Public administrators who have long strived to make their organizations efficient and effective are being challenged to make them even leaner, meaner, and more flexible. The new definition of ...management demands a concern for people, as well as a clear commitment to quality. The management phenomenon referred to as total quality management (TQM), and how it fits within the established theories of public management and public administration, is explored. TQM is firmly rooted in a humanistic approach to allowing people to reach their fullest potential. It links participation with power in ensuring quality production in the organizational context. It postulates that the focal point of any organization must be the customer or the client. Customer satisfaction is the benchmark by which the organization must measure success. TQM incorporates the research and practices in public administration that have evolved in the field over the past 100 years.
The purpose of this bibliographical analysis is to present issues at the forefront of the study of formal organizations relevant to the field of public administration. Although public administration ...is afield, it is useful to think of applicable theories according to Thomas S. Kuhn's structure of scientific revolutions, specifically, how new paradigms develop in science. He maintains tlmt a paradigm is a world view or basic set of assumptions of how the world operates. Theories are then developed in accordance with the prevailing paradigm. Títere are always anomalous events which cannot be explained by existing theories. When enough of these build up, the theories and paradigm begin to break down. A period of competition for paradigmatic dominance ensues. A new paradigm, which subsumes the old, but provides a better explanation, is thus created. In a sense, it is our contention that public administration currently is casting about for a paradigm and theories to explain itself as economic, social, political, intellectual and national boundaries no longer hold. Therefore, this analysis is an attempt to trace where we've been and where we need to go in the critical arena of organizational theory. While we know that it is not possible to predict the future with absolute certainty, we are convinced that those who reflect upon the present and the past concerning organizational theories in the field of public administration can make educated prognostications of wherethe field is headed. This analysis has been such an attempt. It has highlighted the specter of change as it must be confronted by organizational theorists andpractitioners today. That change is thrust upon organizations at an increasingly rapid pace will cause dynamic organizational leaders and academic researchers to embrace change as a fact of existence. We believe that it is time to "push at the seams" of our previous understandings of organizational reality and move rapidly toward both a new attitude and a "new paradigm" for public administration. The new paradigm must view change as the desired state, while, at the same time, constructing multiple hypotheses and theories of organizations in the 1990s. A dynamic focus on continuously probing why something is being done and building rapid fire feedback modes into the processes of organizations will help to keep organizations "lean and nimble. "In any case, no matter what the future holds it is certain that we are involved in an exciting and challenging time for the study and practice of public administration, firmly anchored in the assumption tfmt sophisticated, operational theory is the "raison d'etre" for quality performance in organizational life.
In order to understand both the man and his contributions, this symposium is an attempt to construct an operational code based on the historical records and the data of W. Edwards Deming. Operational ...code is defined as those Deming guidelines and actions believed to be essential for the effective productivity of high performing individuals and organizations. It is assumed that these Deming rules and principles have general applicability to public and private organizations in the USA, and throughout the world. Because today one hears more discussion of the views of commentators and less discussion from the practitioners themselves, the thrust of this symposium is with the use of personal power and the elaboration of Deming's compositions, books, letters, correspondence, and personal lectures on the management process as interpreted by both professional managers and Deming scholars. This development of an operational code hopefully will add critically important dimensions and synergy to the many biographical, historical, and eulogistic materials on Deming scattered in various journals, archives, and libraries.
Snowmass is a US long-term planning study for the high-energy community by the American Physical Society's Division of Particles and Fields. For its simulation studies, opportunistic resources are ...harnessed using the Open Science Grid infrastructure. Late binding grid technology, GlideinWMS, was used for distributed scheduling of the simulation jobs across many sites mainly in the US. The pilot infrastructure also uses the Parrot mechanism to dynamically access CvmFS in order to ascertain a homogeneous environment across the nodes. This report presents the resource usage and the storage model used for simulating large statistics Standard Model backgrounds needed for Snowmass Energy Frontier studies.
Theorists of public administration must not only address themselves to the traditional colloquy of public organizational theory, but as with other social theorists, they must also examine how attuned ...their philosophy is with the intellectual dialogue of their times and how this may relate to the overall social fabric of our modern technological community. Some writers are capable of doing this exceedingly well; most are not. The subjects of this dialogue, Karl Marx and Max Weber, unequivocally are positioned in the former, where taken together, they have substantially influenced the direction of social epistemology and organizational life in the twentieth century. In fact, Marx and Weber have developed doctrine that all contemporary theorists must consider in their efforts to expand the underpinnings of administrative theory and operational reality in the 1990s.
This article examines some of the questions that have been raised by many scholars, consultants, and managers regarding the relevance of organization development (OD) to public sector organizations: ...Some of the questions addressed include: To what extent is OD--as a strategy for planning and implementing change--relevant to public sector management? What are the salient differences between public and private sector organizations that can affect the practice and private sector organizations that can affect the practice and effectiveness of OD? What strategies can be used to accommodate these differences? How can the practice of OD be effectively managed in public sector organizations? What kinds of modifications in the field of OD are necessary to enhance its future relevance to public sector organizations? What are the possible impacts of the Reagan cutback management philosophy for OD in the public sector? After exhaustive analysis, it becomes clear that the public manager who develops a fair understanding of the values, assumptions, and technologies of OD, and the OD consultant who demonstrates a clear understanding of the unique nature of the public sector environment, can successfully manage OD in public organizations if they can set modest goals, accept unexpected setbacks, and be satisfied with tackling manageable issues as opposed to attempting to change the entire system at a fundamental level: A central theme of American public administration is that government can and should be run like a business enterprise: Since the earliest days of the American political system, reform efforts have been guided by an enduring belief in what has been termed the"business analogy:" That is, the nature, problems, and general functions of public and corporate management are viewed ad being essestially analogous. Therefore, the assumption is made that the relatively well developed body of ideas and practices of corporate management can and should be applied to the management of government. Public management can and should be more businesslike. While the popularity of the "business analogy" has waned at times during the course of history, belief in it has endured. Despite evidence indicating significant differences between private and public sector organizations (Bower, 1977; Rainey, Backoff 6 Levine, 1976; Drucker 1954; Whyte, 1934; Rawls, 1975; Buchanan, 19741, belief that American business is an appropriate analogy for discussing, evaluating and reforming public management remains very strong. Politicians and interest groups intent on reforming public management continue to look to private sector organizations --the world of corporate management-- for "proven" management practices and techniques. Unfortunately, the urge to reform public management to make government more businesslike, is sometimes so strong that often insufficient forethought or preparation goes into the reform effort. Public administrators rush to introduce the latest fad to emerge from the world of corporate management with little thought as to whether or not it actually fits the world of public management. The assumption'is made that if it works in business, obviously it will work in government. Unfortunately, in many instances, the application of the latest business management practices to public environments proves less than successful. As Uarvin Bernstein notes, "the history of management improvement in the federal government is too often a story of inflated rhetoric, shifting emphasis from one fashionable managerial skill to another, and relatively little in the way of management achievement."(l) Why haven't the kinds of management practices that have worked in business been more successfully applied to public management? In his book entitled, Uanaqinq the Public's Business, Laurence Lynn suggests that failures in the public sector of "proven" management practices borrowed from the world of corporate management such as management-byobjectives (MBO) and zero-based-budgeting (ZBB), among others, stem from fallacies in the "business analogy," and inadequate understanding of the political nature of public management. In their zeal to impose an orderly, businesslike, approaeh on federal management, reformers invariably ignore the imperatives of the political rocess and the necessity for adapting management practices to it .(The political process of government creates unique managerial problems for public managers, problems which reform advocates too frequently overlook. Lynn presents a particularly cynical view of one of the latest "proven" management approaches to emerge from the world of corporate management--organization development (OD). Despite evidence to suggest that one of the most important developments in the field of OD has been its rapid growth in the public sector (Zawacki & Warrick, 1976; Golembiewski, Proehl 6 Sink, 1981; Burke, 1978; French, Bell 6 Zawacki, 1983) Lynn contends that, although OD has been written about extensively, Its applications in the public sector are rare. He suggests that OD is little understood in the public sector, and that there are few indications that it will be embraced by senior executives seeking to enhance organizational performance. He sees failure on the part of its proponents to demonstrate a direct relationship between OD approaches and actual increased effectiveness or output as a major barrier to its acceptance. Finally, he suggests that a more fundamental objection to OD and other approaches rooted in the human relations school is their tendency to overlook the extent to which the bureaucratic form of organization serves various functional purposes. Other authors in the field of public administration and in the field of OD, although articulating a far more positive assessment of public sector OD, nonetheless voice concerns with regard to its practice in public sector organizations (Burke, 1980). Burke (1980) notes that there are enough failures on record to "at least give one pause with regard to public sector OD."(3) On the other hand, Golembiewski (1977) contends that OD is a significant enough development to warrant it being viewed as "one of a future family of mini-paradigms in the conceptual development of the field of public administration. (4) There is clearly a rather wide range of views with regard to public sector OD. This article examines some of these views, and reviews and addresses some of the questions that have been raised by Lynn and others regarding the relevance of OD to public sector xganizations. Some of the questions addressed include: To what extent is OD--as a strategy for planning and implementing change--relevant to public-sector management? What are the salient differences between aublic and private sector organizations that can affect the practice and effectiveness of OD? What strategies can be used to accommodate these differences? How can the practice of OD be effectively managed in public sector organizations? What kinds of modifications in the Eield of 'OD are necessary to enhance its future relevance to public sector organizations? Before addressing these questions, it seems necessary to define #hat is meant by "OD," briefly outline the values, objectives and unique charactoristics of the field that differentiate it from other strategies used to improve organizational effectiveness, and review some of the transitions that have occurred in the field since its emergence.
The top 10 CV leader priorities Stupak, R J; Greisler, D S; Stupak, V C
The journal of cardiovascular management,
1998 Mar-Apr, Letnik:
9, Številka:
2
Journal Article
