Easy Innovation and the Iron Cage: Best Practice, Benchmarking, Ranking, and the Management of Organizational Creativity

The use of what came to be known as best practices, benchmarking, and ranking, which took corporate America by storm in the 1980s as a method for managing innovation, has seeped into government and nonprofit organizations in the intervening years. In fact, as H. George Frederickson demonstrates in this Kettering Foundation occasional paper, these practices have proven to be counterproductive both in the business and the public sector. Frederickson suggests, instead, a more flexible, less directive, model he calls "sustained innovation." He offers abundant evidence that this model is more effective in producing organizational effectiveness

Public Accountability: Performance Measurement, The Extended State, And The Search For Trust

In an Academy partnership with the Kettering Foundation, National Academy of Pubic Administration Fellows Melvin J. Dubnick and H. George Frederickson have completed a study of accountability. The study, Public Accountability: Performance Measurement, The Extended State, and the Search for Trust, is a treatment of the strengths and weaknesses of contemporary applications of accountability to public affairs. The working title of the study was Public Accountability: From Ambulance Chasing to Accident Prevention, but that title was thought to lack the dignity such an important subject deserves. Dubnick and Frederickson challenge the often assumed relationship between performance measurement and accountability. They give special attention to accountability challenges associated with the outsourcing of government work, what they call the Extended State. And, they provide examples of effective public accountability in the context of high trust public-private partnerships

Searching for Virtue in the City: Bell and Her Sisters

The burden of our claim here is that virtue in the city is to be found not so much in the abstractions and theorizing of higher philosophy but in “vulgar ethics,” Lewis C. Mainzer’s brilliant description of moral education in the classroom and street-level moral practices in the city’s departments and agencies (1991). The hope of virtue in the city is to be found not just in the individual propensity to be virtuous but more so in the development of political and organizational rules and procedures, in virtuous leadership, and in the development of virtuous public cultures

Public Administration and Shared Power: Understanding Governance, Networks, and Partnerships

Starting with the “consolationist” and “fragmentationist” arguments in American local government and contemporary patterns of increasing jurisdictional cooperation and regionalization, this paper examines patterns of jurisdictional cooperation and power sharing in metropolitan regions, and analyses the influence of extrajurisdictional benefits on local government decisions to engage in regional agreements. Our findings are based on a survey of local government officials in the Kansas City Metropolitan area. Cooperation is examined using an Axelrod-type prisoner’s dilemma scenario. Participants include elected officials, chief administrative officers, and department-level administrators—Police Chiefs, Parks and Recreation Directors, Fire Chiefs, and Public Works Directors. Results point to differences in patterns of jurisdictional cooperation between elected officials and administrators. In addition, our analysis demonstrates how cooperation is affected by jurisdictional traits, such as population size and geographic location

Ethics in Public Management

This volume follows two earlier projects undertaken by Frederickson (1993) and Frederickson and Ghere (2005) to present collections of theoretical essays and empirical analyses on administrative ethics. Three years before the publication of the first volume —Frederickson\u27s Ethics and Public Administration — the National Commission on the Public Service released Leadership for America (also known as the Volcker Commission Report) that attested to the quiet crisis in government whereby too many of the best of the nation\u27s senior executives are ready to leave government, and not enough of its most talented young people are willing to join. This erosion in the attractiveness in public service at all levels — most specifically in the federal civil service — undermines the ability of government to respond effectively to the needs and aspirations of the American people, and ultimately damages the democratic process itself. This volume presents part of the solution

University Rankings: Evidence and a Conceptual Framework

University ranking has high public visibility, the ranking business has flourished, and institutions of higher education have not been able to ignore it. This study of university ranking presents general considerations of ranking and institutional responses to it, particularly considering reactions to ranking, ranking as a self-fulfilling prophecy, and ranking as a means of transforming qualities into quantities. The authors present a conceptual framework of university ranking based on three propositions and carry out a descriptive statistical analysis of U.S. and international ranking data to evaluate those propositions. The first proposition of university ranking is that ranking systems are demarcated by a high degree of stability, equilibrium, and path dependence. The second proposition links ranking to institutional identity. The third proposition posits that rankings function as a catalyst for institutional isomorphism. The conclusion reviews some important new developments in university ranking

Testing the Efficiency of Wire Reinforced Catfish Pots and Comparing Horizontal and Vertical Configurations to Catch Invasive Catfish in the James River, VA

The Chesapeake Bay is currently inundated with invasive blue catfish (BCF) which are a serious threat to the ecosystem balance ofthe watershed.The only reasonableway to reduce BCF numbers and biomass is by utilizing new and improving traditional BCF commercial fisheriestechniqueswith emphasis on removing small BCF. In the Mississippi region pots set in a vertically orientation are easier to fish and outperform pots set horizontally. The purpose of this project was to see how pots set in two vertical orientationswould perform compared to thetraditional horizontal orientation. During the project 7275lbs of nonnative catfish were harvested, 3088in vertical pots and 4187lbs in the horizontal pots.A permutation analysis (10,000 iterations) showed no significant difference between pots suspended from a float (mean = 4.1lbs) compared topots in the traditional horizontal orientation (mean 4.4lbs). There was a significant difference between vertical pots attached to the bottom with an anchor (mean = 15.6lbs) when compared to partnered horizontal pots (mean = 22.6lbs). A nonparametric Wilcoxon Ranked sum test concluded there was no significant difference (p=0.327) between the suspended vertical pot and paired horizontal pots but there was a significant difference (p=2.88e-09) between the vertical pots attached to the bottom and horizontal pots. Many external factors influenced this project includinggearloss (likely due to theft), extremely high water flows throughout the year due to heavy rains and using pots with mesh so large that small BCF could escape. Pots suspended from floats are the easiest and quickestto fish but theft makesthe technique impractical in the upper James River. Unfortunately neither of the vertical orientations outperformed their associated horizontal configuration pots so switching techniques would not benefit commercial fishers. We feel we did make some important observations in regards to bait and share ideas on how to improve bait retention which should increase harvest weights

B-Amyloid of Alzheimer\u27s Disease Induces Reactive Gliosis that Inhibits Axonal Outgrowth

Pathological lesions in the brains of patients with Alzheimer\u27s disease (AD) are characterized by dense deposits of the protein ,B-amyloid. The link between the deposition of B-amyloid in senile plaques and AD-associated pathology is, at present, controversial since there have been conflicting reports on whether the 39- 43 amino acid B-amyloid sequence is toxic or trophic to neurons. In this report, we show that B-amyloid peptide when presented as an insoluble substrate which mimics its conformation in vivo can induce cortical glial cells in vitro and in vivo to locally deposit chondroitin sulfate containingproteoglycan. In vitro the proteoglycan-containing matrix deposited by glia on B-amyloid blocks the usual ability of the peptide to allow cortical neurons to adhere and grow. Chondroitin sulfate-containing proteoglycan was also found in senile plaques of human AD tissue. We suggest that an additional effect of B-amyloid in the brain, which compounds the direct effects of ,8- amyloid on neurons, is mediated by the stimulation of astroglia to become reactive. Once in the reactive state, glial cells deposit large amounts of growth-inhibitory molecules within the neuropil which could impair neuronal process survival and regeneration leading to neurite retraction and/or dystrophy around senile plaques in AD

Ethics and the Public Administrator

This article provides an overview and analysis of the practical problems of developing and implementing a code of ethics for public administrators. The article addresses three key issues: (1) What are public ethics and where do they come from? (2) What are the central ethical issues facing public administrators? and (3) Are there practical tools and guidelines to assist public servants to be both ethical and effective public managers? The article concludes with a plea for consideration of ethical issues, and it presents five general ethical principles for public administrators