Terry L. Cooper

Hierarchy, Virtue, and the Practice of Public Administration: A Perspective for Normative Ethics

A military police officer is instructed by a commander not to issue citations to senior officers for driving while intoxicated. Also, certain specified junior officers and noncommissioned officers whose services and support are needed are to be similarly exempted. However, citations are to be issued strictly to all other personnel and maximum punishment is to be sought. When the officer objects to this order on the grounds of its illegality and unfairness, he is threatened with a poor proficiency rating and removal from his position.

Values in Flux: Administrative Ethics and the Hong Kong Public Servant

The ethical orientations of senior civil servants in Hong Kong are examined using survey datafrom a sample of279 officials involved in advanced training and university professional training programs. These public officials were found to identify strongly with the classical ideal constituted by administrative neutrality, loyalty to hierarchy, and respect for organizational rules. However, indications of more assertive personal values independent of the organization were discovered. This erosion of neutrality is characterized by espousal of liberal values such as fairness, equality, justice, honesty, integrity, human dignity, and individual freedom. The extent to which these values reflect a latent professional ethic as an autonomous basis for moral judgment and conduct remains unclear Although at present these administrators experience little incongruence between the rules and norms of the organization and their liberal values, whenever presented with a hypothetical conflict they tend to optfor loyalty to the bureaucratic hierarchy.

Democracy and the Administrative State: The Case of Hong Kong

The problem of appropriately defining the role of the public administrator in a polity constructed upon democratic principles, but characterized as an administrative state, has been one of the central issues for public administration theory and practice during the last several decades and remains so today. The increasing domination of the policy process by administrators has presented serious problems for the creation and maintenance of democratic institutions. Dwight Waldos The Administrative State moved this concern to a prominent place on the agenda for public administration scholars and practitioners in the post World War Two era in the United States.1 Since that time it has been dealt with by numerous American scholars.2

Public Management Ethics Standards in a Transnational World

Abstract Recently international organizations have established international standards for public ethical conduct to be implemented in several countries for more consistent public management ethics. The authors examine regional and international efforts to establish ethics frameworks, reasons for the emerging ethical standards, and emerging global values. Finally, they offer observations about the emerging standards, the social construction process guiding this phenomenon in the absence of shared foundational beliefs, and future prospects.

The potential for neighborhood council involvement in american metropolitan governance

This paper examines the role that neighborhood associations might play in helping to govern American cities. In contrast to recent arguments that there has been a decline in grass-roots level “social capital,” the empirical evidence suggests that local neighborhood associations are growing in number, and are increasingly active. We discuss the theoretical foundations for involving neighborhoods in governance, and argue that informal associations can mediate between citizens on the one hand, and large-scale bureaucracies and businesses, on the other. In addition, a formal system of associations may encourage discussion among fragmented neighborhoods, which in turn could improve conflict negotiation and develop mutual understanding. We argue that a major impediment to the development of a neighborhood council system in Los Angeles has been a lack of information about existing neighborhood-based associations, and discuss an ongoing initiative to develop a comprehensive base of information regarding neighborhood associations in Los Angeles.

bureaucracy nd Community Organization The Metamorphosis of a Relationship

An analysis of the relationship between the Pico-Union Neighborhood Council (PUNC) and the Community Redevelopment Agency of Los Angeles reveals the pressure of bureaucratic perspectives and role demands to be a significant factor in the interaction of public agencies and community organizations. In spite of independent funding, this neighborhood council has moved from militant advocacy, with broad community par ticipation. to community development directed largely by professionals, with substan tially reduced involvement from community residents. This transformation is examined through an analysis of the perspectives and roles of these two organizations as well as those of the technical advisers from the University of California at Los Angeles. The pressure of role demands and the dynamics of modernization are presented as explana tions for the changes which took place in PUNC. Three major considerations for puhlic administrators of agencies involved with community organizations are discussed.

The hidden price tag: participation costs and health planning.

The citizen participation program of the Los Angeles County Health Systems Agency represents one of the most ambitious efforts at implementing the public involvement provisions of PL 93-641. The first year of this program is discussed and analyzed through a participation costs theoretical framework. Specific costs which are inherent in the organizational design and introduced by the implementation procedures adopted are identified and discussed. Levels of participation after one year of operation are examined and found consistent with the high cost of participation in this program.

Challenges in Enhancing Responsiveness in Neighborhood Governance

When numerous stakeholders, constituencies, and service requests are competing for limited city agency resources, administrators need to decide to whom and how to be responsive. A review of literature on bureaucratic responsiveness suggests five possible determining factors for agencies facing conflicting demands: (a) organizational culture, (b) organizational leadership, (c) organizational rules and structure, (d) dependency on a stakeholder making a demand, and (e) the extent of external control placed on the agency. Based on an action research study of City of Los Angeles neighborhood councils and departments, this article suggests areas for future research on these and other possible influences on responsiveness in a collaborative context. Exploratory findings suggest that each factor may be of some importance, but future research is necessary.

Response of Community Organizations to the Civil Unrest in Los Angeles

An analysis of four case studies provides evidence of a unique and short-term increase of resource dependence on community organizations by outside institutions in times of emergency. Outside institutions rely on community organizations as the primary service providers, sometimes temporarily replacing traditional service channels; they also depend on the advantages these organizations offer for the distribution of their own resources. A window of opportunity results for these organizations to advocate on behalf of their clientele, establish their own policies for distribution of resources, and expand and create programs. Policy implications are discussed, as well as the possible changes in these relationships in the long run.

Connecting Neighborhood Councils and City Agencies: Trust Building through the Learning and Design Forum Process

Abstract Though citizen trust in government is very important for the legitimacy of the government, there is evidence to show that citizen trust in government is decreasing, not only in the United States of America but also all over the world. Scholars argue that citizen participation and collaborative processes involving citizen stakeholders in government decision-making could lead to increasing citizen trust in government. However, the argument that citizen participation in governance and citizen-government collaboration can lead to increased trust in governance from a conceptual or macro level perspective is difficult to visualize or establish empirically. We suggest that this collaboration and participation has to be at the experiential micro or local government level rather than at the conceptual macro level. Citizen participation in general has to translate into collaborative relationships between specific micro-level citizen organizations and city or local public agencies. We also propose that citizen participation mechanisms like collaborations and cooperative arrangements as well as the processes of collaboration are critical to establish the participation-trust causal relationship. We then present our Learning and Design Forum model as a process that facilitates a sustainable agreement between neighborhood councils and city agencies model for developing mutual trust and collaboration.