Mirror Sites:
CSUDH - Habermas - UWP - Archives

California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Soka University Japan - Transcend Art and Peace
Created: July 29, 2003
Latest Update: July 30, 2003
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Soc. 328-01: Agencies: Week 3
Preparations for Class and Internet Discussions

Week 3: Week of September 8, 2003

• Topic: The Nature of Agencies: Administrative Law

  Agencies have an interesting mix of power involving politics and expertise. Politics focuses on satisfying the diverse interest groups the agency serves; expertise focuses on finding rules and procedures that work generally, so that the work actually gets done. In the process of setting up and enforcing these rules and procedures, administrators beome very learned in the justificatiory background for their agency's work, and they become wary of allowing any control to interest groups from the diverse groups served by the agency. Meanwhile, those who actually run the agency develop their own expertise at ordinary tasks, which sometimes leads to conflict with the administration's policy moves, and all of these groups ocasionally conflict with the original intent of the legislators in creating the agency.

• Preparatory Readings:

  • Social Agencies W.I. Thomas, "Social Agencies", Chapter 5 in The Unadjusted Girl with cases and standpoint for behavior analysis. Boston: Little Brown and Company, (1923): 151-221. This reading serves as historical background for our focus.

  • The Manager's Job: Folklore or Fact Chapter 1 in Henry Mintzberg, Mintzberg on Management, 1989. Focus on Folklore and Facts; scroll about two inches down the file.

  • Text from which I will lecture: Foundations of Administrative Law, Peter H. Schuck. Foundation Press; (February 1994). * ISBN: 1566629985. I used this for a text the last time I taught the course. It wasn't available this time, though used copies are out there. It's very law-oriented. For that reason some of you might prefer his more recent book below.

  • I also recommend Peter H. Schuck's Diversity in America : Keeping Government at a Safe Distance

• Lecture:

  • Lecture discussion and student responses from September 1999.
  • Sample Rewrite on Theory to Policy to Practice and Back, Fall 1999. Suggestions to improve submissions for Mid-Term, which we try not to have in 2003. But the rewrite still works to earn you a better grade.

• Concepts:

  • theory - refer to lectures for this week
  • policy - refer to lectures for this week
  • practice - refer to lectures for this week

• Discussion Questions:

  1. When you mention "social agency" most people think of someone who needs help. Look at the lists of agencies in our area. Is that knee-jerk response accurate? What kind of affect does that knee-jerk response bring with it?

• Some Recommended Activities for Academic Assessment:

  1. The Worst Boss I Ever Had: Share the story. Identify the formal organization and the informal organization. Competence misdirected or incompetence? The work team's solution? Did they go around him to other departments? Did they create informal paths around her? Was answerability a possibility?

  2. The Best Boss I Ever Had: Share the story. Identify the formal organization and the informal organization. Competence misdirected or incompetence? The work team's solution? Did they go around him to other departments? Did they create informal paths around her? Was answerability a possibility?

  3. Show and Tell: Use an inconspicuous camera that won't raise hackles at the work scene. Take some shots of the outside and the interior of the workplace. Take a shot of the entrance that a stranger would encounter. Put three or four photos together and tell us the story of how your workplace appears to others, to you? Does it look like a helping place?

  4. People who Fall through the Cracks: Who tends to be left out of dialogic answerability at your work place? Do some people use monologic non-answerability? To everyone? Or just to some groups? What effect does this have on the workplace.
  * * * * *

  Week 4: Week of September 15, 2003
  Topic: The Structural Frame, B and D. Chapters 2 through 5.