PAD 706—BUREAUPATHOLOGY Professor Patrick O’Hara

Room 3504 (Suite 3501) North 212-237-8086; 610-286-7163

COURSE OBJECTIVES

To study the relationship between the fundamental structures/processes of organization and the "pathologies" to which organizations are prone, with particular emphasis on public sector and non-profit organizations. To apply and sharpen our understanding of the nature and causes of organizational pathology by closely examining specific instances of organizational failure. To deepen the students understanding of how management policy an employee behavior can undermine the efficient, effective and lawful delivery of goods and services by public, non-profit and private organizations. To analyze organizational pathologies such as corruption, fraud, waste, abuse of power, secrecy, institutionalization, favoritism/nepotism, racism/sexism, and obstruction of oversight. To study and assess how leadership, oversight, policy reform and structural reform can help renew organizations beset by critical and/or chronic failures of performance. To have every student demonstrate his/her understanding of the causes, symptoms, progression and treatment of organizational pathology in general and with respect to a specific organization.

Week 1: Legitimacy and Organization: Community Contexts and Organizational Effectiveness

Week 2: Organizations: Social Entities Nested in Social/Economic/Political Intersects

Week 3: Insitutionalization: Organizational Drift Toward Self-Protection and Exclusion

Week 4: Cases in Institutionalization: The Old Boy Network and the Boston Police; Insitutional Racism in Urban Education

Week 5: Cultural Deviance: Origins and Impacts of Destructive Subcultures

Week 6: Cases in Cultural Deviance: Ramparts Division in Los Angeles; Dirty 30 in New York

Week 7: Structural Failure: When Organizational Design Creates Perverse Outcomes

Week 8: Cases in Structural Failure: Glass Ceiling in the Philadelphia Police Department: Tracking the “Other” to the Organizational “Slow-Track” to Nowhere

Week 9: Mid-Term Exam/Review

Week 10: Oversight Failure: Who Should Be Watching Organizations, Who Does and Does Not

Week 11: Cases in Oversight Failure: Kerner Commission, Knapp Commission, Mollen Commission, NYPD Civilian Complaint Review

Week 12: Organizational Sclerosis: Introspection+Self-Protection+Self-Delusion

Week 13: Cases in Organo-Sclerosis: Chief Williams, New Jersey State Police and Profiling

Week 14: Review and Student Presentations