Howard E. McCurdy

Why Can't We Resolve the Research Issue in Public Administration?

Nearly 50 years ago, in a now classic issue of the Public Administration Review, Robert Hutchins and William Mosher debated whether schools should be established to train people in public administration. Hutchins, then president of the University of Chicago, took a negative view. He argued that public administration is too variable a field to lend itself to systematic exploration. Mosher, then dean of the Maxwell School at Syracuse University, argued in the affirmative. His words are worth recalling:

The Failure of Market Failure

The concept of market failure was originally presented by economists as a normative explanation of why the need for government expenditures might arise. Gradually, the concept has taken on the form of a full-scale diagnostic tool frequently employed by policy analysts to determine the exact scope and nature of government intervention. For some time, economists have known that the market failure idea is conceptually flawed. The authors of this article demonstrate why this is so, employing concepts drawn from the perspective of transaction costs. In a review of empirical studies, they further show how the market failure diagnostic leads analysts to make generalizations that are not supported by facts. Transaction cost analysis helps to explain the underlying processes involved.

The Space Station Decision: Incremental Politics and Technological Choice

Outstanding Academic Title, 1991, Choice MagazineAlthough building a space station has been an extraordinary challenge for Americas scientists and engineers, the securing and sustaining of presidential approval, congressional support, and long-term funding for the project was an enormous task for bureaucrats. The Space Station Decision examines the history of this controversial initiative and illustrates how bureaucracy shapes public policy. Using primary documents and interviews, Howard E. McCurdy describes the events that led up to the 1984 decision to build a permanently occupied, international space station in low Earth orbit.As he follows the trail of the space station proposal through the labyrinth of White House policy review, McCurdy explains the evolution of the presidential budget review process, the breakup of the cabinet system, the proliferation of subcabinets and Executive Office interagency, the involvement of White House staff in framing issues for presidential review, and the role of bureaucracy in advancing administration legislation on Capitol Hill. Comparing the space station decision to earlier decisions to go to the moon and to build the space shuttle, McCurdy shows how public officials responsible for long-term science and technology policy maneuvered in a political system that demanded short-term flexibility.

Fiction and Imagination: How They Affect Public Administration

For more than 50 years, scholars and practitioners have examined the role that fiction plays in public administration. For the most part, attention has centered on the degree to which practitioners can learn something about administration by exposing themselves to works of fiction (Egger, 1944, 1959; Waldo, 1968; Kroll, 1965, 1981). Fiction has been used as a teaching device, like the case study, to illustrate principles and expand experience (Holzer, Morris, and Ludwin, 1979; Argyle and Bright, 1992; Hunker, 1992; Marini, 1992a, 1992b). In this article, I suggest that fiction plays an additional role in public administration. I argue that fiction (and other works of imagination) affect what public managers do and how they do it. Fiction appears to shape the policies that public servants carry out and the way in which they conduct their duties. It probably influences the choice of administrative methods. It does this by entering the public consciousness or popular culture and becoming part of the cognitive base for making decisions about public policy and administration. This expanded view of fiction complements broader efforts currently underway to examine ways in which managers imagine the world around them (Morgan, 1986; Kass and Catron, 1990; Hummel, 1991; Kramer, 1992). It is also part of the effort to understand the relationship between humanistic arts and public administration. The latter is being advanced by a new Section on Humanistic, Artistic, and Reflective Expression in the American Society for Public Administration; by the sections new journal Public Voices, and by a new book on the role of the arts by Charles Goodsell and Nancy Murray (1995). Conventionally, fiction is a term that encompasses works of art portraying imaginary events and persons, as in novels, cinema, television drama, and the theater. I have broadened the subject matter to include additional works that seek to portray events or places in imaginative ways, especially those in the future. Television docu-dramas, various types of paintings, theme parks, and popular science thus join fiction in a broader class of media that affect administration through imagination. In this article, I present three cases that illustrate the influence of fiction and imagination upon public administration. The debate over the best way to treat the mentally ill shows how fiction can influence the outcome of policy debates, especially those for which empirical evidence remains inconclusive. The creation of the U.S. space program shows why other works of imagination must be included along with the study of fiction. The case of the National Performance Review illustrates the way in which fiction affects the course of administrative reform. These cases are followed by some suggestions on the ways in which the study of fiction and imagination might improve the understanding of public administration. Fiction and Mental Institutions Fiction can influence the choice of public policies and the methods for carrying them out, especially in areas where experts cannot agree. This phenomenon is well illustrated by the history of the deinstitutionalization movement. During the 1960s, a great debate took place in the United States on the best way to organize public facilities for the mentally ill. It culminated in the effort to replace large state institutions with community-based mental health centers. The debate began within fairly narrow policy circles, among specialists who treated the mentally ill. The issues they raised could not be settled conclusively through scientific investigation, as is often the case with public policy. Works of fiction slipped into this intellectual vacuum, creating vivid images that lent support to the advocates of deinstitutionalization. Sociologists and psychologists had begun the debate before the 1960s, with a small group of reformers suggesting that government incarceration of the mentally ill served to remove the powerless and odd from society. …

Spaceflight and the Myth of Presidential Leadership.

The reluctant racer, Dwight D. Eisenhower and United States space policy / Da Callahan and Fred I. Greenstein -- Kennedy and the decision to go to the moo Michael Beschloss -- Johnson, Project Apollo, and the politics of space prog planning / Robert Dallek -- The presidency, Congress, and the deceleration o the U.S. space program in the 1970s / Joan Hoff -- Politics not science, the U.S. space program in the Reagan and Bush years / Lyn Ragsdale -- Presidenti leadership and international aspects of the space program / Robert Ferrell - National leadership and presidential power / John M. Logsdon.

Fiction Phenomenology, And Public Administration

Such narrowness in professional education during an age of involvement is inexcusable; in a discipline as dull as administration it can be virulent. As an alternative, imagine a school of public administration which complements professional scholarship with imaginative literature which uses bureaucratic films such as M.A.S.H. to demonstrate behavioral theories, which admits fiction as relevant research experience, and which even involves students in producing a Sesame Street for Bureaucrats on television video tape. Any perception of reality ought to be relevant to the study of administration in an age of organization. This article will argue that the discipline has delineated too narrowly the variety of fiction that may be relevant to the teaching of administration. It will also explore the potential for using fiction to supplement existing research data and to open new insights into administrative theory. Finally, the application of fiction will be suggested through a bibilography of novels not typically included within the world of administration.3 Fiction is here defined as all art forms which utilize imaginative narration, whether written or visual. * This article proposes a far larger role for fiction than its traditional place as a supplement to textbook theories. It suggests that a closer relationship between imaginative literature and public administration will occur as scholars recognize the importance of perceptions in the study of organizational phenomenon, and that fiction has utility for research purposes in the testing of existing theories and the opening of new insights. The theoretical contributions of imaginative literature are illustrated through a compact bibliographic essay relating 100 novels to the major fields of study in public administration-administration, bureaucracy, organization theory and behavior, management science, and comparative administration.

The cost of space flight

Abstract Estimates of the cost of human space flight continue to generate controversy in the effort to set US space policy. Estimates vary widely, depending upon the position of the observer. This article identifies the real cost of major space flight programs and traces the heterofore unsuccessful efforts to cut the expense of space operations.

The decision to build the space station too weak a commitment

Abstract The decision to build the Space Station illustrates the way in which the incremental nature of policy making in the US government favours short-term flexibility over long-term commitments. In making the moves necessary to win approval for the Space, Station NASA officials and their allies took actions which gave policy makers frequent opportunities to re-examine the programme once approved, and may have made likely the continuing uncertainty over the future of the station. Difficulty in securing long-term commitments for large and complex science and technology programmes has been a central feature of US space policy ever since the landing on the Moon.

The decay of NASA's technical culture

Abstract The ability of the US government to carry out future space policies depends upon the maintenance of a technically capable space flight agency. During its first decade of operation the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) developed an organizational culture supporting very high levels of reliability. This ‘technical culture’ stressed the importance of in-house technical capability, ‘hands on’ activity and extensive testing. Forces at work on the agency since 1970 have tended to erode the original culture. This article explains the ways in which the beliefs and norms guiding NASA operations have changed since the agencys first decade of operations.

Spending without results: lessons from the space station program

Abstract The US spent all of the funds originally estimated for the initial development of its orbital space station without producing any significant amount of flight hardware. This article shows how a project with large design costs and significant “non-prime” outlays can quickly deplete program funds. The authors recount the way in which budgetary politics, congressional micro-management, and technological risk conspired to produce this result.