Public Administration: Balancing Power and Accountability, Second Edition

520 Pages·1998·26.22 MB·English

by  Jerome B. McKinney

PUBLIC
ADMINISTRATION
Balancing Power and
Accountability
SECOND EDITION
JEROME B. McKINNEY
AND
LAWRENCE C. HOWARD
PRAEOER Westport, Connecticut
London
To our parents and wives, Betty Howard and Mary Theresa McKinney, and
daughters, Katie and the late Melissan
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McKinney, Jerome B.
Public administration : balancing power and accountability /
Jerome B. McKinney and Lawrence C. Howard. — 2nd ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-275-95564-8 (alk. paper). — ISBN 0-275-95565-6 (pbk. :
alk. paper)
1. Public administration. I. Howard, Lawrence C. (Lawrence
Cabot), 1925-
JF1351.M25 1998
351—dc21 96-47619
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available.
Copyright © 1998 by Jerome B. McKinney and Lawrence C. Howard
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be
reproduced, by any process or technique, without the
express written consent of the publisher.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 96-47619
ISBN: 0-275-95564-8
0-275-95565-6 (pbk.)
First published jn 1998
Praeger Publishers, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881
An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.
Printed in the United States of America
The paper used in this book complies with the
Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National
Information Standards Organization (Z39.48-1984).
P
In order to keep this title in print and available to the academic community, this edition
was produced using digital reprint technology in a relatively short print run. This would
not have been attainable using traditional methods. Although the cover has been changed
from its original appearance, the text remains the same and all materials and methods
used still conform to the highest book-making standards.
Contents
Figures and Tables vii
Preface xi
PART I. CONTEXT OF ADMINISTRATION
1. Ethical Foundations and Imperatives of Public Management 3
2. The Environment and Setting for Public Administration 21
3. Reinventing Government: Transforming Public Administration 41
4. Administration in the Context of Its Practice 58
5. Public Administration and Public Policy 87
6. The External Environment of Public Administration 115
PART II. LINKING PRACTICE AND THEORY
7. Organization Theory and Management Practice 135
PART III. PROCESSES AND PRACTICES
8. Planning in Public Management 193
9. Organizing, Coordinating, and Controlling the Internal
Environment of Management 212
10. Decision-Making and Communication as Basic Management
Activities 254
11. Leadership in Public Management 279
12. Community Relations in Public Management 302
PART IV. SUPPORTING AND CONTROLLING FUNCTIONS
13. Personnel: The Administration and Management of
Human Resources 317
14. Financial Management 350
15. Productivity and Evaluation 384
PART V. POLICY AREAS
16. Intergovernmental Relations and Administration 409
17. International Administration and Development 433
18. Balancing Power and Accountability 463
VI Contents
Appendix: Public Administration Research Aids 481
Selected Bibliography 489
Index 497
Figures and Tables
FIGURES
2.1 Rationale for Studying Public Administration 22
2.2 Pluralistic Politics in Administration 24
2.3 Managers and Accountability 38
3.1 Hierarchy: Traditional Bureaucracy 53
4.1 The A-76 Process 74
4.2 Public Administration and Problem-Solving
Approaches 82
5.1 The Policy Process 93
5.2 The Effective Administration of the Tax Law 97
5.3 The Hierarchical Flow of Policy 98
5.4 A Simplified Traditional View of the National
Legislative Dominance of Policymaking 99
5.5 Rational Model Applied to Resource Allocation:
PPBS School Management Context 101
5.6 Alternatives for Meeting the Problem of
Discrimination in Public Employment 103
5.7 Analyzing the Problem of Discrimination in Public
Employment 104
5.8 Sub-Government Policymaking 109
6.1 Political Economy 129
7.1 The Operating Hierarchy 153
7.2 A Closed System Model 157
7.3 Open Systems 158
7.4 Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs 165
7.5 A View of the Change Process 167
7.6 TQM Continuous Process Improvement 182
8.1 Comparing Planned and Unplanned Organizations 196
8.2 Long-Range Planning Sequence 200
8.3 Strategic Management 202
8.4 Proposed Strategic Management Framework
for AID 203
8.5 YouthBuild Pittsburgh's HUD Grant
Implementation Flow Plan 207
8.6 PERT Computer Installation 208
Vlll Figures and Tables
9.1 Top-Level Organizing Concerns 217
9.2 Organizational Concerns of Administrators and
MLMs 219
9.3 Line and Staff Positions 224
9.4 Organizational Overlays 227
9.5 Project Work Program/Neighborhood Medical
Clinic 237
9.6 Administrative Control Process 244
9.7 Four Steps in Controlling Operations in Process 247
9.8 Managerial Controlling 248
10.1 Decision Alternatives 260
10.2 Rational Decision-Making 261
10.3 The Communication Process 270
11.1 Leadership Traits 282
11.2 The Linking Pin 286
11.3 Continuum of Leadership Styles 289
11.4 Assessing Effective Leadership Styles Varying
with the Situation 291
13.1 Public Personnel Process 320
13.2 Steps in the Employment Process 325
14.1 Critical Role of Financial Management 352
14.2 United Municipal Finance Organization 355
14.3 Federal, State, and Local Revenue 357
14.4 Progressive, Proportional, and Regressive Taxes 358
14.5 Budgeting Resource Allocations 362
14.6 PPBS Budgeting Model 368
14.7 The ZBB Process: An Overview 370
15.1 Linking Inputs with Outputs 386
15.2 University Department of Security (Police) 396
15.3 Effort as Input 397
15.4 Linking Effort to Work Completed 397
15.5 Linking Effort to Impact/Sustainability 398
15.6 Experimental and Control Group in Randomized
Allocation of Participants 401
16.1 Layers of Governance, Whitehall, Pennsylvania,
1996 415
16.2 Intergovernmental Sources of Revenue for
Types of Local Government, 1990-91 425
TABLES
4.1 Distinctions Between the Public and Private Sectors 64
6.1 The Raw Materials of Politics 117
8.1 MBO Advantages and Problems 206
Figures and Tables IX
10.1 Criteria and Weight of Prioritizing Garbage
Removal 259
11.1 The Evolving State of Leadership 280
11.2 Trait and Group Leadership Approaches 283
11.3 Maintenance and Growth Needs 284
11.4 Fiedler's Least-Preferred Co-Worker Scale 288
13.1 Pros and Cons on the Right to Strike 334
13.2 Percentage of Minorities and Women in Selected
Federal Pay Grade Ranges 337
13.3 Myths and Realities About Work and Women 338
14.1 Revenue Sources and Allocation in the Public and
Private Sectors 359
14.2 Variance Report 376
16.1 Government and Private Employment in the United
States, 1954-92 411
16.2 Selected Federal Aid Distribution by Function,
Fiscal Years 1970 and 1995 424
18.1 Comparison of Managers' Beliefs with Perceived
Peer and Top Management Beliefs 469
18.2 NAPA Code of Ethics 473
This page intentionally left blank
Preface
This text presents public administration as a tension between the necessary
exercise of power and the search for accountability by public servants.
Growing disillusionment about the behavior of some public administrators and
frustration over the ineffective and ever-more expensive public programs make a
new approach to the teaching of public management essential. Watergate and
subsequent taxpayer revolts marked a turning point—public administration can
no longer be taught apart from ethical and moral concerns. Today, downsizing
and the pursuit of better government for less are the norm. We can no longer
expect public budgets will continue to increase.
The authors have attempted to initiate a new approach. Our major focus
is on middle- and low-level managers. These are the positions that most students
of public administration will occupy for most of their professional careers. In
the past, many public administration texts have had a bias toward upper-level
officials and a Washington focus. We endeavor to modify that emphasis through
recognition that most of administration is in field offices, in state and local
government, and in cooperation with the private sector. Second, we focus on
power and its potential for influencing the behavior of the bureaucracy. At many
points in the text, we point out how middle- and lower-level managers are the
key translators of policy objectives into program outputs in the delivery of
services. We also point out that much of this power in the middle of
bureaucracies is exercised without close and informed supervision and that much
influence is applied beyond public view. Third, this leads us to attempt to relate
theories about administration to the actual practice of administration. Numerous
illustrations and cases depicting the applications of power are presented. Our
text attempts to show that public administration occurs in a web of tension in
which administrators, on the one hand, must husband and maintain power to
permit needed actions. On the other hand, they must also enhance traditional
responsiveness to elected superiors including programmatic accountability aimed
at enabling people to function without dependency on government.
We have called for greater internalization of accountability, and in this
sense the text assumes a moral stance, a commitment to reform in the practice of
administration toward greater accountability. This is not simply a hope. Rather,
it is the conclusion that greater responsiveness and increased enablement of
citizens are cost-effective and that they will bring increased productivity and
heightened recognition to the administrator who pursues this approach. We are
fully aware that translating this call into performance will not be easily achieved