Public Organization Review

Hamidullah, Madinah; Wilkins, Vicky; Meier, Kenneth

doi: 10.1007/s11115-008-0062-7pmid: N/A

When replacing an executive, an organization is faced with the choice of either promoting someone internally or hiring an outsider. Prior research in the private sector supports the contention that poor performing organizations will be adaptive and seek an outsider in hopes of initiating change that will improve performance. Do public organizations behave similarly? We address this question in the context of public education and examine the superintendent hiring decisions in 491 school districts. We find that school boards make sophisticated assessments of the district’s performance and these assessments influence their selection decisions.

Huang, Ganlin; Ventriss, Curtis

doi: 10.1007/s11115-008-0064-5pmid: N/A

A centralized political context such as China provides a harsh environment for public involvement program that intends to share decision-making power with the public, however, there are still learning opportunities that can survive and prepare the public for a meaningful participation in the future. This article illustrates this point by designing a public involvement program that is implementable and educational in Nanji Islands, China. The public involvement program is designed to solve conflicts and tension regarding to an immigration plan between the public and local government and organized by a third party. It includes information sharing, public representatives election, and negotiation meeting between public representatives and governmental officials. The six-dimension framework from Alterman’s classic work is employed to test its feasibility within the local context.

Jreisat, Jamil

doi: 10.1007/s11115-008-0068-1pmid: N/A

Globalization involves risks and opportunities for the Arab world. Realistic knowledge of these possibilities is essential for adaptation of governance and reform of public administration to deal more effectively with the unfolding processes of globalization. To be participants rather than mere subjects, the Arab states have to recognize opportunities and limit potential negative consequences. Success requires good governance and professional public management. Public administration in the Arab world has to transform traditional methods of command and control and nepotism into a more collaborative management that relies on institutional capabilities and practicing managerial values of accountability, performance evaluation, transparency, and ethics.

Sobaci, Zahid

doi: 10.1007/s11115-008-0069-0pmid: N/A

EU requires the candidate states to introduce the necessary legal arrangements and administrative reforms to harmonize with the EU’s regional policy, and the establishment of RDAs is an important element of those administrative reforms. This is an example of “obligated policy transfer,” which is a subtype of policy transfer. In this context, this article aims to analyze the establishment of RDAs in Turkey as an example of obligated policy transfer. Within this perspective, this article primarily explicates the conceptual framework of policy transfer and obligated transfer as a subtype of policy transfer. Second, the place of RDAs within the EU regional policy and Turkey’s view of regional governments and development conception will be briefly dealt with. Finally, establishment of RDAs in Turkey will be analyzed, using official documents, as an example of obligated policy transfer and the role of EU will be demonstrated.

Thomas, John; Poister, Theodore

doi: 10.1007/s11115-008-0070-7pmid: N/A

Practitioners and scholars have grown increasingly interested in recent decades in how public administrators should and can work with the constituencies they serve. To date, most of this conversation has focused on citizens and broader communities rather than on stakeholders more generally, but these other stakeholders, ranging from oversight policy-making bodies to private sector and nonprofit contractors to governmental partners, are no less important than the general public. The purpose of this paper is to propose a first step that many agencies might take in thinking about their range of stakeholders, a step that we term a “stakeholder audit.” A stakeholder audit entails (1) mapping the universe of an agency’s stakeholders, (2) assessing the agency’s perceived needs for additional information relative to various stakeholder groups, and (3) developing suggestions on how to obtain that information. After first discussing the more general idea of stakeholder analyses, we describe the stakeholder audit technique, and illustrate how it has been applied to a particular agency, the State of Georgia’s Department of Transportation. We conclude by considering how a stakeholder audit could represent a first step for an agency in improving relationships with its stakeholders.

Garcia-Zamor, Jean-Claude; Noll, Sebastian

doi: 10.1007/s11115-008-0071-6pmid: N/A

Since 1992, the budget deficits of larger German cities increased from less than one billion Euros to more than nine billion in 2005. The reasons for this fiscal collapse were a worsening economic situation partly caused by lower government revenue and higher costs of unemployment benefits. In order to reduce their deficits, the municipalities started privatizing and outsourcing large sectors of public administration. Leipzig rejected the path of privatization and became the pioneer in organizing large-scale municipal companies. This approach brought essential social benefits, most needed revenues, greater efficiency in delivering services and allowed the city to reduce almost by 50% the number of its administrative staff.