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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
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Articles 1 - 4 of 4
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Challenges In Enhancing Responsiveness In Neighborhood Governance, Thomas Bryer, Terry Cooper
Challenges In Enhancing Responsiveness In Neighborhood Governance, Thomas Bryer, Terry Cooper
Thomas A Bryer
When numerous stakeholders, constituencies, and service requests are competing for limited city agency resources, administrators need to decide to whom and how to be responsive. A review of literature on bureaucratic responsiveness suggests five possible determining factors for agencies facing conflicting demands: (a) organizational culture, (b) organizational leadership, (c) organizational rules and structure, (d) dependency on a stakeholder making a demand, and (e) the extent of external control placed on the agency. Based on an action research study of City of Los Angeles neighborhood councils and departments, this article suggests areas for future research on these and other possible influences …
William Robertson: Exemplar Of Politics And Public Management Rightly Understood, Terry Cooper, Thomas Bryer
William Robertson: Exemplar Of Politics And Public Management Rightly Understood, Terry Cooper, Thomas Bryer
Thomas A Bryer
William Robertson, director of the City of Los Angeles' Bureau of Street Services, is profiled here as an exemplary public administrator. The authors suggest that Robertson practices politics appropriately in his role in order to achieve great outcomes for his bureau, the citizens with whom he works, and the city as a whole. To adequately define the ways in which Robertson uses politics, Sherry Arnstein's "ladder of participation" is reconceptualized as a circle of participation in which Robertson uses multiple strategies of interaction with citizens, elected officials, employees, and peers. Lessons for public administrators are offered based on Robertson's example.
Toward A Relevant Agenda For A Responsive Public Administration, Thomas Bryer
Toward A Relevant Agenda For A Responsive Public Administration, Thomas Bryer
Thomas A Bryer
The relevance of the concept "bureaucratic responsiveness" has been questioned in recent years. One reason for the questioned relevance is the apparent environmental changes that are occurring in public administration. Globalization and devolution have infiltrated the halls of bureaucracies. Public agencies are being asked to collaborate with actors in other sectors of society, including, and especially, citizens and citizen associations. In addition to these environmental changes, administrators are being confronted with potentially competing ethical obligations that make decisions regarding responsiveness challenging. This article uses these evolving environments and competing ethical obligations to formulate a set of six variants of bureaucratic …
Negotiating Bureaucratic Responsiveness In Collaboration With Citizens: Findings From Action Research In Los Angeles, Thomas Bryer
Negotiating Bureaucratic Responsiveness In Collaboration With Citizens: Findings From Action Research In Los Angeles, Thomas Bryer
Thomas A Bryer
The Collaborative Learning Project conducted an action research program in the City of Los Angeles between 2003 and 2006, in which researchers facilitated a collaborative process between recently created neighborhood councils and city departments of council choosing. In two cases conducted, the patterns of administrative responsiveness to the neighborhood councils differed substantially. This dissertation asks: How can we explain the patterns of administrator responsiveness observed in each of two cases of collaboration between administrators and neighborhood council representatives? To answer the question, an exploratory assessment of each case was conducted from multiple emergent perspectives using an inductive analysis. Data from …