Case Study #4: Star Trek by Gene Roddenberry

Star Trek began as a 1960s television series led by a swashbuckling starship Captain, an intellectual off-world first officer, and a multicultural, heart-of-gold crew. In the third of a century since its appearance on our home screens, the series Gene Roddenberry created has become a world-wide phenomenon.Star Trek is also a rich treasure trove of administrative literature: The setting — usually a starship, sometimes a planetary government organization. The characters are clearly delineated, colorful, share common goals, distinguish between their personal and professional roles and concerns, and serve well as archetypes for distinct organizational personalities. And the missions are clear, benevolent, in the public interest, and frequently controversial.As you watch an episode of one of the four Star Trek series, how many of these facets can you observe?That’s public administration, all right, but in a very different wrapper

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Are They Ready for Their Close-Up? Civil Servants and Their Portrayal in Contemporary American Cinema

Public Voices ◽

10.22140/pv.98 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 11 (1) ◽

pp. 8 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Michelle C. Pautz ◽

Laura Roselle

Keyword(s):

Popular Culture ◽

Public Administration ◽

Civil Servants ◽

Case Study Approach ◽

The Public ◽

Study Approach ◽

American Cinema ◽

Box Office ◽

Narrative Forms

Perceptions of government and civil servants are shaped by a variety of factors including popular culture. In the public administration literature the significant role that film and other narrative forms have on citizens’ perceptions is duly noted, and there is ample research on politicians and military heroes in film, but a focus on civil servants remains largely elusive. Among the sparse literature centered on civil servants are studies that employ a case study approach or focus on a few films. In contrast, our research employs a large sample of 150 films. These films comprise the top ten box-office grossing films from 1992 through 2006; therefore we examine the films most likely to have been seen by a majority of movie-watching Americans. More than 60 percent of the films in our sample portray government as bad, inefficient, and incompetent. However, the data on more than 300 civil servants yield intriguing findings. Surprising, in light of the negative depiction of government, is the positive depiction of individual civil servants. Half of civil servants were positively portrayed, and only 40 percent were negatively depicted. Americans may view government negatively, but they see in film positive depictions of how individual civil servants can and do make a positive difference.

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CHANGES IN MANAGEMENT AND GOVERNANCE IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION. CASE STUDY IN ROMANIA

SERIES V - ECONOMIC SCIENCES ◽

10.31926/but.es.2021.14.63.1.7 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 14(63) (1) ◽

pp. 71-84

Author(s):

Maria Popescu ◽

Lidia Mândru

Keyword(s):

Conceptual Framework ◽

Public Administration ◽

Public Management ◽

New Public Management ◽

Modern Approach ◽

The Public ◽

New Public ◽

Management Perspective

"The paper addresses to the Public Administration (PA) from the management perspective. The first part of the study defines the conceptual framework of the two management doctrines, generically called the New Public Management and New Public Government. The second part of the paper reviews the transformation movement in PA management and governance in Romania in the last two decades. The methodology of the study consists in the analysis of the recent theoretic studies on PA modern approach, and official documents, national and European reports, and other publications related to the PA reform in Romania. "

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Role of Public Entities in Suitable Provision of Public Services: Case Study from Slovakia

Administrative Sciences ◽

10.3390/admsci11040143 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (4) ◽

pp. 143

Author(s):

Viera Papcunová ◽

Roman Vavrek ◽

Marek Dvořák

Keyword(s):

Public Administration ◽

Local Governments ◽

Public Services ◽

Slovak Republic ◽

The State ◽

Main Role ◽

The Public ◽

State Administration

Local governments in the Slovak Republic are important in public administration and form an important part of the public sector, as they provide various public services. Until 1990, all public services were provided only by the state. The reform of public administration began in 1990 with the decentralization of competencies. Several competencies were transferred to local governments from the state, and thus municipalities began to provide public services that the state previously provided. Registry offices were the first to be acquired by local governments from the state. This study aimed to characterize the transfer of competencies and their financing from state administration to local government using the example of registry offices in the Slovak Republic. In the paper, we evaluated the financing of this competency from 2007 to 2018 at the level of individual regions of the Slovak Republic. The results of the analysis and testing of hypotheses indicated that a higher number of inhabitants in individual regions did not affect the number of actions at these offices, despite the fact that the main role of the registry office is to keep registry books, in which events, such as births, weddings, and deaths, are registered.

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At the Dawn of Swiss E-Government: Planning and Use of a Unique Identifier in the Public Administration in the 1970s

Administration & Society ◽

10.1177/0095399718760586 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 50 (9) ◽

pp. 1319-1334 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Jérôme Brugger

Keyword(s):

Public Administration ◽

Information And Communications Technology ◽

Unique Identifier ◽

The Public ◽

Ict Use ◽

Use Of Resources ◽

Interagency Cooperation ◽

First Results ◽

Government Planning

The article explores some of the conceptual discussions on information and communications technology (ICT) use in public administration in the 1970s. Based on ICT-maturity models, the interagency cooperation plans and their failed implementation are analyzed. This case study focuses on the discussions on the utilization of a unique identifier in Swiss public administration and describes the key concepts as well as the actual developments in this specific case. While the chosen approaches for shared use of resources encountered cultural and organizational limitations along with technical difficulties, new organizational practices for coordination and standardization were created and showed first results.

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Conditions of the Right to Erasure

The Right to Erasure in EU Data Protection Law ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198847977.003.0004 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 196-274

Author(s):

Jef Ausloos

Keyword(s):

Public Interest ◽

Freedom Of Expression ◽

Personal Data ◽

Historical Research ◽

Legal Obligation ◽

The Public ◽

The Third ◽

Legal Provisions ◽

The Right ◽

Data Subject

This chapter zooms in on Article 17 GDPR, on the right to erasure (‘right to be forgotten’). It meticulously dissects the three paragraphs of this provision. The first paragraph lists six rights-to-erasure triggers which can be summarized as: (a) purpose expiration; (b) withdrawal of consent; (c) right to object; (d) unlawful processing; (e) legal obligation; and (f) withdrawal of consent by minors in the online environment. The second paragraph comprises an odd extension of the right to erasure, enabling data subjects to request that controllers who have made the personal data public, communicate potential erasure to anyone else processing that same personal data. The third paragraph lists five exemptions to the right to erasure, summarized as: (a) freedom of expression and information; (b) legal obligation or task carried out in the public interest or official authority; (c) public interest in the area of public health; (d) public interest archiving, scientific and historical research, or statistical purposes; and (e) legal claims. What becomes clear right away is how both the right-to-erasure’s triggers and exemptions all refer to other legal provisions in and outside the GDPR. As such, the right to erasure can be seen as a central hub in the GDPR, bringing together key data protection principles from the perspective of data subject empowerment.

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E-Government's Role in Shifting the Paradigm of Performance in the Public Sector

International Journal of Public Administration in the Digital Age ◽

10.4018/ijpada.2015100103 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 2 (4) ◽

pp. 29-45 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Lidia Noto

Keyword(s):

Public Administration ◽

Public Management ◽

Structured Interviews ◽

The Public ◽

Digital Services ◽

The World ◽

Critical Issues ◽

Government Project ◽

Feedback Structure

The emergence of e-government changed the world of the Public Administration (PA) and the discipline of Public Management dramatically. Through the presentation of a case- study of the municipality of Palermo, this article attempts to discuss the renewed need for assessing performance of e-government services in a local government and to disclose the main critical issues in accomplishing this evaluation. Palermo is experiencing the implementation of a second- generation e-government project that is embodied in the realization of a web portal. The conceptualization of a framework to assess the performance of the digital services appears to be crucial in order to improve the system and to avoid the errors of the first project. This work relies on a survey to the citizens and semi-structured interviews to managers in charge of the development of the project. System Dynamics, a particular kind of dynamic simulation, is used to provide the necessary feedback structure for identifying the determinants of the success of the portal.

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Public Administration and the Public Interest

American Behavioral Scientist ◽

10.1177/0002764297041001009 ◽

1997 ◽

Vol 41 (1) ◽

pp. 119-131 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

GARY S. MARSHALL ◽

ENAMUL CHOUDHURY

Keyword(s):

Public Administration ◽

Public Interest ◽

The Public

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Public Service Motivation: A Rationalist Critique

Public Personnel Management ◽

10.1177/0091026018791962 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 48 (1) ◽

pp. 82-96 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Chris O’Leary

Keyword(s):

Public Administration ◽

Empirical Research ◽

Public Service ◽

Public Interest ◽

Public Service Motivation ◽

Civil Servants ◽

The Public ◽

Public Resources ◽

Bureaucratic Behavior

There has been a significant and growing interest, and growing empirical research, around Public Service Motivation (PSM) in recent years. There are few critiques of the construct, and none from a rationalist perspective. Given that the origins of PSM lie in attempts by public administration scholars to counter rationalist explanations of bureaucratic behavior, this lack of countercriticism is surprising. This article provides a rationalist critique of PSM. It argues that PSM is consistent with, and not an alternative to, rationalist understandings of what motivates individuals. It also argues that a significant gap in the PSM literature is around how civil servants and others make decisions; decisions about the public interest, and thus how and when to allocate public resources. It concludes that seeing PSM as consistent with rationality, and specifically as a form of expressive interests, answers many of the remaining questions about PSM and addresses the substantive gaps in the construct.

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