Showing papers in "Public Administration Review in 2002"

The Evolution of E-Government among Municipalities: Rhetoric or Reality?

Abstract: Information technology has become one of the core elements of managerial reform, and electronic government (e-government) may figure prominently in future governance. This study is designed to examine the rhetoric and reality of e-government at the municipal level. Using data obtained from the 2000 E-government Survey conducted by International City/County Management Association and Public Technologies Inc., the article examines the current state of municipal e-government implementation and assesses its perceptual effectiveness. This study also explores two institutional factors (size and type of government) that contribute to the adoption of e-government among municipalities. Overall, this study concludes that e-government has been adopted by many municipal governments, but it is still at an early stage and has not obtained many of expected outcomes (cost savings, downsizing, etc.) that the rhetoric of e-government has promised. The study suggests there are some widely shared barriers (lack of financial, technical, and personnel capacities) and legal issues (such as privacy) to the progress of municipal e-government. This study also indicates that city size and manager-council government are positively associated with the adoption of a municipal Web site as well as the longevity of the Web site.

Reinventing Local Governments and the E‐Government Initiative

Abstract: The Internet provides a powerful tool for reinventing local governments. It encourages transformation from the traditional bureaucratic paradigm, which emphasizes standardization, departmentalization, and operational cost-efficiency, to the “e-government” paradigm, which emphasizes coordinated network building, external collaboration, and customer services. Based on a content analysis of city Web sites and a survey of Web development officials, this article shows that many cities are already moving toward this new paradigm. These cities have adopted “onestop shopping” and customer-oriented principles in Web design, and they emphasize external collaboration and networking in the development process rather than technocracy. The article also analyzes the socioeconomic and organizational factors that are related to cities' progressiveness in Web development and highlights future challenges in reinventing government through Internet technology.

From Responsiveness to Collaboration: Governance, Citizens, and the Next Generation of Public Administration

Abstract: The evolution of the New Public Management movement has increased pressure on state bureaucracies to become more responsive to citizens as clients. Without a doubt, this is an important advance in contemporary public administration, which finds itself struggling in an ultradynamic marketplace. However, together with such a welcome change in theory building and in practical culture reconstruction, modern societies still confront a growth in citizens’ passivism; they tend to favor the easy chair of the customer over the sweat and turmoil of participatory involvement. This article has two primary goals: First to establish a theoretically and empirically grounded criticism of the current state of new managerialism, which obscures the significance of citizen action and participation through overstressing the (important) idea of responsiveness. Second, the article proposes some guidelines for the future development of the discipline. This progress is toward enhanced collaboration and partnership among governance and public administration agencies, citizens, and other social players such as the media, academia, and the private and third sectors. The article concludes that, despite the fact that citizens are formal “owners” of the state, ownership will remain a symbolic banner for the governance and public administration–citizen relationship in a representative democracy. The alternative interaction of movement between responsiveness and collaboration is more realistic for the years ahead.

Participative Management and Job Satisfaction: Lessons for Management Leadership

Abstract: Researchers and practitioners in both the public and private sectors agree that participative management improves employees' job satisfaction. Public agencies have also turned to strategic planning to enhance government performance and accountability. This study explores the relationship between participative management in the context of the strategic planning and job satisfaction in local government agencies. The results of multiple regression analysis show that managers' use of a participative management style and employees' perceptions of participative strategic planning processes are positively associated with high levels of job satisfaction. The study also finds that effective supervisory communications in the context of the strategic planning process are positively associated with high levels of job satisfaction. The study suggests that participative management that incorporates effective supervisory communications can enhance employees' job satisfaction. In this regard, organizational leaders in the public sector should emphasize changing organizational culture from the traditional pattern of hierarchical structure to participative management and empowerment.

Who Wants to Work for the Government

Abstract: In an era when everyone wants to be a millionaire, governments struggle to attract and retain highly qualified employees, making it more important than ever to understand what attracts people to the public service. Using contingency table analysis and logistic regression on the 1989 and 1998 General Social Surveys, we explore how individuals' demographic characteristics and the importance they place on various job qualities influence their preference for and employment in the public sector. Job security may still be the strongest attraction of government jobs, but high income and the opportunity to be useful to society also attract some Americans to the public service. Minorities, veterans, Democrats, and older Americans preferred public-sector jobs more than whites, nonveterans, Republicans, and younger Americans, who were otherwise similar. Women and college graduates were more likely than comparable men and less-educated respondents to have government jobs, but no more likely to prefer them. Overall, desire for government jobs declined markedly between 1989 and 1998.

From Street‐Level to System‐Level Bureaucracies: How Information and Communication Technology is Transforming Administrative Discretion and Constitutional Control

Abstract: The use of information and communication technology (ICT) is rapidly changing the structure of a number of large, executive public agencies. They used to be machine bureaucracies in which street-level officials exercised ample administrative discretion in dealing with individual clients. In some realms, the street-level bureaucrats have vanished. Instead of street-level bureaucracies, they have become system-level bureaucracies. System analysts and software designers are the key actors in these executive agencies. This article explores the implications of this transformation from the perspective of the constitutional state. Thanks to ICT, the implementation of the law has virtually been perfected. However, some new issues rise: What about the discretionary power of the system-level bureaucrats? How can we guarantee due process and fairness in difficult cases? The article ends with several institutional innovations that may help to embed these system-level bureaucracies in the constitutional state.

Outcomes–Based Performance Management in the Public Sector: Implications for Government Accountability and Effectiveness

Abstract: Requirements for outcomes–based performance management are increasing performance–evaluation activities at all government levels. Research on public–sector performance management, however, points to problems in the design and management of these systems and questions their effectiveness as policy tools for increasing governmental accountability. In this article, I analyze experimental data and the performance–management experiences of federal job–training programs to estimate the influence of public management and system–design factors on program outcomes and impacts. I assess whether relying on administrative data to measure program (rather than impacts) produces information that might misdirect program managers in their performance–management activities. While the results of empirical analyses confirm that the use of administrative data in performance management is unlikely to produce accurate estimates of true program impacts, they also suggest these data can still generate useful information for public managers about policy levers that can be manipulated to improve organizational performance.

Public‐Value Failure: When Efficient Markets May Not Do

Abstract: The familiar market-failure model remains quite useful for issues of price efficiency and traditional utilitarianism, but it has many shortcomings as a standard for public-value aspects of public policy and management. In a public-value-failure model, I present criteria for diagnosing values problems that are not easily addressed by market-failure models. Public-value failure occurs when: (1) mechanisms for values articulation and aggregation have broken down; (2) “imperfect monopolies” occur; (3) benefit hoarding occurs; (4) there is a scarcity of providers of public value; (5) a short time horizon threatens public value; (6) a focus on substitutability of assets threatens conservation of public resources; and (7) market transactions threaten fundamental human subsistence. After providing examples for diagnosis of public-values failure, including an extended example concerning the market for human organs, I introduce a “public-failure grid” to facilitate values choices in policy and public management.

Managing Networks: Propositions on What Managers Do and Why They Do It

Abstract: Measuring management in networks is difficult because the allocation of managerial resources in network structures is fluid—that is, the utilization of management behaviors varies across time and space within a given program or project As a means of focusing the network management research agenda, propositions based in contingency logic are suggested to test ideas regarding when, why, and how network managers undertake these behaviors The propositions are intended to identify the vast inventory of network management behaviors and, most importantly, determine how the manager strategically matches behaviors with the governing context Suggestions are also offered to help us understand how and why managerial resources are re allocated over time and space The proposed research agenda is offered as a guide to help us determine which choices are most likely to be effective

Defining the Client in the Public Sector: A Social‐Exchange Perspective

Abstract: Government reformers urge the adoption of a private-sector-style “customer focus,” but critics see it as inappropriate to the public sector, in particular because it devalues citizenship. This article first argues that most public-sector organization-client interactions differ from the private-sector customer transaction and offers a typology of these interactions. But second, it proposes that the central feature of the customer model—the notion of exchange—can be broadened in a way that accentuates the importance of administrators’ responsiveness to their publics. In a social-exchange perspective, government organizations need things from service recipients—such as cooperation and compliance—which are crucial for effective organizational performance; eliciting those things necessitates meeting not only people’s material needs but also their symbolic and normative ones. Engaging in these different forms of exchange with clients is not necessarily inconsistent with an active citizenship model.

Partnership Arrangements: Governmental Rhetoric or Governance Scheme?

Abstract: It has become popular to advocate partnership arrangements. Such partnerships may be seen as new forms of governance, which fit in with the imminent network society. However, the idea of partnership is often introduced without much reflection on the need to reorganize policy-making processes and to adjust existing institutional structures. In this contribution, we discuss the ambiguity of partnerships. An empirical basis is provided by means of an analysis of the policy making on the expansion of the Rotterdam harbor. This case indicates that although new governance schemes are being proposed and explored, they still have to comply with the existing procedures in which they are imbedded. Governments especially are not prepared to adjust to governance arrangements. Policy making continues to be based on selfreferential organizational decisions, rather than on joint interorganizational policy making. This raises questions about the added value of intended cooperative governance processes.

Workplace Relations: Friendship Patterns and Consequences (According to Managers)

Abstract: This article examines orientations toward workplace friendship. Based on a survey of senior managers in cities with populations over 50,000, it addresses the following questions: Do senior managers promote, condone, or discourage workplace friendship? What risks and benefits of workplace friendships do these managers perceive? What policies and strategies that affect workplace friendship are found in organizations? How do these organizational efforts affect perceptions of employee performance? This article finds that, despite the risks, orientations in favor of workplace friendships are widespread, and many jurisdictions engage in efforts to promote them.

A Multiple–Indicator Approach to Municipal Service Evaluation: Correlating Performance Measurement and Citizen Satisfaction across Jurisdictions

Abstract: Early work on municipal service–quality assessment recommended multiple measures of performance from both providers and users. Citizen satisfaction surveys have rivaled their more quantitative counterpart, administrative performance measures, in adoption, but the implication of survey results for action is not well understood by managers or scholars. To achieve meaningfully integrated multiple measures of service quality, we need to explore the dimensions of citizen satisfaction and review patterns of satisfaction across localities. We also need to understand the relationship between administrative performance measures and citizen perceptions. This cross–sectional analysis of municipal citizen satisfaction and performance benchmark data suggests that citizen satisfaction survey results are useful to managers in conjunction with performance–measurement programs as part of a multiple–indicator approach to evaluating municipal service quality. However, understanding citizen perceptions requires a different perspective than that applied to administrative service performance measurement.

A Comparison of Disaster Paradigms: The Search for a Holistic Policy Guide

Abstract: The following article discusses the current emphasis and attention being given to the future of emergency management, as well as theoretical constructs designed to guide research and help practitioners reduce disaster. It illustrates that while the disaster-resistant community, disaster-resilient community, and sustainable development/sustainable hazards mitigation concepts provide many unique advantages for disaster scholarship and management, they fail to sufficiently address the triggering agents, functional areas, actors, variables, and disciplines pertaining to calamitous events. In making this argument, the article asserts that any future paradigm and policy guide must be built on—yet go further than—comprehensive emergency management. The article also reviews and alters the concept of invulnerable development. Finally, the article presents “comprehensive vulnerability management” as a paradigm and suggests that it is better suited to guide scholarly and practitioner efforts to understand and reduce disasters than the aforementioned perspectives.

Interlocal Agreements as Overlapping Social Networks: Picket–Fence Regionalism in Metropolitan Kansas City

Abstract: Public policies addressing complex issues require transjurisdictional solutions, challenging hierarchical modes of public–service delivery. Interlocal agreements (ILAs) are long–established service–delivery instruments for local governments, and research suggests they are plentiful, with a majority of cities and counties involved in at least one ILA. Although ILAs are an established feature of local government operations, previous research is atheoretical, largely descriptive, and unsystematic. This article explores ILAs as social network phenomena, identifying the rationales and underlying values for various ILAs, central and peripheral actors, and brokering roles. In particular, we explore the utility of incorporating network exchange theory into public management network models to identify the relative power of actors in network exchange relationships. We find that a “norm of reciprocity” culture predominates an economizing value as the rationale for an abundance of service–oriented policy networks that produce a picket–fence regionalism of ILA participation in the Kansas City metropolitan area.

Keeping Public Officials Accountable through Dialogue: Resolving the Accountability Paradox

Abstract: How can public officials be held accountable, and yet avoid the paradoxes and pathologies of the current mechanisms of accountability? The answer, claims Harmon (1995), is dialogue. But what exactly is dialogue, and how is it created? More importantly, how can dialogue ensure accountability? To address these questions, I begin with a brief description of dialogue and its basic features, distinguishing it from other forms of communication. An example illustrates how dialogue occurs in actual practice. Not only does dialogue demonstrate the intelligent management of contradictory motives and forces, it also supports Harmon’s claim that it can resolve the accountability paradox and avoid the atrophy of personal responsibility and political authority. I suggest that dialogue’s advantage outweighs its cost as a mechanism of accountability under a particular set of conditions: when public officials confront “wicked problems” that defy definition and solution, and when traditional problem-solving methods have failed, thus preventing any one group from imposing its definition of the problem or its solutions on others.

Public Management Reform: Competing Drivers of Change

Abstract: Public management reforms often are portrayed as part of a global wave of change, and all organizational change is interpreted within a single reform paradigm that is rooted in economics and market–based principles. Reforms outside this paradigm go unnoticed. This article examines the assertion that different drivers of change competing with the dominant focus of management discourse remain present and influence the direction of reform. It presents three alternative drivers of change rooted in normative values and provides evidence of their relevance from three national cases. Normative influences are reflected in a stream of activities occurring within the same time period in different civil service systems. The direction of public management practice cannot be seen as fully determined by any one approach to government reform or as traveling in only one direction. Understanding the balance among competing drivers of change is a key to interpreting both contemporary and future administrative reform.

Implementing Performance‐Based Program Budgeting: A System‐Dynamics Perspective

Abstract: The article proposes a model for evaluating budget reforms that combines insights from budgeting, policy implementation, and system-dynamics literatures. System-dynamics modeling combines both quantitative and qualitative research techniques to provide a new framework for applied research; its use is illustrated using performance budgeting as an example. Applied to the implementation of Florida's performance-based program budget, the model identifies actions in the short run that will increase the reform's likelihood of success: providing clear communications; facilitative budget and accounting routines; reliable performance information. The model also identifies critical legislative behaviors that influence executive implementation: how the legislature in the long-run uses performance information to inform resource allocation and how it applies incentives or sanctions to programs that achieve or fail to achieve their performance standards. The legislature has the opportunity to use program reviews prepared by legislative staff to invigorate the executive branch's resolve to continue implementing the reform.

What to Do When Stakeholders Matter: The Case of Problem Formulation for the African American Men Project of Hennepin County, Minnesota

Abstract: We propose a series of stakeholder analyses designed to help organizations-especially governments-think and act strategically during the process of problem formulation in order to advance the common good Specifically, we argue that at least five sets of analyses are necessary, including the creation of (1) a power versus interest grid; (2) a stakeholder influence diagram; (3) bases of power-directions of interest diagrams; (4) a map for finding the common good and structuring a winning argument; and (5) diagrams indicating how to tap individual stakeholder interests to pursue the common good What the analyses do is help to transform a seemingly "wicked problem"-for example, how to produce better outcomes for African American men aged 18-30into something more tractable, and therefore amenable to collective action In other words, stakeholder analysis can be used to link political rationality with technical rationality so that support can be mobilized for substantive progress

Nonmission–Based Values in Results–Oriented Public Management: The Case of Freedom of Information

Abstract: Since the 1940s, Congress and the federal courts have sought to make U.S. federal administration more responsive to democratic–constitutional values, including representation, participation, transparency, and individual rights. As manifested in the National Performance Review, the New Public Management emphasis on results may reduce attention to these values, which for most agencies are not intrinsically mission–based. Freedom of information illustrates the problem of protecting nonmission–based, democratic–constitutional values in results–oriented public management. Agencies’ annual performance plans under the Government Performance and Results Act overwhelmingly ignore freedom of information, even though it is a legal requirement and performance measures for it are readily available. This study concludes that focusing on results may weaken commitment to democratic–constitutional values by default. It suggests that using a balanced scorecard approach in performance plans could enhance attention to freedom of information and other democratic–constitutional values.

Rethinking Security: Organizational Fragility in Extreme Events

Abstract: Providing public security is a fundamental function of government. As the class and degree of threat vary, government agencies must adapt to changing conditions or risk failing their basic mission. The events of September 11, 2001, illustrated the limits of governmental performance in identifying and interrupting actions intended to harm innocent citizens. These events are examined against the resources, range, and limits of governmental capacity to adapt to the emerging threat of terrorism, and an alternative perspective on administrative performance as a complex adaptive system is proposed. This perspective redefines the search for public security as a dynamic process that balances mechanisms of control with processes of information search, exchange, and feedback among public, private, and nonprofit organizations and is supported by a well–designed information infrastructure. The article concludes that the search for public security is an interactive learning process that, while guided by public organizations, must involve responsible participation by private and nonprofit organizations as well as an informed citizenry.

Airport Security, High Reliability, and the Problem of Rationality

Abstract: The events of September 11, 2001, have raised troubling questions regarding the reliability and security of American commercial air travel. This article applies the concepts and logic of highreliability organizations to airport security operations. Contemporary decision theory is built on the logic of limited or buffered rationability and is based on the study of error-tolerant organizations. The concept of high-reliability organizations is based on the study of nearly error-free operations. For commercial air travel to be highly secure, there must be very high levels of technical competence and sustained performance; regular training; structure redundancy; collegial, decentralized authority patterns; processes that reward error discovery and correction; adequate and reliable funding; high mission valence; reliable and timely information; and protection from external interference in operations. These concepts are used to inform early-stage issues being faced by both local airports and the newly established Transportation Security Administration.

Organizing for Homeland Security

Abstract: The events of September 11 have prompted vastly heightened scrutiny of many aspects of government functioning, as major wars and national cataclysms have done in the past. Few aspects, perhaps, have received more attention than the question of whether government in general, and the federal government in particular, has the right organizational structure to meet the requirements for homeland security. An initial determination was made by the president that sufficient organization was woefully lacking, and he established the Office of Homeland Security by executive order on October 8, 2001, less than one month after the terrorist attacks. The establishment of the office--headed by the new Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and involving the new Homeland Security Council--has not ended the scrutiny and debate over the appropriate organizational system needed by the federal government to meet impending terrorist threats. In fact, the debate over the appropriate organizational structure to combat terrorism preceded the events of September 11, with various proposals emanating from commissions and committees studying the problem. The Advisory Panel to Assess Domestic Response Capabilities for Terrorism Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction (the Gilmore Commission), established by Public Law 105-261, reported in its second annual report on December 15, 2000: "Over the past five years, there have been a half-dozen Congressional attempts to reorganize the Executive Branch's efforts to combat terrorism, all of which failed" (vii). It found, "The organization of the Federal government's programs for combating terrorism is fragmented, uncoordinated, and politically unaccountable" (v). The panel opined, "The lack of a national strategy is inextricably linked to the fact that no entity has the authority to direct all of the entities that may be engaged" (v). The panel recommended that the president establish a national office for combating terrorism in the Executive Office of the President and that he seek a statutory basis for the office. In the analysis that follows, this will be referred to as the "statutory coordinator" organizational option. The U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century (the Hart-Rudman Commission), chartered by the Secretary of Defense in 1998, found that "the assets and organizations that now exist for homeland security are scattered across more than two dozen departments and agencies, and all fifty states" (2001, 10). It recommended a statutorily created national homeland security agency with responsibility for planning, coordinating, and integrating various U.S. government activities involved in homeland security. It would incorporate the Federal Emergency Management Agency, along with the Customs Service, the Coast Guard, and the Border Patrol, while preserving them as distinct entities (15). In the analysis that follows, this will be referred to as the "departmental" option. Although there has been much focus on the requisite powers of the president's Homeland Security Assistant and hearings have been held on the options for structuring a central homeland security headquarters agency, Congress appears content for now to see how the office created by executive order will work before undertaking legislative action. This wait-and-see posture undoubtedly will come to an end, and Congress will once again take up the issue in a more concerted fashion. Even though the issue of organization for homeland security involves the question of the organization of a headquarters under the president, it extends considerably beyond that. In fact, the organizational issue of homeland security implicates the organizations of various venues, including the organization of individual federal departments and agencies, state and local governmental organizations, and private-sector organizations, as well as their relationships with each other. The issues involved in the appropriate organizational structure for the presidential headquarters organization are embedded in organizational issues that pervade all of these organizations. …

To Manage Is to Govern

Abstract: Governance structures constrain and enable the actions of public managers. Principal–agent theory has played a dominant role in our understanding of governance structures. This theory suggests that politicians create relatively static governance structures in a top–down fashion and hold managers accountable for mandated results. In other words, public managers are influenced by governance structures but do not affect governance structures. However, we argue that public managers do affect governance structures, and, in order to understand how this influence takes place, we need a new way of thinking about governance structures. We propose thinking about governance structures as relationships created through the interactions of people in different and reciprocal roles that are relatively dynamic. Public managers are an important source of the multiple, reciprocal, and dynamic interactions that produce governance (relationship) structures. As such, managers are accountable not only for policy outcomes, but also for the appropriateness of the relationships they create and support.

Does Regionalism Beget Regionalism? The Relationship between Norms and Regional Partnerships for Economic Development

Abstract: Introduction Regional governance is on the rise in the United States, according to some scholars and observers (Dodge 1989, 1990; Wallis 1994a). In other words, local government officials are increasingly working together to address interjurisdictional problems and issues. One strategy of regional governance that is being used more often is voluntary groups of local governmental officials--and often business leaders and other citizens--in a region. A number of these "regional partnerships" have been formed specifically to foster the economic development of a multijurisdictional or regional area. Olberding (1997) finds that the number of regional partnerships for economic development increased fivefold during the past decade in large metropolitan areas in the southeastern United States--from three in 1987 to 16 in 1997. The recent growth in regional partnerships for economic development as a public administration/public policy strategy, however, has not been matched by scholarly research. To date, no study has empirically examined the formation of these regional partnerships across a large number of areas in the United States. Further, no study has looked at the organizational characteristics of a representative sample of regional partnerships for economic development in the United States. Therefore, we have a very limited understanding of why regional partnerships form, how they are structured, and what they do. This article attempts to address the shortcomings by developing a theory of regional partnerships for economic development and then testing it using data from all metropolitan areas in the United States and from a national survey to which executive directors of 133 regional partnerships responded. The Literature on Regionalism Two Competing Models of Interlocal Relations There are two competing models of how local governments in a region relate to one another. On the one hand, there are "interjurisdictional competition" models, which assert that cities rival one another for residents and businesses. Tiebout (1956) presents the notion that there is an optimal number of residents and businesses at which communities produce a bundle of public services at the lowest average cost. A community below the optimum tries to attract residents and businesses; a community at the optimum tries to maintain it; and a community above the optimum does not try to repel residents and businesses, but rather economic factors "push people out of it." (1) If a number of citizens with similar preferences for public services and taxes are not satisfied with the current offerings of local jurisdictions, then new jurisdictions are formed. Proponents argue that multiple, competing cities result in an efficient outcome because it enables citizens and businesses to choose jurisdictions with public services and taxes that most closely match their preferences. In addition, public-choice theory suggests that competition improves democracy because politicians must be responsive to mobile constituents (Roeder 1994). In contrast to models based on fragmentation and competition, a second set of models is based on "regionalism" by limiting the number of local governments or by fostering coordination and cooperation among them. Public administration traditionalists assert that fewer local governments result in economy-of-scale benefits, greater political accountability, more equitable treatment of citizens, and greater opportunity to address significant problems (Lyons, Lowery, and DeHoog 1992). Further, urban scholars maintain that economic and social linkages among cities in metropolitan areas are strengthening (Hershberg 1996; Wallis 1994a; Florestano and Wilson-Gentry 1994; Savitch et al. 1993; Grell and Gappert 1993; Peirce 1993a,c,d; Hershberg, Magidson and Wernecke 1992). Proponents of regionalism have asserted that a more optimal outcome is achieved when local governments recognize their interdependencies and act in a coordinated way (Barnes and Ledebur 1998; Dodge 1996; Wallis 1994a; Peirce 1993a, c; Grell and Gappert 1992; Barnes and Ledebur 1991; Dodge 1990). …

County Service Delivery: Does Government Structure Matter?

Abstract: Very little systematic research has been conducted to determine the policy effects of changing the form of county government. The findings of this study suggest that efforts to modernize county government structure may enable county officials to respond successfully to increasing citizen demands for a higher level of current services as well as expand the menu of services. Specifically, there is a strong association between the type of county government (non-charter commission, non-charter commission/appointed administrator or elected executive, or charter commission/appointed administrator or elected executive) and county spending for all types of services. In addition, there is a strong linkage between type of county government and three categories of county services representative of the service roles of the modern American county—that is, traditional, local, and regional services.

Organizing the Federal System for Homeland Security: Problems, Issues, and Dilemmas

Abstract: Improving the capacity of U.S. governments to provide greater homeland security will require numerous changes in the way federal, state, and local governments are organized and operate. It also will require significant alterations in intergovernmental relations. Changes will be required in intergovernmental dimensions, including operational, financial, legal, and political dimensions. A dual-track approach to rearranging intergovernmental relationships in order to provide a coordinated intergovernmental response to the requirements of homeland security is to be expected. Language: en

Employee Commitment and Firefighters: It’s My Job

Abstract: The events of September 11, 2001, have led us to rethink the importance of public service and public–sector employees’ commitment. In previous research, we argued that employee commitment is a construct comprising three dimensions: commitment to the boss, to the work group, and to the organization. However, this characterization cannot explain the behavior of public employees on September 11. For this article, we argue that employee commitment is a construct that comprises four dimensions: With the help of identity theory, there is reason to include commitment to a job as part of the commitment construct. Based on an analysis of an existing data set, we find that firefighters identified themselves as committed to their job, which they viewed as an honorable profession that performs a valuable service to the community.

Competition and Choice in New York City . Social Services

Abstract: Introduction Local governments provide social welfare benefits in the United States through three main mechanisms: (1) directly, using their own personnel; (2) indirectly, through grants or contracts awarded to private nonprofit or for-profit organizations to supply services to government-designated, eligible individuals; and (3) indirectly, through vouchers that are given to eligible recipients, who can use them to purchase services from approved service suppliers. These mechanisms differ significantly. Under direct government provision, as well as under grants and contracts, the producer of the service is subsidized, whereas with vouchers the consumers of the service are subsidized. Both contracts and grants on the one hand, and vouchers on the other, can introduce competition and choice. These ingredients--important for good performance--are lacking in direct, monopolistic government services, hence the move toward privatization of public services, where the principal benefits are achieved by competition (Savas 2000, 122-24). In the 1970s, social services underwent a dramatic change as government awarded contracts and grants to the private, nonprofit sector to supply social services. Between 1971 and 1979, the fraction of state and local social services provided in this manner increased from 25 percent to 55 percent (Kettner and Martin 1994) because local governments could not mobilize internally fast enough to take advantage of the federal funding available for new social programs. By 1992, the fraction of U.S. local governments that relied entirely on their own in-house units for various programs was small, as illustrated in table 1. (Miranda and Andersen 1994, 26-35). None of the responding local governments was operating its own homeless shelters, for example, while 54 percent contracted with private organizations for day care facilities and for homeless shelters. The nonprofit world faces major environmental changes in the United States: devolution from the federal to state governments, welfare reform, tax reform, reinvented government, cuts in government budgets, managed health care, and the evolution of AIDS into a chronic illness, requiring relatively more outpatient social-support services and relatively less in-patient medical care. Welfare reform alone is having a major impact, with renewed emphasis on job training, job placement, child care, and transportation. Nowhere do these changes have more impact than in New York City, which has some 19,500 nonprofit organizations, including about 5,650 active in social services and health care (Haycock 1992). Government funding of nonprofits in New York City--by the federal, state, and city governments--has grown to significant proportions and even dominates some fields: Nonprofit agencies in health care receive 74 percent of their funds from government; in housing, 68 percent; and in social services, 66 percent (Haycock 1992). In 1998, New York City entered into 4,361 such contracts for $1.95 billion (table 2); the vast majority of these were with nonprofit agencies, but the number with for-profit firms was rising. The average contract was for $447,000, an amount large enough, generally speaking, to affect the organization winning such an award. Research Questions This large-scale use of the private sector offers an opportunity to study the use of contracts for social services. The process of contracting for social services has been examined both conceptually and empirically, and, in particular, the issue of competition has been addressed. Kramer and Grossman (1987) identify major policy issues that arise in contracting for social services: Under what conditions should competition be encouraged? Should low bids always be accepted? Should nonprofit organizations be preferred over for-profits? Should government make special efforts to assist small nonprofit organizations so they can compete? DeHoog (1984) asks the pertinent empirical question: "To what extent are [social] service environments characterized by competition? …

Organizing the War on Terrorism

Abstract: The network of public agencies, private firms, nonprofit organizations, ad hoc groups, and individual volunteers that deals with natural and technological hazards and disasters did a remarkable job of responding to and helping us recover from the September 11th attacks. That national emergency management network, along with the national security and law enforcement networks, provides a foundation for our war on terrorism, helps us mitigate the hazard of terrorism, and improves our preparedness for future violence. However, coordinating the efforts of the networks will be a real challenge for the director of homeland security and his or her state and local counterparts. Coordination will necessitate using legal authority to assure compliance, economic and other incentives to encourage compliance, formal partnerships to encourage collaboration, informal understandings to encourage cooperation, and personal encouragement to influence appropriate action. A top–down, command–and–control approach to the war on terrorism, such as the proposed Department of Homeland Security is intended to provide, may be counterproductive.