Suchergebnisse

By making it possible for once dispersed individuals to communicate and cooperate online, the Internet has raised the importance of cybercommunities—informal, online collectivities that provide support by means of many-to-many communication—as an overlooked delivery system for the provision of public goods. The importance to public administration of these communities is discussed through multisectoral analysis. Existing case study-based research on the topic is empirically assessed by mapping the cyberuniverses of three issue areas discussed in that research. Although many of the findings of the existing research remain valid, the internal governance, and so the accountability and legitimacy, of cybercommunities are found to be weak. This raises serious questions about current understanding regarding the implications of online organization for public administration.

An analysis of data from the premier public administration journals in Australia, Brazil, Canada, and the United States shows academic public administration has taken both a narrow and a conservative approach to four social equity issues, including gender, race, sexual orientation, and social class. The findings show these periodicals (a) seldom and sometimes never publish articles on the four themes; (b) confine nearly all their social equity writings to race and gender; sexual orientation and social class receive little or no attention; and (c) only publish such papers long after the matter has become fashionable in most other social circles. The article concludes by suggesting ways American public administration can develop a more intellectually diverse, proactive professoriat, thereby allowing for publishing more—and more timely—articles about emerging social equity topics.