Steven Kelman

5 Public Administration and Organization Studies

Abstract The study of public organizations has withered over time in mainstream organization studies research, as scholars in the field have migrated to business schools. This is so even though government organizations are an important part of the universe of organizations—the largest organizations in the world are agencies of the U.S. government. At the same time, the study of public administration, once in the mainstream of organization studies, has moved into a ghetto, separate and unequal. Centered in business schools, mainstream organization research became isomorphic to its environment—coming to focus on performance issues, which are what firms care about. Since separation, the dominant current in public administration has become isomorphic with its environment. In this case, however, this meant the field moved backward from the central reformist concern of its founders with improving government performance, and developed instead a focus on managing constraints (i.e., avoiding bad things, such as co...

Adversary and cooperationist institutions for conflict resolution in public policymaking

Compared with other societies, the United States makes unusually extensive use of adversary institutions for resolving public conflicts-that is, institutions where the job of advocates is to present for a third party the strongest possible case for their own point of view and where responsibility for actual political choice is then left to the third party. This article presents a case for placing greater reliance on “cooperationist institutions,” that is, ones where parties talk with each other rather than to a third party and where the parties attempt to reach agreement among themselves, acceptable to most or all the participants, about the issue in question. The case for cooperationist institutions is argued in terms of the effects of such an institutional design on the development of public spirit among participants in the policymaking process. The article also considers objections against cooperationist institutions and concludes by making some suggestions about the concrete forms that such institutions might take in the United States.

Improving service delivery performance in the United Kingdom: Organization theory perspectives on central intervention strategies

Abstract A noteworthy example of public sector performance management was launched by the UKs Labour government in 1997. Starting in 1998, departments established a central capacity to deal with “public service agreements” negotiated with Treasury and the performance of frontline units in its domain. In 2001 the Prime Ministers Delivery Unit (PMDU) was established to work on prime ministerial priorities involving 21 targets in four departments. This paper examines the role of central government in contributing to performance improvement where actual performance is delivered by dispersed subunits. It seeks to identify techniques the central government uses for performance management, and asks whether these techniques appear likely to have positive effects on performance. It develops a framework using concepts from organization theory and uses it to evaluate the activities and effectiveness of the PMDU in influencing frontline service delivery.

A Case for In-Kind Transfers

One of the most common policy-related messages that economists present to non-economists is the superiority of cash over in-kind transfers as a policy tool. A good deal of government policy on behalf of the poor consists, of course, of various forms of in-kind assistance, such as medical care or food stamps. However, if we wish to help the poor, the argument goes, in-kind transfers are an inferior way to do so.

Using implementation research to solve implementation problems: The case of energy emergency assistance

Generalizations drawn from implementation research can offer useful guidance in formulating new implementation plans, as the development of a revenue-recycling program illustrates. According to the conventional wisdom drawn from implementation research, the program design should be simple and all the steps necessary to produce the desired results should be identified at the outset. The program that was developed in this case was an extensive one, intended to provide financial relief to all U.S. citizens in an energy emergency. The program would be under the control of one existing agency where equipment, personnel, space, and standard operating procedures were most suitable to the goals of the plan. Although the admonitions derived from past research are straightforward, it turns out that adhering to them in the practical process of resolving specific implementation problems requires imagination and tenacity. Because implementation takes place in settings that are extraordinarily diverse, new generalizations regarding implementation will not be easy. Besides, those that engage in implementation research must reconcile themselves to the fact that their generalizations face a demanding test, far more demanding then that encountered in most policy analysis research-“Does it really work?”

Successfully Achieving Ambitious Goals in Government: An Empirical Analysis

Many senior government leaders who have attempted to achieve ambitious goals have been quite successful, though others (sometimes very visibly) have not succeeded. What do those who succeeded do differently? Is their success just a matter of luck? What (if anything) do the most successful public sector leaders have in common across agencies with very different missions? To explore these questions, the authors use a reputational approach to identify success, relying on independent experts to nominate leaders from the two most recent completed presidential administrations. In order to understand what successful leaders do differently, the authors also use a control group for comparison. The authors test a range of hypotheses based on the public management literature. Successful leaders do a number of things that control group members generally do not. Examples of these techniques are general good management techniques, including using a strategy planning process, using performance metrics, and working proactively to gain support from external stakeholders. By contrast, change management techniques, which we had expected to distinguish successful leaders, are also used by unsuccessful leaders. Thus, their use does not differentiate the successes.

Effort as Investment: Analyzing the Response to Incentives

We analyze a model in which incentives in one period on one task can affect output more broadly through learning. If agents can invest in human or organizational capital, then output will increase both before and after short-term incentives. We develop a model of these e¤ects, and then we evaluate its predictions using data from hospitals in Britain during a series of limited-time performance incentives offered by the government. We …nd empirically that these policies increase performance not only during the incentivized periods but also before and after, matching the preditctions of our model. We also examine performance along non-incentivized dimensions of quality of care and find little evidence of classical effort substitution.

Policy Views, Constituency Pressure, and Congressional Action on Flag Burning

Much of the rational choice literature suggests that constituency considerations will dominate decision-making when constituency concerns are pronounced and the issue is conducive to citizen audit. The 1990 House of Representatives vote on a constitutional amendment banning flag burning provides a good test of this argument. Drawing from a survey of legislators and polling data we argue that even in the face of salient constituency views legislators demonstrated a willingness to vote their policy views and cross their constituents. We explore how concerns about reputation and other considerations contributed to this phenomenon. We also suggest directions for future research.

Successfully Executing Ambitious Strategies in Government: An Empirical Analysis

How are senior government executives who attempt to execute an ambitious vision requiring significant strategic change in their organizations able to succeed? How do they go about formulating a strategy in the first place? What managerial and leadership techniques do they use to execute their strategy? In this paper, these questions are examined by comparing (so as to avoid the pitfalls of “best practices†research) management and leadership behaviors of a group of agency leaders from the Clinton and Bush administrations identified by independent experts as having been successful at executing an ambitious strategy with a control group consisting of those the experts identified as having tried but failed at significant strategic change, along with counterparts to the successes, who had the same position as they in a different administration. We find a number of differentiators (such as using strategic planning, monitoring performance metrics, reorganizing, and having a smaller number of goals), while other techniques either were not commonly used or failed to differentiate (such as establishing accountability systems or appeals to public service motivation). We find that agencies that the successes led had significantly lower percentages of political appointees than the average agency in the government. One important finding is that failures seem to have used techniques recommended specifically for managing transformation or change as frequently as successes did, so use of such techniques does not differentiate successes from failures. However, failures (and counterparts) used techniques associated with improving general organizational performance less than successes.

Book Review Essay: 9/11 and the Challenges of Public Management: The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States

Although as of this writing at the beginning of 2006, there has been no significant new act of terrorism in the U.S. since September 11, 2001, the risk of an attack on a major city with weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, chemical, or biological) remains terrifying. One might even see the danger that Western countries face now as greater than during the bleakest years of the Cold War. Then, there was the unimaginable risk of a holocaust that might end life on earth, but it was hard to imagine this would come about by other than ghastly error, while now there is probably no risk of extinction, but there are those who wish consciously to unleash mass destruction. Many sober observers (e.g., Allison, 2004) believe it is very possible that an entire city might be annihilated by a terrorist nuclear blast.