Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Texas at Arlington, 2009.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of History, June 2002. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Despite repeated attempts, no normative theory of public administration has emerged that fully and satisfactorily answers questions about the role of public administration, and public administrators, in the process of governance. This dissertation argues that such questions are unresolvable because they are framed in terms of overly simplistic systems metaphors relating to machines and organisms. When theories are framed in terms of these metaphors, they lead inexorably to dichotomies between politics and administration, policy and implementation, and between the society and its government. The dissertation attempts to "reframe" our concept of governance in terms of another metaphor that supports a view of governance as a process that is deeply interrelated and interconnected with its social environment. / Ph. D.

An intellectual history of the field of public administration is reviewed. It is argued that since the nation's Constitutional origins, public administration has been suffering an identity crisis. The Anti-Federalist - Federalist debate pitted government by dialogue--the need for a community of meaning, on the one hand, against government by distant centralized authority--the objective control of administration, on the other. In the 20th century this same contradiction is manifested in the ethos of the progressive era which emphasized both rationalism (the objective control of administration) and embodied the ideal of public interest (administration as dialogue and the need for a community of meaning). It is argued that Herbert Simon's Administrative Behavior appropriates the discourse of rationalism manifested in the progressive movement but that Simon's model of administration lacked the original symbol that legitimized the field--the communitarian ideal of public interest. The result was the loss of a key tension in the American governance process: the Anti-Federalist - Federalist debate of community versus centralized control. An analytical strategy called deconstruction is used to examine Simon's most seminal work, Administrative Behavior. It operates in a different fashion than traditional discourse and traditional academic research and critique. Two aspects of that uniqueness include: (1) the point of reference of the reader is not defined by the author, and (2) the subject matter under scrutiny is seen as a form of narrative rather than an objective representation of reality. The effect of using this strategy is to render uncertain many of the central assumptions and taken for granted aspects of Administrative Behavior. As a consequence, new intellectual space becomes available to other narratives in the field of public administration. / Ph. D.

A normative theory of public administration grounded in the Constitution is examined in practice from individual, institutional and situational perspectives. This theory argues that public administrators should use their discretionary power in order to maintain the balance of powers among the three branches of government in support of individual rights. The role of serving multiple constitutional masters simultaneously is captured by the concept of subordinate autonomy. The individual level of analysis describes the process by which a variety of public administrators at several levels of government have illustrated constitutional subordinate autonomy in their careers. The institutional perspective examines how public administrators can be influenced by the agencies in which they operate, and how these factors interplay with the constitutional model. The situational perspective presents classic dilemmas commonly faced by public administrators that are relevant to the constitutional model. The case studies presented illustrate the usefulness and limitations of this normative theory by examining several factors which guide and restrain public administrators as they struggle with contentious issues and use their discretion to influence the direction of public policies and programs. / Ph. D.

Attacks on public administration are commonplace in today’s anti-bureaucratic approach to government. The legitimacy of public administration has long been questioned. Public administration is not one of the three branches of government explicitly formed by the Constitution. Further, public administrators are not elected by the people. Numerous attempts have been made to develop an idea of legitimacy that is grounded in the Constitution and that renders public administration consistent with the representative character of American government. A recent attempt presents public administration as an institution of governance that is derived from, and grounded in, the Agency Perspective. This perspective provides a new foundation stone for the legitimacy of public administration. Central to the perspective is public administration’s ability to evoke dialogue in a way that takes into account the public interest and brings about communities of shared meaning. This literature, however, does not provide a specific enough perspective, i.e., a perspective that has been given a practical specification. Simply exhorting public administrators to evoke dialogue is not sufficient. Public administrators who are encouraged in this general manner will have no choice but to look to what they know: interest group liberalism. Public administration needs a more specific alternative to interest group liberalism and a new methodology from which public administrators can work. In the research at hand, a new methodology is developed and demonstrated. The outline of the new methodology can be seen through the lens of principled negotiation. This literature maintains that negotiation from the positions of the various parties involved in a conflict, as is characteristic of interest group liberalism, is inefficient. Principled negotiation, on the other hand, recognizes that vital interests, not positions, are the key to creating consensus and achieving collaboration. The difficulty with this approach is that people, either as individuals or as role occupants in organizations, typically are unaware of their vital interests. Therefore, it is the task of the negotiator or, in this case, the public administrator to help surface these deeper interests. The new methodology is grounded in the literature of structuralism. Structuralism is a social theory and a method of inquiry (Gibson, 1984:2) that provides a means of looking beneath the surface of events or issues to identify patterns of meaning that are not evident at the surface. The work of linguist Ferdinand de Saussure served as the basis for modern structuralism (Sturrock, 1988:6). Working from Saussure’s writings, Claude Levi-Strauss "treats all forms of cultural expression as language and he assumes that like language it is all [structured] by unconscious laws that constitute a grammar for each" (White, 1983:12). In a similar vein, the structuralist undertaking in this research views the vital interests of the related groups and role occupants as the "underlying grammar" that structures the various approaches to policy formulation. This research employs a case study design to which the theory of structuralism and the technique of structural analysis have been applied. The case study is that of national long-term care policy. Role occupants from 23 national organizations involved in long-term care policy were interviewed. The role occupants are key people involved in long-term care policy formulation for the organizations for which they work. The organizations' long-term care position papers were obtained. Using a process of structural analysis, the position papers and interview transcripts were analyzed to identify vital interests. An analysis of linguistic elements such as metaphors and other figures of speech, justifications, preferred meanings, and recurrent terms was conducted. In addition, content analysis was carried out with the aid of a computer program. The vital interests identified through these analyses served as the basis for the development of a strategy to shape the national long-term care policy debate. / Ph. D.

Public administration scholars have raised serious concerns about loss of democratic accountability when government services are outsourced to private forprofit businesses because of the very different values and missions of the two sectors. Particular concern for democratic accountability arises when administrative discretion is delegated to governments' private sector agents. Furthermore, if contractors may adversely impact individual rights or interests, or may adversely impact vulnerable populations, special democratic responsibilities arise. It is these three features of outsourcing transactions that constitute the elements of the proposed framework used in this research in order to assess need for heightened attention to democratic accountability. Some scholars argue for application of constitutional and administrative law norms to some government contractors. / Public service ethics and transparency requirements found in administrative law are heavily value-laden and mission-driven. If applied to certain government contractors, they can help to bridge the sectors' mission and value differences, thus enhancing democratic accountability for the services performed by governments' private sector agents. This research offers an analytical framework for identifying features of outsourcing transactions that call for enhanced democratic accountability measures such as ethics and transparency requirements, and explores the application of ethics and transparency requirements to governments' contractors. Contracts and laws governing three Florida local government service categories were subjected to close systematic textual and legal analysis: residential trash collection, building code inspection, and inmate health care. / The analysis revealed circumstances calling for greater attention to democratic accountability in that the selected outsourcing transactions delegated to contractors the authority to exercise police power, make public policy, and commit expenditures of public funds. Contracts and laws haphazardly required contractors to abide by public service ethics and transparency requirements, thus beginning to adapt the mission and value system of their private sector agents to those of government. / Rebecca L. Keeler. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2010. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2010. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Public administration addresses issues that competing and aligning groups determine to be meaningful enough to address. However, there seems to be no shared universally objective ways of remedying anything. Everything is up for argument. Additionally, attempting to solve one set of problems often creates other connected problems and/or unintended consequences. So, public work ever [sic] never ends. This dissertation's purpose was to contribute a new theoretical understanding of the experience and practice of public administration. Its research addressed if and how a grounded existential theoretical framework could emerge that would help practitioners and scholars understand and describe public administrative efforts and experiences. Currently, there is no existential theory of public administration. This dissertation sought to initiate work in that direction. This dissertation employed a grounded theory methodology to collect information from Senior Executive Service (SES) members, to analyze the information for emerging concepts and theoretical relevance through constant comparison, and to discover/construct a theoretical framework for understanding public administrative efforts and experiences. "The grounded theory approach is a general methodology of analysis linked with data collection that uses a systematically applied set of methods to generate an inductive theory about a substantive area" (Glaser, 1992, p. 16). / This dissertation identified the emergence of three categories/themes that organized what the SES members were saying, doing, and perceiving. These categories include "the environment," "the work," and "the individual." The core category/theme, "the Sisyphusian predicament," theoretically unifies these categories/themes through a metaphorical application of existential concepts. It describes the issues administrators experience (never-endingness, boundedness, and finitude in the face of infinitude (managing the scope and scale of one's intentions; generating and authoring relevance, significance, and meaning; and the choice for metaphysical revolt/ microemancipation). There are scholarly and practicable applications of this framework. This dissertation contributes exploratory work towards developing a new theoretical alternative within public administration. It provides an alternative approach for viewing and understanding organizational processes within public organizations. Additionally, an existential approach facilitates a plurality of competing schools of thought wherein administrators can select approaches to decision making and acting on the basis of context and utility. / by T. Lucas Hollar. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2008. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2008. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

In the study of government accountability, there have long been arguments about which model is superior. These arguments, which are largely made by those in the performance and political accountability camps, state that their particular model is the best, and indeed only legitimate approach to ensuring accountable government. At the same time, there is growing research in policy tools but little in how accountability models and policy tools are linked in policy design. This study makes use of the context provided by the critical cases of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). With such large sums of money in play at a time of serious economic downturn and mounting federal deficits, government clearly has a responsibility to ensure accountability so that the public can be assured not only that its funds are being spent properly but also more generally, that accountability as well as policy tool choice is in the minds of officials as they formulate, adopt and implement public policy. The intent of this study is to present an argument in two main areas using the critical case studies of TARP and ARRA. First, that no one accountability model fully explains most policy tool choices in TARP or ARRA and that the use of multiple models is superior. Second, that we can link policy tool choices and accountability models in policy design. The standards used to establish what models explain what tool choices are in the models themselves. Each policy is explored individually in a chapter, and the lessons and results of this study are then presented in the final chapter. The data presented in this study indicate that a single-model approach may explain a few, but not most and certainly not all, policy tool choices in TARP and ARRA. Indeed, a multiple model approach proves superior to a single-model approach in all but a few instances. As for the connections between policy tools and accountability models, the data presented in this study show that they were strongly impacted by the policy formulation process itself, specifically the way in which the policy problem was framed and the speed with which it was undertaken.

The extent of work being contracted out in government and the type of work being contracted out is growing in magnitude. Government agencies wrestle with the effect this has on government operations as the daily work of many government employees is changing from that of actually conducting government work to overseeing government contractors who are now providing goods and services for government. In effect, many government employees are becoming contract managers. However, most studies of government contracting sidestep or ignore the role of individual employees in ensuring the success of contractual relationships with the private sector. Scholars in public policy are calling attention to the need to look at theories from organizational change research and apply them to the context of changing government organizations. Furthermore, organizational change theorists stress the importance of studying individuals within organizations that are undergoing transformations. Heeding this advice, this dissertation research uses the theory of readiness for organizational change from organizational change literature to develop a readiness for contracting construct to study how individual government employees respond to increasing contracting out in government. The readiness for contracting construct builds on current debates about government contracting by encompassing perceptions on the extent to which government contracting is needed and the concept of management capacity as two dimensions of the readiness for contracting construct. This study explores the relationship between readiness for contracting in the context of contracting out in government and 11 career path, involvement, and competence factors identified in the literature that may influence an individual s readiness. The results of multiple regression analysis show that an individual s readiness for contracting is positively predicted by an individual s perceptions of personal impact, information about contracting out, and management support. Results of this research support the need for more attention to be given to individual government employees in the context of government contracting from both a theoretical and pragmatic perspective.