Delmer D. Dunn

Public Affairs, Administrative Faculty and the Winter Commission Report

The following is a summary of a larger report prepared by the National Association of Schools and Public Affairs and Administration Task Force on Education for the State and Local Public Service. This summation reflects written contributions to the larger report made by task force members, including Glen Cope, Chet Haskell, Janet Patton, James Perry, Barbara Romzek, Frank Sherwood, and David Carnevale.[1] The Winter Commission recommendations profoundly impact teaching and research in public affairs and administration. Those who read the report may find parts they disagree with or identify areas that are not addressed in the recommendations. But the core of the report has programmatic implications for university and college public affairs and administration programs to which faculty and administrators in these programs must devote serious attention. The Winter Commission issues a clarion call for a new kind of public service which will require radical curricular transformation. The report should stimulate faculty reconsideration of the core curriculum of their degree programs to emphasize the best practices in public organization design and management control systems. The report challenges programs of public affairs and administration to equip students with the knowledge, skills, and abilities to be catalysts for change rather than guardians of the status quo. The commissions emphasis on public managers who serve as coaches and facilitators rather than supervisors and controllers will require faculty reconsideration of the range of skills that are imparted to graduates. The result will be greater emphasis on new skill packages that include competency in team building, negotiation, communication inside and outside the organization, employee involvement, cultural awareness, and program quality. The reform proposals also suggest that new teaching methods must be developed and emphasized. Programs must develop experiential opportunities to assist students in mastering interpersonal and managerial skills. High performance laboratories, developed in cooperation with state and local government officials, would bring together new ideas and skills. Further, programs should consider ways to develop and deliver in-service training in ways that enhance their attractiveness to practitioners by emphasizing flexibility regarding formats, locations, schedules, and program length. The Winter Commission emphasizes stable, consistent support for human resource development much more than many reform proposals. There is a need to develop in-service training programs that will hasten the time when public service managers can become the new kind of public manager envisioned by the report. In-service programs will also provide training of those whose initial education experience came from areas other than public management. Some training can be campus based and can be developed on a fee-for-service basis. Other strategies should promote the training of trainers to expand and enhance the quality of training provided directly by local governments or state departments and agencies. Faculty and administrators should work with state and local governments to better fund training and develop sufficient staff levels to provide the necessary time for training. Faculty members in public affairs and administration, as well as others, must face the reality that most persons in the state and local public service will be educated in areas other than public affairs and administration. This is not surprising since specialization typically has been the key to both entry-level positions and early career advancement. Persons interested in government often see other professional degrees or training as more useful to them in pursuing career objectives in the public service. Given these facts, public affairs and administration faculty and administrators must develop more cooperative relationships with these other higher education programs than has often been the case in the past. …

Exploring the values underlying evaluation of research: A social judgment analysis

This study uses social judgment analysis in a mailed questionnaire design to examine the judgment process used to evaluate research by editorial board members of various journals in one field of inquiry, public administration. The study examined the way board members valued criteria commonly used to evaluate research, examined the internal consistency with which they applied these values, and tested for consistency among board members in the relative weights they placed upon these criteria. The respondents evaluated 30 hypothetical research products which had been randomly scored on the criteria of clarity and organization, linkage to previous research, design and methods, contributions to knowledge, and utility of findings. The study found that respondents applied criteria consistently in evaluating research. The highest weighted criteria were contributions to knowledge and utility of findings and the least weighted was linkage to previous research. The weights seem to contravene the commonly held norms for conducting resarch by placing less weight on design and methods. Finally, the study suggests that the apparent inconsistency common to manuscript review is not caused by lack of agreement on the relative importance of the criteria, but rather by a lack of agreement on what constitutes good design or a contribution to knowledge.

THE UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT AS PRAGMATIST: An Investigation of Priorities

Presidents of leading American universities were surveyed to determine the priority they place upon university programs of research, instruction, and service. The study examines the priorities they place upon methods of delivering university service programs to various constituent groups and the varying priority that the presidents place upon business and professional groups; general public groups; state or local government officials; federal government officials; labor groups; and agriculture groups. The study also compares the priorities of private, public non-land-grant, and public land grant university presidents on these items. Highest priority was given to research, followed by instruction and service. The rating for research was six times higher than for service. The service priority was further analyzed to reveal a client orientation by presidents linked to the basis of university support.

Contributors in the American Electoral Process

The dramatic events surrounding Watergate have highlighted the important place of campaign financing in the conduct of modern election campaigns. The charges and counter-charges of Watergate are well known: large companies, interest groups, and some individuals are alleged to have made campaign contributions that were directly associated with favorable decisions by the Nixon Administration. Executives of oil and airline com-

JOHN J. GARGAN and JAMES G. COKE, eds. Political Behavior and Public Issues in Ohio. Pp. vi, 388. Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press, 1972.

that women workers could not be organized into unions, Chafe lays the blame for lack of organization at the door of a hostile American Federation of Labor. Too, there is abundant data here to bury the contention that women made significant economic and political gains before 1940. Largely because proportionately little attention is given to the post World War II period, Chafe is less persuasive when he argues that the 1940s were a turning point for women. The treatment of other areas, too, is uneven. There is fascinating but skimpy material on changes in women’s colleges and magazines in the 1920s. While the 1930s, with all that happened to the family then, is sloughed over, the war years are colored in vivid hues. In the end, however, this book must rest