Public Administration Shaping the ‘Unscripted Future’

1. Public Administration Shaping the ‘Unscripted Future’

2. Examining the Nature of Change in Public Administration: Limitations and Possibilities in Public Administration Reform • Rapid global, economic and social changes are profoundly affecting institutions and the lives of individuals. These changes are challenging the prevailing paradigms in public administration. • Public Administration Reform in the Past: Influenced by external forces, history, and institutional constraints. • Public Administration Reform in the Future: Requires a new theoretical framework that can deal with the complexities of the 21st Century.

3. Public Administration Reform in the PastPath-dependency vs. External Forces • Public administration has traditionally reformed in response to external forces, but it has done so within constraints. During the 20th Century, significant political, social and economic changes took place, but public administration remained relatively constant. • One possible explanation for the consistency in public administration during the 20th Century is that public administration reform has been path-dependent (Pollitt and Boukaert 2004; Peters and Pierre 1998).

4. Path Dependency: Key Concepts • Originally applied to technology. • “History Matters” • Key Concepts: • Patterns of timing and sequence are important. • Large consequences can result from small events. • Courses of action, once initiated, can be almost impossible to reverse • Political development is punctuated by critical junctures. (Pierson 2000)

5. Path Dependency: Increasing Returns Path Dependency is frequently described as an “increasing returns” or “positive feedback” process which highlights two important features: 1. The cost of switching to another alternative increases over time. 2. Timing, sequence, and formative events are important. (Pierson 2000)

6. Path Dependency: Increasing Returns Aspects of technology and institutions that generate an increasing-returns process. • Large set up or fixed costs. • Learning effects • Coordination effects • Adaptive expectations (Pierson 2000, North 1990)

7. Public Management Reform as Path-Dependent • Peters and Pierre (1998): “The objectives and concrete design of administrative reform mirror the historical, political, and societal roles of public administration as well as its internal culture. Such reforms are path-dependent, probably to a much greater extent than we generally realize” (224).

8. Public Management Reform as Path-Dependent • Pollitt and Bouckaert (2004): View management reform as influenced by global economic factors, socio-economic change, and new management ideas, but also acknowledge the role of path-dependency. • “Certain laws, rules, and institutions can create heavy disincentives for change” (Pollitt and Boukaert citing Pierson 2004, 33). • The “costs of change” in management reform include learning new methods of operation, developing new networks and new patterns of authority (Pollitt and Boukaert 2004, 33).

9. Criticisms of Path-Dependency • Ignores the importance of smaller, more incremental change. • Engages in “retrospective rationality” (Peters, Pierre, & King 2005, 1277) • Does not account for political conflict properly. • Inadequately explains political and policy change. • Does not have a convincing account of decision-making. (Peters, Pierre, & King 2005; Kay 2005)

10. Criticisms of Path-Dependency • Criticisms are not fatal to the validity of path-dependency (Kay 2005). • The concept is useful for understanding “the limits to intentional reform which are due to the presence of institutional inertia” (Torfing 2009, 81).

11. Public Administration’s “Legacy Effects” Public Administration is bound by tradition and is subject to “legacy effects” in the sense that its “inheritance exerts its influence in the face of pressures for change” (Painter and Peters 2010, 13).

12. Traditional Public Administration: A Critical Juncture • Growth of capitalism, influx of immigrants, urbanization, and the Progressives. • The Traditional Doctrine was crafted around • Wilson’s (1887) ideas of efficiency, businesslike administration, the separation of politics from administration, and hierarchy. • Weber’s (1922) account of bureaucracy which emphasized control from the top, hierarchy, rules and regulations, and a rational system of control which made the bureaucrat subordinate to his political superior. (Moore 1995; Pfiffner 2004).

13. The Traditional Doctrine: A Critical Juncture • Work was organized, structures were designed and superior-subordinate relationships were crafted around the principles of efficiency, hierarchy and the separation of politics from administration. • There were 11 major reform initiatives during the 20th Century, but these basic principles continued to resurface.

14. The Traditional Doctrine and Path Dependency • Timing was important. Early events mattered more than later ones. • The cost of switching to other alternatives increased over time. Scholarship and practices were guided by the doctrine. • Wilson’s and Weber’s writings had large and lasting consequences. • Self-reinforcing since there were large set up costs that made it difficult to change established methods and relationships, learning effects led to innovations based on this dominant framework, and coordination effects and adaptive expectations led to interdependence.

15. Reform Movements Constrained by the Traditional Doctrine

16. The New Public Service: A Break from the Past? The New Public Service (Denhardt and Denhardt 2007) Concepts Citizens “as bearers of rights and duties within the context of a wider community” (60) Citizens as central to administration, policymaking and implementation. Public administrators as guided by “shared values and collective citizen interests” (78) The public administrator is only one “key actor within a larger system of governance” (81). Concerns “Not a blueprint for a structure. . .an ideal” (187). Not yet determined if it represents a distinct break from the past.

17. A New Path for the 21st Century? • Possible cost of following the same path is that it may lead to suboptimal outcomes (Pierson 2000). • Rapid rate of global, economic and political change is making it impossible to stay on the same path. We may now be at a critical juncture similar to the one at the beginning of the 20th Century. • “The traditional visions of public management can no longer be stretched to accommodate the growing complexity of the world” (Kiel 1994, 3).

18. Factors Influencing Reform in the 21st Century

19. Preparing Public Administrators for the 21st Century: New Skills for Public Managers • Change presents new challenges for public administration educators. • In order to be prepared for the 21st Century, public managers will need a new skill set. • Kiel (1994), Drucker (1994), and Freidman (2007) offer insight on the type of skills that employees and public managers will need.

20. Preparing Public Administrators for the 21st Century: New Skills for Public Managers Kiel (1994): Instead of relying on an organizing theory for direction, public managers will lead by • being unthreatened by change • letting go of control • looking for the “deep order” in work • focusing on processes instead of structure • accepting that uncertainty is inevitable • recognizing that values can provide underlying order in an organization (201-212).

21. Preparing Public Administrators for the 21st Century: New Skills for Public Managers Drucker (1994): Public managers are “knowledge workers” who must have the ability to understand and apply both theoretical and analytical knowledge, and the habit of continual learning.

22. Preparing Public Administrators for the 21st Century: New Skills for Public Managers Friedman (2007): In a “flat world” students must • “learn how to learn” (309) • have the ability to “navigate the virtual world” (310) • have an attitude of curiosity and passion • have a background in the liberal arts Educators must nurture right-brain skills that deal with emotions and synthesis.

23. Implications for Education This shift to a new set of skills will also require higher education to reconsider its pedagogy, orthodoxy and structure.

24. References • David, Paul A. 1985. Clio and the Economics of QWERTY. The American Economic Review 75 (2): 332-337. • Denhardt, Janet V. and Robert B. Denhardt. 2007. The New Public Service: Serving, Not Steering. Armonk, New York: ME Sharpe. • Denhardt, Robert B. 2008. Theories of Public Organization. 5th ed. Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth. • Drucker, Peter F. 1994. The Age of Social Transformation. The Atlantic Monthly, November. www.theatlantic.com/politics/ecbig/soctrans.htm. Accessed 3/29/2009. • Drucker, Peter F. 1999. Management Challenges for the 21st Century. New York, New York: HarperCollins. • Frederickson, George. 1996. Comparing the Reinventing Government Movement with the New Public Administration. Public Administration Review 56 (3): 263-270. • Friedman, Thomas. 2007. The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century. NewYork: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. • Heinrich, Carolyn J., Carolyn J. Hill and Laurence E. Lynn, Jr. 2004. Governance as an Organizing Theme for Empirical Research. In The Art of Governance: Analyzing Management and Administration, edited by Patricia W. Ingraham and Laurence E. Lynn, Jr, 3-19. Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press. • Kay, Adrian. 2005. A Critique of the Use of Path Dependency in Policy Studies. Public Administration 83 (3): 553-571. • Kettl, Donald F. 2005. The Global Public Management Revolution. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press. • Kiel, Douglas L. 1994. Managing Chaos and Complexity in Government. San Francisco: Jossey Bass. • Mehhan, Elizabeth. 2003. From Government to Governance, Civic Participation and ‘New Politics’; the Context of Potential Opportunities for Better Representation of Women. Occasional Paper No. 5. October. www.qub.ac.uk.cawp/research/meehan.pdf Accessed 5/27/2010.

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