One dimensional man

The public sector faces increasing demands to run government like a business, importing privatesector concepts such as entrepreneurism, privatization, treating the citizen like a “customer,” and ma...

Running Government Like a Business: Implications for Public Administration Theory and Practice

Industrial Society is susceptibile to catastrophic events, including technological disasters and social and political crises. Risk, uncertainty, crisis, collective stress, and "normal accidents" now need to be incorporated into a broader understanding of how governments and decision makers respond to the un-ness of crisis situations: unpleasantness in unexpected circumstances, representing unscheduled events, unprecedented in their implications and, by normal routine standards, almost unmanageable. Current horizons in disaster and related studies need to be broadened to incorporate a political-administrative perspective on crises and crisis management. Prevailing insights within disaster studies are reviewed, and a broader crisis typology is presented. In addition, a five-step heuristic is outlined that helps to identify perceived administrative challenges posed by specific crisis events. Finally, some general patterns of governmental crisis intervention are outlined in a second typology in order to stimulate more generic future research into crisis episodes. With organizational structures more complex (Wilson 1975, 288-92) and technological systems becoming even more interdependent, vulnerable, and problematic in their intended and unintended consequences (Perrow 1984, 330; Sagan 1993), industrial societies are confronted with an increasing susceptibility to numerous and diverse catastrophic events. All too often, unfortunately, the impact of man-made or natural disasters is compounded because policy makers have prepared neither themselves nor the public for appropriate responses once tragedy strikes. Devastating events include natural disasters (Comfort 1989 and 1993); international and domestic disruptions in the delivery of J-PART 7(1997):2:277-304 277/Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory This content downloaded from 207.46.13.69 on Mon, 16 May 2016 05:37:11 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Crises and Crisis Management vital goods and services (Perry and Haynes 1993); industrial (Shrivastava 1994) and nuclear accidents (Sagan 1993); leisure center fires (Turner and Toft 1989); aircraft and marine accidents (Perrow 1984); loss of control over laboratory experiments (Bradford et al. 1994); and starvation and epidemics (Benini 1993). Many policy analysts consider adversity to be the key concept of the 1990s (Dror 1986; Wildavsky 1988). Although in international relations, for example, prevention of nuclear war or control of the diffusion of fissionable material may be of pivotal concern, there are many other risks. Natural hazards have the special quality of emphasizing man's relative helplessness. In stressing the relationship between natural disasters and the technological abuse of the environment (Fesbach and Friendly 1992), many geographers now insist on the importance of man's capacity to prevent further deterioration of the ecology (Hewitt 1983). For many, modern society is characterized by the nonrandom generation of risk (Beck 1992) and, in particular, by the deployment of high-risk technology (Perrow 1984; Sagan 1993; La Porte 1994). People who live with high-risk technologies do so in a setting where many of these crisis events take on the condition now known as normal accidents (Perrow 1984). This does not mean that organizations or actors refrain from taking technological action. According to Perrow, however, some technologies need improvement whilst others need to be restricted, even abandoned, in favor of a Luddite-like belief in solving technological threats. Recognizing and stressing the human as well as, increasingly, the organizational and political components in these crisis events (Winner 1972; Taylor 1975; Lagadec 1988) opens up the challenge of rethinking strategies for planning and preparedness in risk situations (La Porte and Consolini 1991; May 1994; Turner 1994). It is now time to broaden the horizons of disaster-crisis research. At present, it tends to be overly compartmentalized with important yet separate work in international relations and disaster sociology (Quarantelli 1987; Drabek 1990). Taking a political-administrative perspective on crises and crisis response, the combination of insights on how to manage extraordinary events becomes somewhat more evident, perhaps even more pressing. From the perspective of decision makers and government agencies dealing with crisis situations, there are many similarities between seemingly unique risk settings and crisis events. 2781J-PART, April 1997 This content downloaded from 207.46.13.69 on Mon, 16 May 2016 05:37:11 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Crises and Crisis Management A more comprehensive analysis of crisis management needs a more focused understanding of processes involved in crises and of the challenges these processes pose for administrators. This article provides such conceptualization and outlines a more encompassing crisis typology. In addition, the authors outline a five-step heuristic and suggest a procedure to help identify perceived administrative challenges posed by specific crisis events. Finally, they outline some general patterns of governmental crisis intervention, which may serve to stimulate increasingly important future research on crisis management. CRISES: TOWARDS A MORE GENERIC UNDERSTANDING According to Dynes (1974), similarities can be established between various categories of exceptional circumstances. One might view disasters, riots, and terrorist actions, for example, as crises. If it is accepted also that crises may be viewed usefully as "occasions for decision," then an approach especially designed to deal with the decision-making and management aspects of crisis situations would seem to be quite appropriate (Robinson 1972). At first glance, then, Hermann's (1972, 13) classic definition seems to be quite apt: "A crisis is a situation that threatens highpriority goals of the decision-making unit, restricts the amount of time available for response before the decision is transformed and surprises the members of the decision-making unit by its occurrence. " Upon further examination, however, this definition requires some adjustment. In order to render the concept suitable for the wider context of social, political, and organizational circumstances, it would be necessary to formulate the reference point of threat in a broader sense; it is not necessarily only goals that are involved. Threat may be more subtle than immediate survival. The crisis decision-making situation is, nevertheless, characterized by the necessity to make critical choices. This is particularly so with protracted crises or 'creeping crises' (Rosenthal, 't Hart, and Charles 1989, 27), especially social, political, or even environmental crises which take some time to develop into more conventionally understood acute or dramatic events (Kouzmin and Jarman 1989; Jarman and Kouzmin 1990; 1994a; 1994b). The third defining feature-the surprise elementpresents numerous problems (Hermann 1969; Rosenthal 1986). It would be more appropriate to view the surprise element as only one of many factors that can lead to a relatively high degree of uncertainty and view high uncertainty as a defining feature of crisis situations. This brings one to the following definition of crises: 2791J-PART, April 1997 This content downloaded from 207.46.13.69 on Mon, 16 May 2016 05:37:11 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Crises and Crisis Management . . . a serious threat to the basic structures or the fundamental values and norms of a social system, which-under time pressure and highly uncertain circumstances-necessitates making critical decisions. (Rosenthal, 't Hart, and Charles 1989, 10) If adversity is associated with unpleasant developments and negative trends, crisis relates to acute, indeed critical, situations (Dror 1986). Crises involve an accumulation of adverse conditions, severe threat, uncertainty, and the necessity for prompt decision making, often in situations where normal communications are cut. With this breakdown of information and decision there is very likely a cut in routine response agency capacities (Comfort 1994; Garnett and Kouzmin 1996). The situation may be caused by nature or may be man-made-for instance, earthquakes versus a fierce confrontation between ethnic groups. Manmade crises may result from the loss of technological control or from identifiable human errors. Man-made crises also point to deliberate attempts to reshape the social and political fabric. They also may follow from a constellation, if not sheer coincidence, of unfortunate factors. Crises can have international, domestic, local, or organizational dimensions, or they can involve a mixture: for example, threat of nuclear war, an embargo on the export of oil or wheat to hostile countries, or unrestrained conflict in large, nonprofit institutions. Crises also can involve danger to the physical integrity of citizens, inflicting damage arbitrarily or selectively: for example, the hijacking of a train or the kidnapping of a prominent political or corporate leader. Crises can also emanate from a threat to employment and economic prosperity, the closing of a plant in a single-factory town, the closure of a mine in a coal region, or the sudden drop of investment in a national

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/1181713

Crises and Crisis Management: Toward Comprehensive Government Decision Making.

This article reviews and synthesizes diverse streams of literature to assess the potential of deliberative democracy for American public administration. It asserts that the field should refocus its attention on the role of citizens in the work of government to help address the pervasive citizenship and democratic deficits in the United States. American public administration has an obligation to address these deficits because (a) it is required to do so by democratic ethos, (b) it has contributed to the deficits with its widespread embrace of bureaucratic ethos, and (c) it must find ways to effectively engage citizens within modern network and collaborative governance structures. This article identifies deliberative democracy as one potential method to help fulfill these obligations and explains how deliberative processes may help address the deficit problems. The article concludes by identifying a preliminary research agenda for exploring the potential of deliberative democracy for public administration.

https://www.maxwell.syr.edu/uploadedFiles/news/stories/Nabatchi_ARPA.pdf

Addressing the Citizenship and Democratic Deficits: The Potential of Deliberative Democracy for Public Administration:

O objetivo deste artigo e analisar, em uma perspectiva comparada, a administracao publica gerencial e a administracao publica societal, propondo uma agenda de pesquisa para futuras investigacoes. Examinamos os antecedentes e as caracteristicas desses modelos de gestao publica. Em seguida, comparamos os modelos a partir de seis variaveis de observacao: a origem, o projeto politico, as dimensoes estruturais enfatizadas na gestao, a organizacao administrativa do aparelho do Estado, a abertura das instituicoes a participacao social e a abordagem de gestao. Por fim, enfatizamos os limites e os pontos positivos de cada um dos modelos, alem de enfatizarmos a necessidade de aprofundamento dos estudos sobre a administracao publica societal e a abordagem de gestao social.

/pdf/administracao-publica-brasileira-entreo-gerencialismo-e-a-2rr3l5k2m0.pdf

Administração pública brasileira entreo gerencialismo e a gestão social

The new science of organizations: A reconceptualization of the wealth of nations

Introdução crítica à sociologia brasileira

Administração e contexto brasileiro : esboço de uma teoria geral da administração

14.00 14.00 Administrative theory can no longer legitimize the functional rationality of the organization as it largely has done. The basic problem of an earlier time was to overcome the scarcity of material goods and elementary services. In that period a great amount of toil in work settings was technically and socially necessary and even inevitable, which is not true at present. What brings about the crises in today's organizations is the fact that by design and operation they still assume that old scarcities continue to be basic, while in fact contemporary man is aware of critical scarcities belonging to another order, i.e., related to needs beyond the level of simple survival. Thus, the Social Darwinism that has traditionally validated management theory and practice has become outdated by the force of circumstances. This article is an attempt to reassess the evolution of administrative theory. It takes models of man as its point of reference (namely, the operational man, the reactive man, and the parenthetical man). Normal 0 21 false false false PT-BR X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */
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Modelos de homem e teoria administrativa

14.00 14.00 This paper represents an attempt to purge contemporary social science, and particularly the theory of modernization, of the residues of nineteenth century metaphysical evolutionism. According to the author, the writings about modernization can be placed on a continuum, the poles of which can be called Theory N and Theory P. The main assumption of Theory N, as far as modernization is concerned, is that there is a law of historical necessity that pushes every society to try to attain the stage occupied by the so-called developed or modernized societies. These societies show the so-called developing societies the image of their future. Consequently, with this understanding, the authors of Theory N refer to dichotomies such as developed versus developing nations, and "referent" versus "follower" societies. Ordinarily, many that talk about "obstacles to development" or "prerequisites of modernization" are conditioned by the deterministic assumptions of Theory N, by a frozen archetype of modernization, more or less identified with the present stage of Western Europe or of United States. On the other hand, in relation to modernization, Theory P has two main characteristics: it supposes that modernity is not located in any part of the world; that the process of modernization is not to be oriented to any Platonic archetype; and it holds that any nation, whatever its contemporary configuration, always has its own possibilities of modernization, the implementation of which can be disturbed by the superimposition of a frozen, normative model, extrinsic to those possibilities. The author observes that Warren Bennis and Robert Chin ask correct1y for theories of changing instead of theories of change. The author thinks that this question can be answered only by a concrete and existential social science, based on the possibility model, some of whose guidelines he presents in this paper. Normal 0 21 false false false PT-BR X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */
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Alberto Guerreiro Ramos

Papers

The new science of organizations: A reconceptualization of the wealth of nations

Introdução crítica à sociologia brasileira

Administração e contexto brasileiro : esboço de uma teoria geral da administração

Modelos de homem e teoria administrativa

A modernização em nova perspectiva: em busca do modelo da possibilidade