Suchergebnisse

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.

This book addresses what it means to be ethically competent, how to achieve a satisfactory level of ethical competence, and how ethical competence contributes to effective public service leadership. It describes how ethical competence should guide organizational conduct, with prescriptions based on: knowledge of the normative foundations of public administrative ethics, a thorough grounding in organization theory and behavior, and knowledge of organization development and the design approach. Chapters are written by experts in public administration and the book is useful for students entering public service as well as professionals in the field. --

Citizen participation in government decision making, especially at the local level, has received heightened attention with regard to its promise for improved governance. The overarching administrative ethos of the administrative state creates barriers to citizen participation in governance. Developing and nurturing citizen participation in the presence of the administrative state is a significant challenge. Drawing on the literary tradition of public engagement and learning, this article models a developmental strategy of participation that offers one avenue for achieving meaningful partnerships between city agencies and neighborhood councils in a metropolitan environment. We present a model of citizen participation that brings neighborhood councils and city agencies together in a collaborative partnership. This model is based on the literature on citizen participation, which focuses on the significance of interactive processes in building trust among participants and creating mutual understanding and agreement.

The concept of race, from a scientific perspective, has such poor construct validity and reliability that there is a growing consensus that the term should be abandoned. It is the premise of this article that the concept of race is not only a scientific construct but also a social construct and a policy construct. It is argued through an ethical analysis that the premature abandonment of the scientific construct of race, especially in epidemiology, clinical field trial studies, and health care delivery monitoring, may create greater harm than good. Recommendations are offered for the orderly dismantling of the social construction of race, which this article proposes should come first, through both biological and policy constructs.