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Drawing on perspectives from several academic traditions, we argue that sustainability is best understood as intergenerational social equity. When viewed thusly, it is possible to determine what socially responsible organizations look like in practice. After reviewing historic claims and evidence of sustainability, we turn to modern applications of institutionally based sustainability. We then describe sustainability in the framework of an intergenerational social equity model, claiming that the legacies of social and cultural institutions are evidence of sustainability in action. We conclude with a discussion of what it means for an organization to be socially responsible given our understanding of sustainability.

Using historical and numerical analysis and the five‐part schema, this study finds that over the past 50 years structural modifications and adaptations by American cities have generally followed the standard S curve of the diffusion of innovation. In tests of Kaufman's and Hirshman's theories of epochs of change from representativeness to administrative efficiency, this study determines that mayor‐council cities have, in a standard innovation diffusion S curve, adopted many of the key features of council‐manager cities, increasing their administrative efficiency. At the same time, council‐manager cities, again in an S curve, have adopted many of the key features of mayor‐council cities, increasing their political responsiveness. Fewer cities are now either distinctly mayor‐council or council‐manager in form, and most cities are structurally less distinct, constituting a newly merged or hybrid model of local government—the type III city.

AbstractUniversity ranking has high public visibility, the ranking business has flourished, and institutions of higher education have not been able to ignore it. This study of university ranking presents general considerations of ranking and institutional responses to it, particularly considering reactions to ranking, ranking as a self‐fulfilling prophecy, and ranking as a means of transforming qualities into quantities. The authors present a conceptual framework of university ranking based on three propositions and carry out a descriptive statistical analysis of U.S. and international ranking data to evaluate those propositions. The first proposition of university ranking is that ranking systems are demarcated by a high degree of stability, equilibrium, and path dependence. The second proposition links ranking to institutional identity. The third proposition posits that rankings function as a catalyst for institutional isomorphism. The conclusion reviews some important new developments in university ranking.

This article is an intellectual history of the noble endeavors and challenges involved in the creation and evolution of the American Review of Public Administration. It traces the journal's development from its beginning as the Midwest Review of Public Administration ( MRPA) under the leadership of Park College professor Jerzy Hauptmann, a Polish intellectual who entered the United States at the end of World War II. Hauptmann launched MRPA with a regional focus, welcoming contributions from a variety of voices in public service–related occupations. A political scientist suspicious of the power of national governments, Hauptmann favored a less top-down regional approach. The article provides insights from the late 1960s into the growing field of public administration. Behind the scenes, the article chronicles the financial challenges, details of manuscript review processes, and more in an initially low-technology world. This history is also multi-institutional, detailing the journal's transfer from a small college to a team of scholars, including coauthor John Clayton Thomas, at the three public administration programs of the University of Missouri—in Columbia, Kansas City, and St. Louis. We are indebted to our now-departed colleague and coauthor, George Frederickson, for the idea of writing this article.