Curtis Ventriss

New Public Management: An Examination of Its Influence on Contemporary Public Affairs and Its Impact on Shaping the Intellectual Agenda of the Field

Abstract This paper contends that an effective way to examine new public management and its assumptions is by focusing on its relationship to the public philosophy of modern liberalism. It will also be argued that while the New Public Management may be effective in addressing certain administrative issues, it can, at best, be only a very limited approach in confronting some of the central problems facing society.

Organizational Change: The Role of Organizational Culture and Organizational Learning

Recent findings suggest that organizational culture and learning impact organizational performances. We report the results of an organizational change program focused upon strengthening further productivity in a public sector organization. The findings suggest that systematic and structured programs that include specific organizational goals, performance measures, performance feedback mechanisms, and incentives yield enhancements of targeted organizational performances. We present guidelines to promote organizational change and suggest that perceived collective efficacy plays an important role in changing organizational culture.

Organizational Learning and Public Policy: Towards a Substantive Perspective

The concept of organizational learning has gained increasing attention as an important approach to administrative theory and practice. This article examines some of the major models of organizational learning and argues that these different approaches, to one extent or another, have obscured the importance of learnings substantive meaning as applied to public policy and public affairs in general. We propose an approach called substantive learning which challenges public administrators to reflect upon the intended and unintended outcomes of policies in an intersectoral environment.

Critical theory and the role of citizen involvement in environmental decision making: A re-examination

Much of the administrative literature on public participation in environmental decision making assumes that citizen involvement contributes to reflexive deliberations, communication, effective representation, and consensus building in the public sphere. We will argue that for all the intuitive appeal of public participation, it may ironically limit the boundaries of possible change all under the normative guise of democracy and fair and open deliberations concerning environmental issues. In particular, we critically examine the citizen as a stakeholder as one mechanism that obscures as much as it reveals about public participation. To explore some of the implications of this critical approach, Jurgen Habermas and David Harvey’s ideas will be examined, who, from their own differing perspectives, contend that the forces of social conflict and change cannot be so easily contained under a public participative approach to environmental decision making.

The Rise of the Entrepreneurial State Governments in the United States: The Dilemma of Public Governance in an Era of Globalization

Subnational governments have increasingly become involved in international economic affairs that were previously reserved primarily for the nation-state. This international involvement by subnational governments has resulted, among other things, in attempting to be more entrepreneurial in terms of attracting foreign investment and promoting state exports. This article contends that these activities have transformed, in part, public governance whereby the notion of citizenship is becoming “reconstructed,” raising some disturbing questions in this era of globalization and mobility of capital.

Community Participation and Modernization: A Reexamination of Political Choices

A critical issue facing democratic societies is how to integrate the concept of citizen participation with the technocratic nature of modern organizations. The issue of participation in the workplace has a long and controversial history in organizational theory. 1 The nature and extent of citizen participation in governmental organizations, an issue of concern since the formation of Greek city states, takes on added significance under the pressures of modernization.2 Classic democrats, while acknowledging the complexity of modern society, have concluded that participation is too crucial an element of citizen development to be sacrificed to the demands of modernity.3 On the other hand, pluralist theorists, while acknowledging the importance of participation in

Radical Democratic Thought and Contemporaryamerican Public Administration A Substantive Perspective

This article argues that radical democratic thought, although to a large extent theoretically ignored in public administration, has an important role to play in raising critical issues that are interwoven with the political and economic fabric of society itself. Specifically, it contends that radical thought challenges the field to reconceptualize the role of democratic citizenship in a modern polity and to rethink the theoretical and intellectual development of public administration theory.

From Partnerships to Networks: New Approaches for Measuring U. S. National Heritage Area Effectiveness.

National Heritage Areas (NHAs) are an alternative and increasingly popular form of protected area management in the United States. NHAs seek to integrate environmental objectives with community and economic objectives at regional or landscape scales. NHA designations have increased rapidly in the last 20 years, generating a substantial need for evaluative information about (a) how NHAs work; (b) outcomes associated with the NHA process; and (c) the costs and benefits of investing public moneys into the NHA approach. Qualitative evaluation studies recently conducted at three NHAs have identified the importance of understanding network structure and function in the context of evaluating NHA management effectiveness. This article extends these case studies by examining quantitative network data from each of the sites. The authors analyze these data using both a descriptive approach and a statistically more robust approach known as exponential random graph modeling. Study findings indicate the presence of transitive structures and the absence of three-cycle structures in each of these networks. This suggests that these networks are relatively ‘‘open,’’ which may be desirable, given the uncertainty of the environments in which they operate. These findings also suggest, at least at the sites reported here, that the NHA approach may be an effective way to activate and develop networks of intersectoral organizational partners. Finally, this study demonstrates the utility of using quantitative network analysis to better understand the effectiveness of protected area management models that rely on partnership networks to achieve their intended outcomes.

Toward an Understanding of Citywide Urban Environmental Governance: An Examination of Stewardship Networks in Baltimore and Seattle

Efforts to create more sustainable cities are evident in the proliferation of sustainability policies in cities worldwide. It has become widely proposed that the success of these urban sustainability initiatives will require city agencies to partner with, and even cede authority to, organizations from other sectors and levels of government. Yet the resulting collaborative networks are often poorly understood, and the study of large whole networks has been a challenge for researchers. We believe that a better understanding of citywide environmental governance networks can inform evaluations of their effectiveness, thus contributing to improved environmental management. Through two citywide surveys in Baltimore and Seattle, we collected data on the attributes of environmental stewardship organizations and their network relationships. We applied missing data treatment approaches and conducted social network and comparative analyses to examine (a) the organizational composition of the network, and (b) how information and knowledge are shared throughout the network. Findings revealed similarities in the number of actors and their distribution across sectors, but considerable variation in the types and locations of environmental stewardship activities, and in the number and distribution of network ties in the networks of each city. We discuss the results and potential implications of network research for urban sustainability governance.

Evaluating U.S. National Heritage Areas: theory, methods, and application.

Like many governmental actors in recent decades, the U.S. National Park Service (NPS) has operated increasingly through partnerships with other state and federal agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), community groups, and private sector corporations. Perhaps the most salient example of this trend toward partnerships is the rapid growth and development of national heritage areas (NHAs). Since the first NHA received congressional designation in 1984, NHAs have become an increasingly popular strategy for protecting and managing landscapes. To date, congressional designation has been granted to 49 NHAs, making them one of the fastest growing initiatives involving the NPS. Despite this growth, no prior research has examined the efficacy or effectiveness of the NHA model. This article introduces the NHA concept, while reviewing the literature on evaluation research and its application to protected area management. We then offer an NHA program theory model for evaluating NHAs. The model was developed using a theory-based, process evaluation approach, along with 90 qualitative interviews conducted at three study sites: Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor, MA-RI (BLAC); Delaware and Lehigh National Heritage Corridor, PA (DELE); and Cane River National Heritage Area, LA (CANE). We conclude by discussing the key challenges and implications associated with developing a long-term research agenda for evaluating NHAs.