Randy T. Simmons

All Organizations Are Public: Bridging Public and Private Organizational Theories

PrefaceThe Author 1. The Publicness Puzzle: How the Public Status of Organizations Affects Their Behavior 2. Comparing Public and Private Organizations: Organizations, Personnel, and Work Context Issues 3. Barriers to Developing Knowledge About the Publicness of Organizations 4. Econmic Authority: Understanding the Roots of Privateness 5. Political Authority: Understanding the Roots of Publicness 6. Why All Organizations Are Public: A Multi-Dimensional View of Publicness 7. A Case Example: How the Level of Publicness Affects Performance in R&D Organizations 8. Implications for Research, Mangement Education, and Effective Management ReferencesIndex

Curricular and Programmatic Innovation at the Intersection of Business Ethics and Entrepreneurship

Abstract We explore the current landscape of business ethics and entrepreneurship within the undergraduate business school curricula and programmatic structure. We then present a couple of approaches we have used to advance the understanding and teaching of business ethics and entrepreneurship as a set of foundational principles. As contextual framing for our analysis we convened eight colloquia/workshops over the past three years that bring a wide-ranging group of business school faculty, scholars in complementary disciplines, and business practitioners into a small-group setting to have in-depth conversations about the role of business ethics and entrepreneurship within the business school. Data used in our analysis catalog the ways and the degree to which AACSB-accredited business schools focus their undergraduate curricula and degree program structure on ethics and entrepreneurship. Working through publically available data, primarily from business school websites, we use content analysis as a framework for statistical analysis of the alignment between how a business school articulates strategic focus (mission, vision, and purpose statements) and how it structures its curricular offerings and degree programs. Most business schools continue to operationalize their approach to business ethics and entrepreneurship as programmatic appendages rather than a foundational set of knowledge and skills that are central to the school’s teaching mission. In general, business schools are missing an opportunity to teach practical business ethics and principled entrepreneurship as the central driving force in value-creating activities within all organizations.

Public choice and public life

This chapter attempts to impose analytical order on my 6 years as a city council member and 4 years as mayor of a small Utah city. It traces how Buchanan and Tullock affected my academic and public life and the difficulties of being a public choice mayor. The Buchanan/Tullock enterprise provides insights to how people act badly when trying to act through government and do good when acting in voluntary small groups.

Pathological politics: The anatomy of government failure

A pathology of politics is meaningless without a normative foundation--in this case, efficiency, a much misunders tood and abused term among noneconomists. Here it refers to a measure of how well society provides for the material wants of its members. This simple definition is in accord with the more precise one of Vilfredo Pareto, namely, whether a given policy, action, or allocation is able to improve the subjective well-being of anyone without diminishing that of others. Such a result is said to be Pareto optimal. A polity or economy producing huge quantities of unwanted goods and services even at the lowest cost is not considered efficient. No one would be made better off and indeed many would be worse off since the resources could be allocated for more valued uses. So our chief concern is with allocative efficiency and secondarily with technical efficiency, that is, producing something at the lowest cost. We are concerned with meeting individual preferences and employing resources in their most valued uses. Despite the importance of individual preferences in democracies, a number of otherwise attractive political features have the unhappy facility of violating Paretian optimality. The two most prominent involve redistribution of income. Redistributive gains dominate efficiency considerations in policy discussions, and democratic institutions encourage this redistributive propensity. In addition, democracy has an unfortunate but distinct penchant for enacting inefficient proposals--proposals that make some better off but at the expense of others or, even worse, that make everyone worse off in the long run. By choosing policies and rules that produce greater costs than benefits and failing to enact those having greater benefits than costs, citizens fail to achieve their highest welfare. Sources of inefficiency in the political process may be usefully categorized in six ways: (1) perverted incentives, (2) collective provision of private wants, (3) deficient signaling mechanisms, (4) electoral rules and the distortion of preferences, (5) institutional myopia, and (6) dynamic difficulties.

Planning is Political; Except when it isn′t

DOI 10.1515/cjpp-2013-0005 Calif. J. Politics Policy 2014; 6(4): 599–613 Ryan M. Yonk* and Randy T. Simmons Planning is Political; Except when it isn′t Abstract: City councils, mayors, and other local elected officials are consumed by questions of how much development to allow, where that development should occur, and what type of development it should be. In fact, managing and plan- ning for growth are a large part of what local politicians do (Babcock, R. F. and C. L. Sieman (1985) The zoning Game Revisited. Boston: Oelgeschlager, Gunn, & Hain.). Many planning and growth management decisions, however, are not made by politicians; instead they are made by unelected planning commissions and professional planning staff (Beito, D. B., P. Gordon and A. Tabarock (2002) The voluntary city; Choice, community, and civil society. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.). Planning commissioners are asked to play two different roles. In the first they assist in developing formal planning documents, and ordinances. In the second role they act as quasi-judicial officials who determine if proposals are consistent with general plans and ordinances. In this study we seek to under- stand what drives planning commissioners’ quasi-judicial decisions. We begin by assuming that commissioners are driven by three factors, either in combination or individually: staff recommendations, planning commissioners’ own opinions, and public input (Nelson, R. H. (1977) Zoning and Property Rights. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; Babcock, R. F. and C. L. Sieman (1985) The zoning Game Revisited. Boston: Oelgeschlager, Gunn, & Hain). To explore how these factors influence the decision making process we conduct a quantitative case study of decisions by the Ventura, CA planning commission and draw conclusions for other municipalities. Keywords: California; land use; planning; planning commission. *Corresponding author: Ryan M. Yonk, Political Science, Southern Utah University, 351 West University Blvd GC406, Cedar City, UT 84721, USA, Tel.: +4355867961, e-mail: ryanyonk@suu.edu; ryanyonk@yahoo.com Randy T. Simmons: Economics and Finance, Utah State University, Logan, UT, USA 1 Introduction City councils, mayors, and other local elected officials are consumed by ques- tions of how much development to allow, where that development should occur, and what type of development it should be. In fact, managing and planning for growth are a large part of what local politicians do (Babcock and Sieman 1985).