67 research outputs found
Cops, Teachers, and the Art of the Impossible: Explaining the lack of diffusion of impossible job innovations
In their now classic Impossible Jobs in Public Management, Hargrove and Glidewell (1990) argue that public agencies with limited legitimacy, high conflict, low professional authority, and weak agency myths have essentially impossible jobs. Leaders of such agencies can do little more than cope, which is also a theme of James Q. Wilson (1989), among others. Yet in the years since publication of Impossible Jobs, one such position, that of police commissioner has proven possible. Over a sustained 17-year period, the New York City Police Department has achieved dramatic reductions in crime with relatively few political repercussions, as described by Kelling and Sousa (2001). A second impossible job discussed by Wilson and also by Frederick Hess (1999), city school superintendent, has also proven possible, with Houston and Edmonton having considerable academic success educating disadvantaged children. In addition, Atlanta and Pittsburgh enjoyed significant success in elementary schooling, though the gains were short-lived for reasons we will describe. More recently, under Michelle Rhee, Washington D.C. schools have made the most dramatic gains among city school systems. These successes in urban crime control and public schooling have not been widely copied. Accordingly, we argue that the real conundrum of impossible jobs is why agency leaders fail to copy successful innovations. Building on the work of Teodoro (2009), we will discuss how the relative illegitimacy of clients and inflexibility of personnel systems combine with the professional norms, job mobility and progressive ambition of agency leaders to limit the diffusion of innovations in law enforcement and schooling. We will conclude with ideas about how to overcome these barriers
Hyperemesis gravidarum and risk of cancer in offspring, a Scandinavian registry-based nested case–control study
Minor Complementation Patterns in Post-classical Greek (I–VI AD): A Socio-historical Analysis of a Corpus of Documentary Papyri
Nitrogneous waste products and excretory enzymes in the marine polychaete Cirriformia spirabrancha (Moore, 1904)
Die Frage der Möglichkeit der Skoliosenvorbeugung auf Grund der Schüleruntersuchung in Pécs
Incremental Consolidation and Comprehensive Reorganization of American State Executive Branches
Large Eddy Simulation/Conditional Moment Closure modeling of swirl-stabilized non-premixed flames with local extinction
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