The Future of Public Administration around the World

The Minnowbrook Perspective

Rosemary O'Leary, David M. Van Slyke, Soonhee Kim, Rosemary O'Leary, David M. Van Slyke, Soonhee Kim

• Publisher: Georgetown University Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781589017115, 9781589017122
• eBook ISBN: 9781589016255
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Public Affairs & Administration
• Index: Politics & International Relations

A once-in-a-generation event held every twenty years, the Minnowbrook conference brings together the top scholars in public administration and public management to reflect on the state of the field and its future. This unique volume brings together a group of distinguished authors—both seasoned and new—for a rare critical examination of the field of public administration yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

The book begins by examining the ideas of previous Minnowbrook conferences, such as relevance and change, which are reflective of the 1960s and 1980s. It then moves beyond old Minnowbrook concepts to focus on public administration challenges of the future: globalism, twenty-first century collaborative governance, the role of information technology in governance, deliberative democracy and public participation, the organization of the future, and teaching the next generation of leaders. The book ends by coming full circle to examine the current challenge of remaining relevant.

There is no other book like this—nor is there ever likely to be another—in print. Simply put, the ideas, concepts, and spirit of Minnowbrook are one-of-a-kind. This book captures the soul of public administration past, present, and future, and is a must-read for anyone serious about the theory and practice of public administration.

PART I
STUDYING AND MANAGING PUBLIC ORGANIZATIONS OF THE FUTURE

When we imagine public organizations of the future, many of us think of The Jetsons, the prime-time animated television show that was shown on Sunday nights in the early 1960s—with years of reruns and a cult-like following. The story of the Jetson family takes place in 2062. Aliens, flying people in special suits, flying cars that look like flying saucers with transparent bubble tops, and flying family pets that speak are the norm. Computers have human personalities and belong to the Society for Preventing Cruelty to Humans. Robots do most of the work, and a full-time job consists of three hours a day, three days a week. George Jetson’s workday entails pushing one button on a computer, surrounded by an abundance of other labor-saving devices. Nonetheless, he often complains about his grueling schedule and the difficulty of his work.

Although we are certain that public organizations of the future will be more high technology than they were at the time of Minnowbrook III (see part III on the role of information technology in governance), the reality of the public organization of the future is much less glamorous than that portrayed in The Jetsons. The trend of tightening both human and financial resources is likely to continue as public organizations struggle to become more flexible, efficient, politically responsive, adaptable, and competitive. Contract management, network formation, and collaborative management will most likely continue to grow as public managers increasingly seek alternatives to better address society’s most pressing public challenges.

In the midst of this turbulent environment, six of the seven chapters in part I focus on what is missing in the study and management of public organizations in 2009 and provide ideas for the future. These six chapters fall into three thematic groups: values, evidence, and race and ethnicity. A final chapter, on homeland security, chronicles a trend in public administration that has developed since Minnow-brook II.

Leading off in “From Performance Management to Democratic Performance Governance,” Donald P. Moynihan writes that much has changed since the original Minnowbrook Conference in 1968. Many of the values that the Minnowbrook-inspired New Public Administration criticized—efficiency, effectiveness, and means/end rationality—are central to current approaches to governance. But traditional bureaucracies are still under attack. The start of the twenty-first century is characterized by limited faith in the expertise of managers and the capacity of governments. Instead, our current era places faith in quantitative indicators of performance, third-party government, and contracts as the new mechanisms of governance. Moynihan argues that a crucial task for public administration is to move beyond the study of performance management as a narrow technique, akin to personnel management, and instead conceptualize it as democratic performance governance.

Next comes “An Argument for Fully Incorporating Nonmission-Based Values into Public Administration,” in which Suzanne J. Piotrowski maintains that a focus on nonmission-based values is conspicuously absent from the theory and practice of public administration. Nonmission-based values are those not associated with the central focus of an organization or program. For most public administrators, examples of these values include due process, equity, integrity, and transparency. Though some attention has been paid to these values and their associated laws, regulations, and policies, they are generally regarded in the public administration literature—either explicitly or implicitly—as subservient to the value of achieving results cost effectively. Piotrowski argues that there needs to be a coherent public administrative strategy to prioritize nonmission-based values in public-sector organizations. Public-sector employees need clear signals that these values and their associated laws, rules, regulations, and policies are an essential part of their jobs.

In “Are We There Yet? From Taylor’s Triangle to Follett’s Web; From Knowledge Work to Emotion Work,” Mary E. Guy, Meredith A. Newman, and Sharon H. Mastracci focus on values of a different sort: those dealing with emotions. They question whether the field of public administration—in either theory or practice—has arrived at an appreciation for the worker as a whole person rather than as a cog in the machine where only cognitive skills are appreciated. Tracing the contributions of Frederick Taylor, Mary Parker Follett, and Peter Drucker to management theory, the authors argue that the field has stopped short of a full appreciation for public service work skills. Effective public service requires both emotional and cognitive work, they argue. The emotional part of public-sector work—dealing with trauma and death, working with citizens who may be unlikable, and interacting with needy, vulnerable members of society at the worst moments of their lives—is often not addressed in the official rhetoric of management efficiencies. The authors encourage public management scholars to amend public management theory to seek a more comprehensive understanding of the public service worker. Only then, they maintain, can we realistically comprehend public service work and all that it requires.

In “The Raised Fist and the Magic Negro: Public Administration and the Black Public Administrator,” Domonic Bearfield writes about the second theme of this part—race and ethnicity. He argues that scholars in public administration have incompetently struggled with a changing racial and ethnic landscape, and that the field has consistently relied on old racial narratives to construct research questions and interpret data. What is needed is an examination of the images of race that are prevalent in the field and new robust analyses that catalyze our understanding of the role that race and ethnic background bring to public administration.

In a chapter on a similar subject but with a different twist, “Social Equity in Public Administration: The Need for Fire,” Susan T. Gooden maintains that social equity in American public administration and policy is caught up in an unproductive cycle. She writes that there must first be solid data indicating whether social inequities exist. Second, there must be an acceptance of the research and a concrete plan to reverse identified inequities. Third, the reversal plan must be successfully implemented. These three steps can be expressed metaphorically as “ready, aim, fire.” However, current practice suggests that a more appropriate metaphor is “ready, aim, study more,” a cyclical process that results in very little fire, thus raising the question: How can research be more effectively used to reverse social inequities?

Next, shifting gears to the issue of evidence, is Kimberley R. Isett, in “… And the Pendulum Swings: A Call for Evidence-Based Public Organizations.” Instead of “reactionary innovation,” which is often based on what sells well to the public, Isett maintains that what the field needs is a body of knowledge that focuses on creating evidence concerning what works and under what conditions for a particular set of governmental, institutional, and environmental factors or characteristics. Such evidence-based organization and system design would entail an understanding of how particular organizational forms or permutations interact with the institutional, environmental, and normative contexts of government organizations. Evidence-based organizational analysis would take into account not only that the organization is in the public sector but also the substantive mission of the agency, as well as the set of constraints and opportunities facing the organization. Isett’s goal is to retreat from faddish pseudosolutions that sound good but are often promoted without systematic analysis.

Finally, in “Public Administration: The Central Discipline in Homeland Security,” Dale Jones and Austen Givens maintain that one of the most pronounced changes in U.S. government and public administration since Minnowbrook II has been the focus on homeland security as a major policy area, triggering immense changes in and challenges for U.S. public organizations. The national response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks resulted in the most sweeping changes to federal government organization since the National Security Act of 1947. New legislation and executive branch actions after 9/11 brought significant changes for the first time in more than half a century, marking the beginning of a new era in American government and public administration. Jones and Givens explain the development of homeland security as a profession, argue that public administration is at the core of homeland security, and analyze what this means for the study and management of public organizations, as well as the education of current and future public affairs and public policy students.

Although these chapters do not address flying cars or people, robots, or talking dogs, taken as a whole they challenge us to think broadly and deeply about some of the most pressing issues facing public organizations now and in the future.

FROM PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT
TO DEMOCRATIC PERFORMANCE
GOVERNANCE

DONALD P. MOYNIHAN

Much has changed since the original Minnowbrook meeting in 1968. Many of the values that the Minnowbrook-inspired New Public Administration criticized—efficiency, effectiveness, and means/end rationality—remain central to current approaches to governance. But traditional bureaucracies are still under attack. The start of the twenty-first century is characterized by limited faith in the expertise of managers and the capacity of governments. Instead, our current era places faith in quantitative indicators of performance, third-party government, and contracts as the new mechanisms of governance.

This chapter argues that a crucial task for public administration is to move beyond the study of performance management as narrow technique, akin to personnel management, and instead conceptualize it as democratic performance governance. It is a task of profound importance because of how deeply embedded performance information is in the practices of governance.

The term “governance” reflects the reality that results-based reforms imply more than technical measurement processes, or even management. Performance routines are gradually altering the basic social and organizational processes whereby public services are considered and delivered. Within the traditional boundaries of government, agencies are required to state strategic goals and targets, and to report results. Governments continue to try, with little success, to connect pay systems to performance indicators. Within our growing state of agents, performance information is the primary basis on which contractual forms of accountability are established, and the means whereby webs of connected principals and agents allocate responsibility. To understand these mechanisms of governance, we need to understand the use and effects of performance information. The first three chapters of part I address these questions. But the Minnowbrook tradition calls us to do more than to consider matters of governance solely from an empirical point of view. Therefore, this final chapter of part I offers a normative argument that calls for the diffusion of democratic values into measurement processes.

HOW WE USE PERFORMANCE INFORMATION: PASSIVE, POLITICAL, PERVERSE, AND PURPOSEFUL

One of the difficulties of studying the use of performance information is that we think of it as a single construct, when in fact it has multiple categories and subcategories. Researchers usually focus on one or two of these categories and ignore others. There is a danger of conflating these different categories, and thus using the same name for different variables, with different causes and effects. If we are to emerge from this muddle, it would behoove us to conceptualize and measure these categories in the standardized way that we do for other multifaceted behavioral concepts, such as organizational commitment, public service motivation, and goal ambiguity. There are many possible ways to categorize the use of performance information, but for the sake of brevity, I will limit myself to the “four Ps”—passive, political, perverse, and purposeful—while collectively referring to bureaucratic and contract actors as “agents.”

Passive

Results-based reforms may result in passive reactions, where agents do the minimum to comply with requirements to create and disseminate information but do not actually use this information (Radin 2006). This strategy is logical if (1) there is a high likelihood that the current approach to performance-based bureaucracy is temporary, (2) elected officials and stakeholders demonstrate little real interest in implementation, and (3) agency leaders see little additional benefit in implementing performance management tools. The struggles of previous versions of performance management, and growing bureaucratic disillusionment with current reforms, make such an outcome highly plausible. But where results-based reforms have a permanent statutory basis, it becomes more difficult for bureaucrats to assume that they can wait it out.

Political

Results-based reforms demand that agents provide evidence of performance. Agents may come to see data as a means to define their efforts and success as a means of advocacy in a political environment (Moynihan 2008a). Agents often have some discretion or input in selecting and measuring the performance goals and measures by which they are judged, and they are likely to select, disseminate, and interpret information that portrays them in a favorable light. External stakeholders may also seek to use performance data to support or criticize the agent, but the information asymmetry of the agents is likely to make them more effective as advocates.

Perverse

In some cases the pressures to maximize measured performance may be so great that agents will improve these measures in ways that are in conflict with the underlying or unmeasured goals of a program (Radin 2006, 207–8). Agents may game program indicators through a variety of tactics, including making up data, creaming easy-to-serve clients, changing performance goals to limit comparison across time, or manipulating measures.

Purposeful

The central hope of results-based reforms is that public employees will actually use the data to try to manage their program in ways that directly improve performance. Such improvements can come via goal-based learning that gives rise to efficiency improvements, better targeting of resources and more informed strategic decisions, or by tying indicators to rewards/sanctions in contract arrangements (Moynihan 2008a). As much of governance is devolved into ongoing contracts, a key question is whether principals can learn how to limit gaming on the part of agents, and actually encourage performance improvement rather than the exploitation of incomplete contracts (Courty and Marschke 2007).

WHY WE USE PERFORMANCE INFORMATION

Performance information use is contextual, influenced by incentives and the surrounding environment. As with many other initiatives, leadership and/or political support, organizational culture, and the supply of adequate resources are likely to be important factors to encourage the purposeful use of performance data. Where these factors are absent, passive use is more likely. Another important contextual factor is the nature of the task and how easy it is to measure. In an ideal situation, key goals are easily measured, measures capture the underlying goals of a program, outputs can be linked to outcomes, and individual effort can be clearly linked to outputs. In such a context, the purposeful use of indicators and effective contractual arrangements become more likely. But these desirable measurement characteristics are rare in the public sector. As a result, contracts are likely to be incomplete, making advocacy and gaming more feasible. Though measurement ambiguity should precede the decision to align performance indicators with incentives, it often does not, and the creation of market-type mechanisms forms another contextual factor that shapes use. The incentive for gaming and advocacy increases when measurement ambiguity and market-li...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• Introduction: The Legacy of Minnowbrook
• PART I. Studying and Managing Public Organizations of the Future
• PART II. Globalization
• PART III. Collaboration
• PART IV. Deliberative Democracy and Public Participation
• PART V. Teaching the Next Generation of Leaders
• PART VI. Remaining Relevant
• Conclusion: Challenges and Opportunities, Crosscutting Themes, and Thoughts on the Future of Public Administration
• List of Contributors
• Index