Bruce Buchanan

Red-Tape and the Service Ethic: Some Unexpected Differences Between Public and Private Managers

Comparing public and private organizations has long been a favorite pastime of public administration, but such comparisons have often been self-serving. Most have stressed conceptual or normative arguments-oriented largely toward justifying the separate study of public administration. Few have undertaken to establish an empirical basis for their claims. One of the strongest cases made thus far against such comparative efforts is by Parker and Subramaniam (1964). They note particularly the lack of common standards of description and analysis typical of these comparisons, the tendency to compare &dquo;great conglomerations of miscella-

Public organizations: A value-conflict view

That values are at the core of public administration is a notion that has gained popularity and credibility in recent years. From this perspective, public administrators have become inextricably involved in both adjusting to and promoting institutionalized values. Certain values shaping public organizations may, however, be distinctive in quality and magnitude from those of private organizations. Our purpose in this essay is to suggest criteria for identifying the distinctive values of public organizations, to propose and define three such values, to briefly examine the dynamics of change engendered by value conflicts and dilemmas, and to speculate on the theoretical and practical implications of our proposed values framework. In the process an inchoate perspective is outlined in which values occupy the centerpiece of inquiry in public administration.

Developing an Evaluation Design for the Senior Executive Service

In 1979, the Office of Personnel Management requested that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS, then the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare) plan an evaluation study to assess the impact of the Senior Executive Service (SES) on the department. An evaluability assess ment was conducted which produced an agreed-upon model of the SES program design and a clear basis for a longitudinal evaluation study. This paper summarizes the conclusions of the HHS/SES evaluability assessment.