Rosemary O'Leary

Breaking up Is Hard to Do: The Dissolution of Judicial Supervision of Public Services

Public services in many states have been placed under federal court supervision. In our 1991 PAR article, we examined the implications of the federal judicial decisions in supervising the Kansas City Metropolitan School District for the “new triumviate” governing public services—public officials, legislators, and judges. In this article, we examine judicial decisions affecting the same school district a decade later to reveal the impact of judicial supervision on the school district and to discern the implications for policy termination. We find that, once begun, judicially mandated federal court supervision of public institutions is not readily terminated, even pursuant to the wishes of the United States Supreme Court.

Teaching Collaborative Leadership: Ideas and Lessons for the Field

This article describes and analyzes a new approach to teaching collaborative leadership to masters of public administration students at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. The 3-year-old course teaches students how to design a collaborative network with the necessary players at the table; structure governance for a collaborative group; negotiate ethically to best leverage resources; facilitate meetings of a network; manage conflict among network members; effectively engage the public, including designing and sequencing civic engagement to make effective use of public knowledge; design useful systems for evaluating the outcomes of collaboration; and operate within the legal constraints on collaborative public agency action. The theoretical and pedagogical underpinnings of the course are explained. Ideas and lessons for the field are offered.

Conclusion: Conflict and Collaboration in Networks

As the authors of the articles in this symposium demonstrate, public managers who work collaboratively in networks find themselves not solely as unitary leaders of unitary organizations. Additionally, they find themselves facilitating and operating in multiorganizational arrangements to solve problems that cannot be solved, or solved easily, by single organizations. Management in networks is different than traditional management in single programs or organizations in several respects. One of the major challenges concerns the management of conflict within the network. The theme of conflict in networks manifests itself in different ways in each of the four core articles in this symposium. Keast, Mandell, and Brown differentiate among cooperation, coordination, and collaboration. Each requires a different level of trust and different way of working together. Each normally requires different structural linkages, degrees of formality, and time. Each presents different risks and rewards. Keast, Mandell, and Brown write about potential conflict among members of collaborative networks who, because of their hectic, demanding jobs, do not have time for ‘‘declaring shared understanding and shared goals.’’ They also highlight the different organization cultures that are brought together in collaborative networks. They mention potential conflicts with the public who seek to have an impact on network decisions. Rhodes and Murray present a six-part framework for understanding complex adaptive systems. The six parts are system scope or arena, system outcomes, system rules, agents and their decision-making behavior, decision factors that affect the behavior of agents, and the processes of the system that will be affected by initial conditions, path-dependencies, and bifurcation points. Conflict can arise in any one of these areas, but the last area—process—is a pivot point for conflict management. Rhodes and Murray explain: International Public Management Journal

Federalism and Environmental Policy: The Case of Solid Waste Management

This article examines current policy concerning the interstate transport of waste with particular reference to the relative role of different levels of government in shaping and implementing waste management policy in five key United States Supreme Court cases and two recent Court of Appeals cases. The intergovernmental tensions between the federal courts and state and local governments are highlighted, the clashes between law and policy are discussed, and the implications for public management are analyzed.

Eight supreme court cases that have changed the face of public administration

This article examines eight recent Supreme Court decisions that have important implications for public administrators. The areas examined include public personnel policy, solid waste management, budgeting and finance, taxation, privacy, and public school education.

Collaboration and performance: introduction to symposium on collaboration

In our era of collaboration, the public sector increasingly engages in collaborative efforts (Bingham & O’Leary, 2008; Keast & Mandell, 2014; Mandell & Steelman, 2003; O’Leary & Bingham, 2009; O’Leary, Gerard, & Bingham, 2006). Expectations and resources invested in collaborative arrangements rise accordingly, making the issue of collaborative performance increasingly salient (Keast, Mandell, Brown, & Woolcock, 2004; Mandell, 1989; Mandell & Keast, 2007; Voets, Van Dooren, & De Rynck 2008). Fiscal crises, demanding strong governmental steering, regulation, and intervention on the one hand, but stressing lean government (in a context of decreasing public budgets) focused on its core tasks, on the other hand, add pressure to the quest for collaborative performance (Keast, 2011; O’Leary & Gerard 2012, 2013). Collaborative performance, however, is a broad concept that entails a variety of arrangements or interactions within or across governments, or involving private actors (for-profit, nonprofit, and community groups). These arrangements may focus on different kinds of activities or results (e.g., information sharing,