Don't Blame the Bureaucracy!

1983 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Brinton Milward ◽  
Hal G. Rainey
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Sector ◽  
Special Interest ◽  
The United States ◽  
External Factors ◽  
Public Employees ◽  
Public Agencies ◽  
The Public ◽  
Special Interest Politics ◽  
Public Bureaucracy

ABSTRACTPublic agencies and public employees are increasingly berated as inept and inefficient. We argue that the public bureaucracy in the United States is more valuable and effective than generally recognized. Where public agencies do perform badly, the problem is often due to external factors. We discuss the oversimplified calls for more businesslike efficiency in government, the value complexity which complicates evaluation of the public bureaucracy, and the higher standards imposed on the public sector. We also discuss the challenges imposed on public agencies by special interest politics, an overload of highly complex assignments, and adverse public stereotypes. The danger of overlooking these issues is that we will continue to have a huge, active public sector, and decisions about its role and management must not be determined by oversimplification and stereotype.

Management consultants and the United States’ public sector

2013 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 381-399 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bessma Momani
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Sector ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Agencies ◽  
The Public ◽  
Management Consultants ◽  
Management Consultant ◽  
The Us ◽  
Strategic Advice ◽  
Different Levels

Management consultants provide strategic advice to public sector agencies and departments throughout the US, contributing to what some scholars call the “hollowing out of the state.” What ideational frameworks underlie these public -private relationships? Findings from a survey of management consultant show that they believe that they are contracted because they provide knowledge that is unavailable inside the public sector and that their ideas are more innovative. This study helps to explain management consultants’ perceptions of their services contracted by US public sector. By gauging the perspectives of management consultants, this research will potentially help academics and practitioners to better understand public agencies’ contracting of management consultants. This article provides preliminary steps towards better understanding and analyzing the use of management consultants by different levels of the US public sector.

Pension Enhancements and the Retention of Public Employees

ILR Review ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 70 (2) ◽  
pp. 519-551 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cory Koedel ◽  
P. Brett Xiang
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Sector ◽  
Employee Retention ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
The United States ◽  
Pension Plans ◽  
Public Employees ◽  
Public School Teachers ◽  
School Teachers ◽  
Public Pension Plans

The authors use data from workers in the largest public-sector occupation in the United States—teaching—to examine the effect of pension enhancements on employee retention. Specifically, they study a 1999 enhancement to the benefit formula for public school teachers in St. Louis, Missouri, that resulted in an immediate and dramatic increase in their incentives to remain in covered employment. To identify the effect of the enhancement on teacher retention, the analysis leverages the fact that the strength of the incentive increase varied across the workforce depending on how far teachers were from retirement eligibility when it was enacted. The results indicate that the St. Louis enhancement—which was structurally similar to enhancements that were enacted in other public pension plans across the United States in the late 1990s and early 2000s—was not a cost-effective way to increase employee retention.

scholarly journals Asia`s Role in Internet Governance

2009 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-142
Author(s):  
Park Y. J.
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Public Sector ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Internet Governance ◽  
The Public ◽  
Policy Negotiation ◽  
Global Public Policy

Most stakeholders from Asia have not actively participated in the global Internet governance debate. This debate has been shaped by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers(ICANN) since 198 and the UN Internet Governance Forum (IGF) since 2006. Neither ICANN nor IGF are well received as global public policy negotiation platforms by stakeholders in Asia, but more and more stakeholders in Europe and the United States take both platforms seriously. Stakeholders in Internet governance come from the private sector and civil society as well as the public sector.

scholarly journals Contraction and Expansion: The Divergence of Private Sector and Public Sector Unionism in the United States

1988 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 63-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard B Freeman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Sector ◽  
Private Sector ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
Union Status ◽  
Contraction And Expansion ◽  
Public Sector Unionism

The institutional structure of the American labor market changed remarkably from the 1950s and 1960s to the 1980s. What explains the decline in union representation of private wage and salary workers? Why have unions expanded in the public sector while contracting in the private sector? Is the economy-wide fall in density a phenomenon common to developed capitalist economies, or is it unique to the United States? To what extent should economists alter their views about what unions do to the economy in light of the fact that they increasingly do it in the public sector? To answer these questions I examine a wide variety of evidence on the union status of public and private workers. I contrast trends in unionization in the United States with trends in other developed countries, particularly Canada, and use these contrasts and the divergence between unions in the public and private sectors of the United States to evaluate proposed explanations.

Non-Standard Work in Two Different Employment Regimes

2004 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 321-348 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen M. Olsen ◽  
Arne L. Kalleberg
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Sector ◽  
The United States ◽  
Institutional Factors ◽  
Temporary Workers ◽  
The Public ◽  
Work Arrangements ◽  
Standard Work ◽  
The Us ◽  
Hiring And Firing

This article examines organizations’ use of non-standard work arrangements - fixed-term employees hired directly by the organization, workers from temporary help agencies (THA), and contractors - in the United States and Norway. Our analysis is based on information obtained from surveys of 802 establishments in the US and 2130 in Norway. We find that Norwegian establishments make greater use of non-standard arrangements than the US establishments; we argue that this is due in part to the greater overall restrictive labour market regulations on hiring and firing regular workers, and greater demand for temporary labour resulting from generous access to leaves of absence, in Norway. We also find that certain institutional factors have a similar impact in both countries. First, establishments in the public sector are more likely to use direct-hired temporary workers and less apt to use contractors and THAs; this pattern is particularly striking in Norway, but is also evident in the United States. Second, highly unionized establishments tend to have the lowest use of non-standard arrangements in both countries.

scholarly journals Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association: The American Labor Relations System in Jeopardy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann C. Hodges
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Sector ◽  
Labor Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Court Decisions ◽  
Union Security ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Labor

The petitioners in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association seek to overturn longstanding law relating to union security in the public sector. A decision in favor of the petitioners will invalidate provisions in thousands of collective bargaining agreements covering millions of workers. Additionally, it has the potential to upend the labor relations system in the United States. To understand how this might be the case, this Issue Brief will review the history of union security and the Supreme Court decisions that upheld union security agreements in the public sector. The Issue Brief will then look at the Friedrichs case itself, engaging in an analysis of the case which concludes that the Court should reach the same result as in prior cases.

Defending Government: Why Big Government Works. By Max Neiman. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2000. 260p. $27.00 paper.

2001 ◽  
Vol 95 (1) ◽  
pp. 217-218
Author(s):  
John C. Pierce
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Public Sector ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
Goal Achievement ◽  
Graduate Courses ◽  
The Public

Max Neiman provides a concise, well-written, and compre- hensive critical analysis of "the conservative attack on the public sector, especially its explanation for and evaluation of the size and growth of the public sector in the United States" (p. viii). In doing so, however, he only partially fulfills what is promised in the subtitle, namely, explaining why big govern- ment works. Rather than explicitly assess the reasons for goal achievement in a variety of policy areas, as the title implied to me, Neiman focuses on why we have big government and on the various critiques of that size. To be sure, the book is appropriate for upper division and graduate courses in political science, public policy, or public administration.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Alasdair Roberts
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Public Sector ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Public Management ◽  
The United States ◽  
Management Approach ◽  
The Public ◽  
Change Of Direction

This introductory chapter provides a background of public administration. In the United States, the field of public administration was launched almost a century ago by people with bold aspirations. They were not interested only in the efficiency of government offices; they wanted a thorough overhaul of the American state so that it could manage the pressures of modern-day life. Unfortunately, this expansive view of the field's purpose has been lost. Over the last four decades in particular, the focus within the field has been mainly on smaller problems of management within the public sector. This is sometimes called the “public management approach.” This narrowing of focus might have made sense in the United States and a few other advanced democracies in the waning decades of the twentieth century, but it does not make sense today. Many people have recently protested this shrinking of ambitions. Thus, there is a need for a change of direction and to recover an expansive view of the field. This book proposes a way to do so.

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