PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION Balancing Power and Accountability SECOND EDITION JEROME B. McKINNEY AND LAWRENCE C. HOWARD PRAEOER Westport, Connecticut London To our parents and wives, Betty Howard and Mary Theresa McKinney, and daughters, Katie and the late Melissan Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data McKinney, Jerome B. Public administration : balancing power and accountability / Jerome B. McKinney and Lawrence C. Howard. — 2nd ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-275-95564-8 (alk. paper). — ISBN 0-275-95565-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Public administration. I. Howard, Lawrence C. (Lawrence Cabot), 1925- JF1351.M25 1998 351—dc21 96-47619 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright © 1998 by Jerome B. McKinney and Lawrence C. Howard All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 96-47619 ISBN: 0-275-95564-8 0-275-95565-6 (pbk.) First published jn 1998 Praeger Publishers, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. Printed in the United States of America The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48-1984). P In order to keep this title in print and available to the academic community, this edition was produced using digital reprint technology in a relatively short print run. This would not have been attainable using traditional methods. Although the cover has been changed from its original appearance, the text remains the same and all materials and methods used still conform to the highest book-making standards. Contents Figures and Tables vii Preface xi PART I. CONTEXT OF ADMINISTRATION 1. Ethical Foundations and Imperatives of Public Management 3 2. The Environment and Setting for Public Administration 21 3. Reinventing Government: Transforming Public Administration 41 4. Administration in the Context of Its Practice 58 5. Public Administration and Public Policy 87 6. The External Environment of Public Administration 115 PART II. LINKING PRACTICE AND THEORY 7. Organization Theory and Management Practice 135 PART III. PROCESSES AND PRACTICES 8. Planning in Public Management 193 9. Organizing, Coordinating, and Controlling the Internal Environment of Management 212 10. Decision-Making and Communication as Basic Management Activities 254 11. Leadership in Public Management 279 12. Community Relations in Public Management 302 PART IV. SUPPORTING AND CONTROLLING FUNCTIONS 13. Personnel: The Administration and Management of Human Resources 317 14. Financial Management 350 15. Productivity and Evaluation 384 PART V. POLICY AREAS 16. Intergovernmental Relations and Administration 409 17. International Administration and Development 433 18. Balancing Power and Accountability 463 VI Contents Appendix: Public Administration Research Aids 481 Selected Bibliography 489 Index 497 Figures and Tables FIGURES 2.1 Rationale for Studying Public Administration 22 2.2 Pluralistic Politics in Administration 24 2.3 Managers and Accountability 38 3.1 Hierarchy: Traditional Bureaucracy 53 4.1 The A-76 Process 74 4.2 Public Administration and Problem-Solving Approaches 82 5.1 The Policy Process 93 5.2 The Effective Administration of the Tax Law 97 5.3 The Hierarchical Flow of Policy 98 5.4 A Simplified Traditional View of the National Legislative Dominance of Policymaking 99 5.5 Rational Model Applied to Resource Allocation: PPBS School Management Context 101 5.6 Alternatives for Meeting the Problem of Discrimination in Public Employment 103 5.7 Analyzing the Problem of Discrimination in Public Employment 104 5.8 Sub-Government Policymaking 109 6.1 Political Economy 129 7.1 The Operating Hierarchy 153 7.2 A Closed System Model 157 7.3 Open Systems 158 7.4 Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs 165 7.5 A View of the Change Process 167 7.6 TQM Continuous Process Improvement 182 8.1 Comparing Planned and Unplanned Organizations 196 8.2 Long-Range Planning Sequence 200 8.3 Strategic Management 202 8.4 Proposed Strategic Management Framework for AID 203 8.5 YouthBuild Pittsburgh's HUD Grant Implementation Flow Plan 207 8.6 PERT Computer Installation 208 Vlll Figures and Tables 9.1 Top-Level Organizing Concerns 217 9.2 Organizational Concerns of Administrators and MLMs 219 9.3 Line and Staff Positions 224 9.4 Organizational Overlays 227 9.5 Project Work Program/Neighborhood Medical Clinic 237 9.6 Administrative Control Process 244 9.7 Four Steps in Controlling Operations in Process 247 9.8 Managerial Controlling 248 10.1 Decision Alternatives 260 10.2 Rational Decision-Making 261 10.3 The Communication Process 270 11.1 Leadership Traits 282 11.2 The Linking Pin 286 11.3 Continuum of Leadership Styles 289 11.4 Assessing Effective Leadership Styles Varying with the Situation 291 13.1 Public Personnel Process 320 13.2 Steps in the Employment Process 325 14.1 Critical Role of Financial Management 352 14.2 United Municipal Finance Organization 355 14.3 Federal, State, and Local Revenue 357 14.4 Progressive, Proportional, and Regressive Taxes 358 14.5 Budgeting Resource Allocations 362 14.6 PPBS Budgeting Model 368 14.7 The ZBB Process: An Overview 370 15.1 Linking Inputs with Outputs 386 15.2 University Department of Security (Police) 396 15.3 Effort as Input 397 15.4 Linking Effort to Work Completed 397 15.5 Linking Effort to Impact/Sustainability 398 15.6 Experimental and Control Group in Randomized Allocation of Participants 401 16.1 Layers of Governance, Whitehall, Pennsylvania, 1996 415 16.2 Intergovernmental Sources of Revenue for Types of Local Government, 1990-91 425 TABLES 4.1 Distinctions Between the Public and Private Sectors 64 6.1 The Raw Materials of Politics 117 8.1 MBO Advantages and Problems 206 Figures and Tables IX 10.1 Criteria and Weight of Prioritizing Garbage Removal 259 11.1 The Evolving State of Leadership 280 11.2 Trait and Group Leadership Approaches 283 11.3 Maintenance and Growth Needs 284 11.4 Fiedler's Least-Preferred Co-Worker Scale 288 13.1 Pros and Cons on the Right to Strike 334 13.2 Percentage of Minorities and Women in Selected Federal Pay Grade Ranges 337 13.3 Myths and Realities About Work and Women 338 14.1 Revenue Sources and Allocation in the Public and Private Sectors 359 14.2 Variance Report 376 16.1 Government and Private Employment in the United States, 1954-92 411 16.2 Selected Federal Aid Distribution by Function, Fiscal Years 1970 and 1995 424 18.1 Comparison of Managers' Beliefs with Perceived Peer and Top Management Beliefs 469 18.2 NAPA Code of Ethics 473 This page intentionally left blank Preface This text presents public administration as a tension between the necessary exercise of power and the search for accountability by public servants. Growing disillusionment about the behavior of some public administrators and frustration over the ineffective and ever-more expensive public programs make a new approach to the teaching of public management essential. Watergate and subsequent taxpayer revolts marked a turning point—public administration can no longer be taught apart from ethical and moral concerns. Today, downsizing and the pursuit of better government for less are the norm. We can no longer expect public budgets will continue to increase. The authors have attempted to initiate a new approach. Our major focus is on middle- and low-level managers. These are the positions that most students of public administration will occupy for most of their professional careers. In the past, many public administration texts have had a bias toward upper-level officials and a Washington focus. We endeavor to modify that emphasis through recognition that most of administration is in field offices, in state and local government, and in cooperation with the private sector. Second, we focus on power and its potential for influencing the behavior of the bureaucracy. At many points in the text, we point out how middle- and lower-level managers are the key translators of policy objectives into program outputs in the delivery of services. We also point out that much of this power in the middle of bureaucracies is exercised without close and informed supervision and that much influence is applied beyond public view. Third, this leads us to attempt to relate theories about administration to the actual practice of administration. Numerous illustrations and cases depicting the applications of power are presented. Our text attempts to show that public administration occurs in a web of tension in which administrators, on the one hand, must husband and maintain power to permit needed actions. On the other hand, they must also enhance traditional responsiveness to elected superiors including programmatic accountability aimed at enabling people to function without dependency on government. We have called for greater internalization of accountability, and in this sense the text assumes a moral stance, a commitment to reform in the practice of administration toward greater accountability. This is not simply a hope. Rather, it is the conclusion that greater responsiveness and increased enablement of citizens are cost-effective and that they will bring increased productivity and heightened recognition to the administrator who pursues this approach. We are fully aware that translating this call into performance will not be easily achieved