerability for needy individuals when they rely on and cooperate with little-known others offering rescue and care. Trust in the relationship between a care provider and a care receiver is used as the link between two types of vulnerability to articulate the process through which individuals assess their care provider's trustworthiness. This article outlines an approach for future tests of the model's hypotheses and discusses practical implications of the model for improving public services that depend on cooperation from individuals in extreme need as well as its theoretical contributions.

The Budget Process as Complex Civic Space: Wildavsky and Radical Incrementalism

Dennard, L. F. — 2008-10-24

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the late Aaron Wildavsky's pluralist cultural and political theory. Wildavsky, who is an icon in the policy literature of American public administration, has often been at odds with the rational/linear paradigm that dominated the field of public policy. His work, which has found a new home in complexity theory, spans several disciplines. Yet, the greatest value of Wildavsky's early systems thinking, including his theory of radical incrementalism, may be that it provides both a theoretical base and ethical reasoning with which to meaningfully discuss the possibilities of complexity theory as a new paradigm for governing.

The United States Public Service Academy: The Coming Debate

Rohr, J. A. — 2008-10-24

Managing Collaborative Processes: Common Practices, Uncommon Circumstances

Weber, E., Khademian, A. M. — 2008-08-13

The study of managers in collaborative efforts continues to progress. In this article, the authors investigate the efforts by managers to build and maintain collaborative processes to address complex public problems that vary by policy area (emergency management, environmental regulation, and community renewal), focus on different dimensions of the problem, are prompted by different forms of system breakdown, and generate different collaborative responses. This study investigates whether there are essential characteristics of collaborative capacity building that cut across these three cases, and it is found that the key managers in each case build collaborative problem-solving capacity by adopting a common approach comprising the same six practices.

Mentor Matching: A "Goodness of Fit" Model

Bozeman, B., Feeney, M. K. — 2008-08-13

One of the few mentoring topics that has received little attention in the abundant mentoring literature is the determinants of organically formed (as opposed for formal program-based) mentoring relationships. The authors propose a Goodness of Fit model, which outlines the basic elements of the mentor—protégé match, viewing the relationship as a social exchange based on the fit among mentor and protégé preferences, endowments, and the content of knowledge transmitted. After presenting the model, the authors provide a few illustrative research questions that flow from the basic logic and terms of the model. They conclude with suggestions for future research, including possibilities of the use of the model in experimental and quasiexperimental research.

The Nature of Metropolitan Governance in Urban America: A Study of Cooperation and Conflict in the Kansas City Region

Wood, C. — 2008-08-13

The evidence in this study demonstrates that the dominant pattern of metropolitan governance in the Kansas City metro area across 46 cities and 28 public services is one of intergovernmental cooperation, punctuated by conflict. Contrary to what would be predicted by theories of cooperation, the scope of cooperation is negatively related to the number and percent of joint intergovernmental service arrangements and that the scope of cooperation increases when a municipality transfers a service to another public entity or a municipality specializes in a regional service.

Public Service Motivation and the Assumption of Person--Organization Fit: Testing the Mediating Effect of Value Congruence

Wright, B. E., Pandey, S. K. — 2008-08-13

This study contributes to our understanding of public service motivation by clarifying the mechanisms through which public service motivation influences employee attitudes previously linked to organizational performance. In particular, the authors find that the relationship between employee public service motivation and job satisfaction is mediated by the extent to which the employee perceives that his or her values are congruent with those of the public sector organization he or she works for. This study suggests that caution should be exercised when making claims regarding the effects of public service motivation and that greater emphasis should be placed on ways public sector organizations can foster employee—organization value congruence.

Goldilocks Loses Her Paradigm

Dennard, L. F. — 2008-08-13

The ongoing conversation among the public management and public administration is given a slightly more complex twist in this sequel to the story of Goldilocks and paradigms first published in Administration & Society in 1989.