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Created: July 21, 2003
Latest Update: July 21, 2003
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

TITLE OF ESSAY

Site Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors, July 2003.
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Week 2:Week of September 1, 2003
Topic: The Structure of the Organization

Topic: Agencies are organizations. So are corporations, but they're a little different. You won't get to create the structure when you first start work, but you'd better understand how they did it.

Preparatory Readings:

Introduction to our text: Reframing Organizations : Artistry, Choice, and Leadership by Lee G. Bolman, Terrence E. Deal. Amazon.com had 22 used copies available on July 23, 2003.

Skim Chapters 3, 4, and 5 of Bolman and Deal.

Lecture: Not up yet. It will be on the application to agencies and social helping groups of the "aesthetics of answerability."

Concepts to be covered:

• Public sector and private sector differences and similarities. (at p. xiii)
• What role does artistry play in management and leadership? (at p. xiii)
• Understanding the situatedness of your piece of the organization (at p. xiv)
• What do we mean by organizational structure? Formal, informal, and aesthetic. (from lectures)

Discussion Questions:

1. What's wrong with just going into an organization and doing your job as best you can?

   Consider that an organization is a social group, much like a family is a social group. There are different roles to be played, different status badges to be displayed, and different learning and working styles, never mind different personalities? One thing you might consider sharing in these early weeks are stories you have seen enacted in work places, private and/or public.

2. Is the manager always the leader in a work group?

   If you answer "yes" to this we will be pleased to direct you to the counseling center.

3. Is the manager always the titular leader of the work group?

   Yes. That's what formal organization means: the way the organization chart reads. That ain't necessarily the way it really works. Welcome to the real world.

4. What does your text mean by the artistry of management and leadership? Will the text cover the "aesthetics of answerability?"

   The text is practical. The authors might agree with the theories on which we base our studies, but I doubt the book will cover them. This is an educated guess because I don't have the book yet. Had to switch to it unexpectedly when I discovered that Schuck's book was out of print.

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Week 3: Week of September 8, 2003
Understanding Agency: Where Does the Power Come From? Who Rules?

Introduction to our text: Foundations of Administrative Law, by Peter Schuck. This book is out of print, but I will lecture from it.

Concepts to be covered:

• Agency as the administrative arm empowered by legislators who were in turn empowered as representatives of the people.
• Administrative law. Delegation of the power granted to legislators to permit others to act to carry out the mplementation of the laws. That includes one very large amount of interpretation. Sometimes it also includes the special concerns of "experts," and of special interest groups.
• Experts. Those who specialize in the implementation of the agency's or corporation's goals and make the decisions, based on technical expertise.
• Special interest groups. MADD, ethnic groups, racial groups, citizen groups, and so on, each with a particular focus that may be only one of many of the agency's focus.

Discussion Questions:

1. Why is the law so open to interpretation in implementation.?

   Because the law is written generally and applies to all persons equally, if any of us can figure out what that means. Consider affirmative action. How did affirmative action start? Did you think immediately of the Civil Rights legislation. Started lots before that. One example I recall is the veterans returning from World War II with GI Bill school credits. They were the first group of law school students for whom separate writing and research classes had to be added to the curriculum as remedial efforts to bring their academic skills up to par. It generally falls to agencies, schools, the armed services, the government agencies to work out the real problems, and find tenable solutions.

2. What's the problem with letting the experts, the parole agents, the social workers, the teachers interpret and implement the laws?

   Consider if it's my job to help people, I might want to assure myself there will always be people to help. It's called self-interest. Of course, there will always be students, but what if I decide that I, as a teacher, know what all those students should learn. Paulo Freire would say that at that point I have ceased to be a teacher, and have moved to self-interest.

   Experts often have different goals and agendas from those of the legislators who passed the laws in the first place.

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Week 4: Preparatory Readings for Week of September 15, 2003
People Rule: Either Well or Badly

• Interpersonal dynamics in a larger setting. The aesthetics of the Other. After Bakhtin's sense of dialogic discourse through human interaction, which is reflected in discourse. The dialog as humans interact to perform acts with a common purpose changes each of them in the process, leading to a merging of differences and distinctions. Structure doesn't rule. People do.

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Week 5: Preparatory Readings for Week of September 22, 2003
Field Research and Field Reports

• To better develop a sense of the boundaries of your possible career paths, field work is essential to getting a handle on the real world. This section addresses your selection of a variety of agencies that interest you and your field reports of interactions with them.

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Week 6: Preparatory Readings for Week of September 29, 2003
Community Interests and Agency Effects: when Agencies Interfere in Our Lives

• Saturday, June 21, 2003. Telephone Solicitation: Californians Against Telephone Solicitation. Low-paying, low-skilled jobs. Used to relieve unemployment. How will legislation affect them? Where does the legislation fit into corporate ethics? Links to a Government site. Why government supported? Learn to check for authoriztiion and authorship.

• Saturday, June 21, 2003. Telephone Solicitation: FCC site on policy and telephone solicitation.

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Implementing Public Policy Governance in Theory and in Practice Michael Hill and Peter Hupe.

"The text stresses the continuing importance of a focus upon implementation processes and explores its central relevance to the practice of public administration. In light of the changing nature of governance, Hill and Hupe suggest strategies for both future research on and management of public policy implementation. Their basic approach is two-fold: firstly, to understand the process of implementation and secondly, to address how one might control and affect this process.

"Re-exploring the state of the art of the study of implementation as a sub-discipline of political science and public administration, this book will be essential reading for students and researchers in public policy, social policy, public management, public adminstration and governance." From the Sage Publications site.

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