Richard J. Herzog

A Model of Natural Disaster Administration: Naming and Framing Theory and Reality

This article develops a model for natural disaster administration that illustrates the roles of theory and reality. Theoretical ideals are presented and discussed from planning and management perspectives. This administrative model combines mitigation and planning together and it combines disaster management, response, and recovery in an effort to better name and frame the influence and the potential of public administration theory in national disaster administration. This model is framed with three sets of filters that condition a sequence between theory and disaster management/response. The assessment and portability of these theories will provide a tool to learn from past failures/successes and to build for future challenges and opportunities that confront praxis related to disaster administration. It is speculated that theoretical approaches should play a more prominent role in natural disaster administration.

Framing Discourse in Budgetary Processes: Warrants for Normalization and Conformity

Abstract Using a modified form of Burkeian cluster analysis, a study of discourse in local government budgetary processes uncovered three warrants that were used for normalization and coriformity (persuasion, conservatism, and expenise). These warrants encourage panicipants in budgetary processes to appear to be consistent with institutional goals and values in order to receive desired financial outcomes. Therefore, administrators have incentives to employ these warrants. Failure to use these warrants can lead to adverse budgetary decisions, in effect punishments. The analysis suggests a significant discrepancy between actual warrants identified in this study and ideal ones such as proposed by Fox and Miller. This discrepancy raises the question of which warrants best serve the public interest.

Performance budgeting: Descriptive, allegorical, mythical, and idealistic

The descriptions of performance budgeting, based on theory and practice, allow for the application of Dante’s allegory in The Divine Comedy. This allegory places performance budgeting into the spiritual domains of heaven, hell, and purgatory. These domains are used to frame the theoretical foundations of performance budgeting and to discuss a match with operational reality. Performance budgeting practices often fall between heaven, the optimal use of public revenues, and hell, the worst use of public revenues. It can be argued that most performance budgeting efforts tend to congregate in purgatory. Realizing purgatory allows for the recognition of principles that form the basis for performance budgeting to be classified as institutional myth. As institutional myth, the practice of performance budgeting is blocked from theoretical idealism.

Teaching What You Practice: The Need for Self-Reflection in Academic Settings

Abstract Public administration academics—scholars and teachers—should consider discussing, documenting, and disseminating their organizational experiences. Most academics are aware of their administrative actions, practices, and experiences. Through self-reflection and dissemination, these actions and practices can be placed into a richer context to build practical theory and provide improved professional knowledge. By engaging in the self-reflection process modeled in this article, academics can teach what they practice. This process offers a pedagogy that can be used to create effective learning communities in which academics share practices with students.

Assessing Stories Managers Tell

Seven assessment criteria are developed from applied logic and supported by relevant literature: relevancy, application, factual/lifelike, social construction, effectiveness, has a point, and goodness. These assessment criteria can be used in narrative inquiry by scholars, storytellers, and listeners to assess how well stories meet these criteria and promote the transference of experiential knowledge to practice. To illustrate how these assessment criteria can be used in thematic narrative inquiry, a convenience sample of three city managers was selected, qualitative interviews consisting of previously structured questions were conducted, and stories were elicited. The city managers’ stories were selected and assessed to determine the level of specificity with which the story met the criterion. Based on these assessments, the authors identified the best storyteller from the perspective of the listener, highlighting characteristics of good storytellers. Public management heuristics developed from themes or points from the stories are discussed.

The invisible administrator

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to argue that intersubjective experiences, governed by various dimensions of space, and induced actions are invaluable to invisible public administrators. Knowledge of these experiences holds the keys to good public administration practice and theory building.Design/methodology/approach – This paper seeks to establish various dimensions for cultivating space in public organizations. These dimensions are related to intersubjective experiences.Findings – The development and refining of methods, including reflection, reflexivity, hermeneutics, and dialectics, to enrich intersubjective experiences, is found to be essential.Practical implications – As organizational realities change, the administrative understandings of intersubjective experiences will have to evolve.Originality/value – Knowledge of the invisible administrator and intersubjective experiences has not been accorded enough research importance.

Symposium—Naming and Framing Public Administration Theory in Natural Disaster Planning and Response

In the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the December 2006 ATP Call for Articles to this symposium was timely and judicious. The devastating wildfires that recently ravaged Southern California reinforce the need for continued improvement in praxis related to disaster administration. Public administration theory can offer insights throughout the disaster administration sequence: mitigation, planning, response, management, and recovery. Hopefully, this symposium will have a positive impact on disaster administration theory and practice. This symposium was spawned out of a 2006 PAT-Net panel discussion in Olympia, Washington, which raised more questions than answers and often lacked theoretical groundings. Elevation of this discussion requires an elaboration on the connections between theory and practice in disaster administration. This symposium provides that elaboration by opening a dialogue and possibly advancing an interest in more broadly grounded disaster administration theories and practices. The emphasis of many scholarly or applied endeavors is on lessons learned and the future application of those lessons. As a reviewer for this symposium noted,

Governmentality, Biopolitical Control, and a Value Pluralist Perspective of Wellness Programs: Creating Utopian Employees

The craze for wellness programs and the healthism paradigm have led to a need to better understand their complexity and the desired result: the creation of utopian employees. This understanding can benefit from a theoretical discussion of governmentality and biopower that combines the perspectives of employer and employee in the framework of value pluralism. The employer perspective hinges on value monism, which prescribes that healthcare costs must be controlled. Employees would like to be healthy, but may be conflicted by organizational pressures. These pressures are highlighted by the discussion of value pluralism, which includes hierarchical obedience, productivity, fairness, privacy, and economics. The article differentiates utopian and nonutopian employees and discusses the workplace dystopias that can result from the adoption and implementation of wellness programs.

Administrative ironies and DHS performance reporting

Objectivism is the critical lens used to view organizational communication of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The Government Performance Results Modernization Act of 2010 changed requirements for such communication by mandating that agencies like DHS emphasize performance goals and targets to be achieved in the upcoming years in their performance reporting. Interpretivism is the sense-making lens used to view changes in performance reporting. This study focuses on performance target reductions, new performance measures, and retired performance measures documented in a DHS annual report. Nineteen performance measures were selected and discussed from empirical interpretivist and institutional interpretivist lenses. When intepretivism cannot match what is reported with what would appear to be logical, administrative ironies are established.

Salary surveys as institutional myth: ritual, validity, reality

The use of dialectics and social construction theory can help expose rationalized institutional myths used to create useable knowledge. This discussion presents a popular technique, advocated and used among public officials when establishing pay scales, called a salary survey. Salary surveys appear rational because they use logical positivist (quantitative) methods to illustrate a “truth” that is actually “symbolic.” This process is institutionalized when pay discussions and decisions are required to proceed on the basis of salary surveys. Salary surveys take on the role of myth when they become accepted by officials as an “objective reality” without a thorough examination of the biases and assumptions. This study uses the ritual, validity, reality dialectic to illustrate how administrators construct and shape reality through social interaction. Through this dialectic, some officials may want to question their acceptance of salary survey practices and consider the recommendations offered in this article.