The struggle for dominance
Abiodun Giwa
Professor David Thompson
Introduction to Public Administration
School of Public Affairs and Administration
Rutgers University, Newark, New jersey
Wilson offers a more valuable perspective to those seeking to understand and succeed at public and nonprofit administration. Unlike Long, Wilson gives a good argument beginning with the forms of government in early times, the beginnings of the present complexities of trade, perplexities of commercial speculations and the birth of worrisome national debt. Long writes about the exercise of political power and the struggle for dominance between the executive on one hand and Congress and the civil service on another. While Wilson writes about importance of the conduct of business as applicable to the day to day running of government typical of public administration and nonprofit against so much attention given to the constitution and the law.
Precisely, Wilson’s argument like that of Long also comprises the delusion among most public debate about the place of the constitution and the political power wrangling between the executive, the Congress, the role and the place of civil service. But Wilson states clearly that the civil service is a field of business as the lifeblood of an administration, because without it policies packaged by the power at the top echelon of government will have no way of reaching the people.
Getting services to reach the people explains clearly the various service delivery that the public administration and nonprofit are involved, how they get money, how the money is spent and what services they offer. He lists healthcare delivery, management of the airports and seaports, hospitals and prisons, to mention just a few of the businesses that public administration and nonprofit operate, in addition to the partnership between the public administration and nonprofits that evolves into contract management running into billions of dollars. Consequently, the pursuit of accountability, which earlier was not given much attention, but has become a major focus of public administration and nonprofit management, to know how the tax money is expended and to be sure that the money is not going down the drain.
How has Gibson make the mark in all the leadership qualities enumerated here? Based on Gibson’s leadership style and his achievements as contained in Bill Gibson and the Art of Leading Across Boundaries by Ricardo S. Morse, Gibson is a go-getter and he demonstrates all the attributes. He achieved so much demonstrating the power of motivation, getting people to follow, demonstrating human, technical and conceptual skills, and abilities and rare interpersonal skills, drive for organization goal attainment, pursuing both relationship and tasks without wavering. He emphasizes collaboration, a sense of entrepreneurship, attention to relationship capital and he derives strength from humility, while focusing on achieving success on the job, without unnecessarily exhibiting any act of authoritarianism or any attribute without a need for it.
The seemingly favored group, based on numerical strength and exercise of stronger application of knowledge, don’t want to let go the cake in favor of the minority that has been unable to match the majority’s demonstration of knowledge. The Equal Employment Opportunity of 1972’s aimed at reducing discrimination against women and people of color has not achieved its objective the way observers want it done in a whiff, because the emergent written tests unwittingly in favor of the majority for their superior exercise of knowledge. No one seems to think that the EEO law of 1972 requires time and gradual upliftment for women and people of color to be uplifted to reach catch up with the majority group. The situation has led to what Riccucci and Riccardelli term “Damned if You Do and damned If You Don’t,” and that made a growing number of diversity scholars view ‘the rule of three’ as seriously complicating the diversity effort.
The rate of litigation from both the minority group and the majority group claiming disparate impact goes along way to show the confusion that the written tests have caused in the hiring procedure by the police and the fire department, and the continued reliance in full or in part, on the written tests.
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Introduction to Public Administration
School of Public Affairs and Administration
Rutgers University, Newark, New jersey
Wilson offers a more valuable perspective to those seeking to understand and succeed at public and nonprofit administration. Unlike Long, Wilson gives a good argument beginning with the forms of government in early times, the beginnings of the present complexities of trade, perplexities of commercial speculations and the birth of worrisome national debt. Long writes about the exercise of political power and the struggle for dominance between the executive on one hand and Congress and the civil service on another. While Wilson writes about importance of the conduct of business as applicable to the day to day running of government typical of public administration and nonprofit against so much attention given to the constitution and the law.
Precisely, Wilson’s argument like that of Long also comprises the delusion among most public debate about the place of the constitution and the political power wrangling between the executive, the Congress, the role and the place of civil service. But Wilson states clearly that the civil service is a field of business as the lifeblood of an administration, because without it policies packaged by the power at the top echelon of government will have no way of reaching the people.
Getting services to reach the people explains clearly the various service delivery that the public administration and nonprofit are involved, how they get money, how the money is spent and what services they offer. He lists healthcare delivery, management of the airports and seaports, hospitals and prisons, to mention just a few of the businesses that public administration and nonprofit operate, in addition to the partnership between the public administration and nonprofits that evolves into contract management running into billions of dollars. Consequently, the pursuit of accountability, which earlier was not given much attention, but has become a major focus of public administration and nonprofit management, to know how the tax money is expended and to be sure that the money is not going down the drain.
- Bill Gibson and Sean O’Keefe both offer impressive leadership in the public administration context that ally with the trait theory, skills theory, style theory, situational leadership, contingency theory, path-goal theory, transformational leadership and the life-cycle theory.
How has Gibson make the mark in all the leadership qualities enumerated here? Based on Gibson’s leadership style and his achievements as contained in Bill Gibson and the Art of Leading Across Boundaries by Ricardo S. Morse, Gibson is a go-getter and he demonstrates all the attributes. He achieved so much demonstrating the power of motivation, getting people to follow, demonstrating human, technical and conceptual skills, and abilities and rare interpersonal skills, drive for organization goal attainment, pursuing both relationship and tasks without wavering. He emphasizes collaboration, a sense of entrepreneurship, attention to relationship capital and he derives strength from humility, while focusing on achieving success on the job, without unnecessarily exhibiting any act of authoritarianism or any attribute without a need for it.
- Three major lessons can be drawn from the two articles Damned If You Do and Damned if You Don’t: Title VII and Public Employ Promotion Disparate Treatment Disparate Impact Litigation by Robert N. Roberts and The Use of Written Exams in Police and Fire Departments by Norma M. Riccucci and Margaret Riccardelli.
The seemingly favored group, based on numerical strength and exercise of stronger application of knowledge, don’t want to let go the cake in favor of the minority that has been unable to match the majority’s demonstration of knowledge. The Equal Employment Opportunity of 1972’s aimed at reducing discrimination against women and people of color has not achieved its objective the way observers want it done in a whiff, because the emergent written tests unwittingly in favor of the majority for their superior exercise of knowledge. No one seems to think that the EEO law of 1972 requires time and gradual upliftment for women and people of color to be uplifted to reach catch up with the majority group. The situation has led to what Riccucci and Riccardelli term “Damned if You Do and damned If You Don’t,” and that made a growing number of diversity scholars view ‘the rule of three’ as seriously complicating the diversity effort.
The rate of litigation from both the minority group and the majority group claiming disparate impact goes along way to show the confusion that the written tests have caused in the hiring procedure by the police and the fire department, and the continued reliance in full or in part, on the written tests.
- There are many reasons that have made Pay for performance difficult to achieve in the public sector, and inferentially justifying the earlier introduction of merit pay. The same reasons have been responsible for the past failure of pay-for-performance in the public sector. Pay-for-Performance, defined as compensation contingent on performance awarded to individual as permanent increments to base salary or as bonuses, requires certain conditions to succeed, and those conditions are absent in the public sector. The civil service laws, economic and political constraints are unconducive for pay-for-performance. Consequent upon these are lack of transparency, low level of trust, fairness and credibility and inability for the public sector to maintain secrecy account largely for the failure. Added to these are budget constraint, payroll cost containment and the principal’s moral hazard constraints that says a public official who may have approved pay for performance may vote against appropriations to fund it if fiscal restraint serves larger political interest.
- Abraham Maslow, Douglas MacGregor, Reinsis Likert and Chris Argyris belong to the the human side of the organizational management, and they offer the most valuable practical insight in management. Unlike the classical management that assumes that individuals are motivated by money, the human relations aspect of management affirms that humans are motivated by social and psychological needs for food, shelter and clothing as immediate human needs and followed by safety, love and acceptance. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is crowned by McGregor’s ‘X and Y’ theory about a view of humans’ dislike and avoidance of work and another view about human’s enjoyment of work and embrace of responsibility, and McGregor’s embrace of the latter. Naturally, humans are motivated to work to meet the most essential goals like food, clothing and shelter. Therefore, the humanistic view that humans are naturally encouraged to source the means to meet their needs without being coerced is just natural. Likert and Argyris reinforce the same argument that there is no need for exploitative or benevolent management, to be brutal or kind, as to make humans highly productive. But foist a sense of belonging and collaborative environment for optimized productivity. The workers are not less human than the provider of the means of production, who is only playing a role in division of labor. Treat workers as human beings that they are, and not like cogs or serfs within the framework of a rigid machine-like hierarchy. The entire contract process, from feasibility assessment through implementation, monitoring and evaluation, require effective contracting capacity. The most challenging component will depend on individual government’s previous experience and situation in contracting. But based on the outcome of research, implementation and evaluation attract more investments than feasibility assessment. The only time that feasibility assessment attracted more investment was when government is dissatisfied with previous contracting experience and would invest more in feasibility capacity. The feasibility assessment comes first, followed by the decision to contract, the implementation of the contract and finally the evaluation of the vendor performance, according to data and methods from Contract-Management Capacity in Municipal and County Governments by Trevor L. Brown and Matthew Potoski.
- The feasibility assessment for a Citistat for the city of Newark shows that the first core challenge is the acquisition of a room equipped with a table, a podium and a projector. The mayor and his key staff will require permanently assigned seats. The podium will for the director of the agency whose performance is being examined will stand. The projector will be for maps, data and pictures from the computer onto the screen. The next core challenges will be putting together a staff with a full-time director, analysts and investigators. The major function of the director and his staff will be collection and analysis of personal and financial data from the agencies of independent sources. The financial cost of the staff will come under consideration. The staff may be hired full time or be borrowed among existing staff in the agency to reduce cost. It thus means the staff will be multifunctional. The Citistat will be regular or periodic meetings. It is necessary and compelling that the mayor and key staff must attend the meetings to give the program required credibility and acceptance by all agencies. An agreement must exist for the director of the program or a top staff form the mayor’s office to chair the meetings. The city’s mayor and agency heads must come to the reality that the meetings and the outcome will not be a comfortable affair for the agency heads under scrutiny and the outcome and follow up must be managed professionally that no manager is humiliated but rather use the information from the evaluation to help the agency overcome poor service delivery. I am optimistic that these challenges can be overcome and that the Citistat will succeed in Newark, just as it has reportedly succeeded in other major cities.
- John Spencer, as the director of the Environmental Protection Agency Seattle Region 10 office, failed to live up to expectation in term of his conducts in office, and failed to uphold essential aspects of Waldo’s Twelve Ethical Obligations. I agree with the actions taken by the guerillas to call attention to Spencer’s unethical conducts. The guerillas’ action served the goals of democratic accountability as well as efficient and effective agency performance. If the guerillas had failed to act against Spencer’s announcement of a [plan to purchase an official membership of the chambers of commerce for the EPA with the tax payers’, an organization active in lobbying both the EPA and state environmental agencies, trips at public expense and transferring the director who said government funds could not be used for personal trips, lobbying the corps of engineers on behalf of a yacht club of which he was a member for rapid approval of a dredging permit and embarking on political use of superfund, the purpose of democratic accountability would have been undermined without redress. The happy ending was the investigation of Spencer’s act of misconducts by the office of EPA Inspector General. Spencer was found not criminally liable! But happily, the transferred director was promoted by Spencer’s successor.
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