Introduction to Public Administration--PAD 700--Fall 2000

Professor Patrick O’Hara Professor Judy-Lynne Peters

3504 N Suite (3501) 3520 N

212-237-8086/610-286-7163 212-237-8071

patohara@email.jjay.cuny.edu jlpeters@email.jjay.cuny.edu

Course URL:http://jjconline.jjay.cuny.edu

Goals: The goal of this course is to introduce students to public administration as a field of practice and as an academic discipline. This first course in the Master of Public Administration program is also designed to insure that every student engages the skills, protocols, and communication methods--both written and oral--essential to success in the program. Completing this course with B or better means that students have demonstrated the capabilities and fundamental understanding necessary for success in the remainder of the MPA program. Failure to achieve a grade of B in this course, therefore, may result in dismissal from the MPA Program.

Overview: This course is designed to be challenging, stressing the development and application of written and oral communications skills, research methods, and simple mathematical calculations in the context of the public administration discipline. Written homework will be assigned most weeks, requiring students to engage with and synthesize assigned readings prior to each class. Students will be held responsible for completing each week’s written assignment prior to class and submitting the assignment in class. All homework should be typed or neatly handwritten, double-spaced, and carefully proofread. All homework will be graded for presentation (grammar, spelling, sentence construction), clarity (the degree to which the assignment accurately and clearly communicates with the reader), and substance (the student's understanding of the materials upon which the assignment is based). Late submissions will, without exception, be penalized. In addition, failure to do each week’s assignment will greatly increase the likelihood of low grades on tests and classroom participation. Homework assignments are directly linked to each week's class discussion. Questions on the midterm and final examinations are drawn directly from the homework assignments. Logical, well-organized, clearly written homework submissions are your foundation for success in this course.

One homework question (Week 12, #2) requires students to apply basic mathematical skills. As with all homework, students are expected to engage fully before class with this Week 12 assignment, Two "research skill exercises" require students to demonstrate their ability to utilize library resources, and conduct a simple search on the Internet. The library assignment--consisting of an annotated bibliography of no less than five scholarly articles on a single topic--is due at the Week 10 class. By the Week 11 class, students are to submit, by E-Mail to the instructor, electronic hotlinks for at least 12 articles from the World Wide Web relating to a student-selected topic related to public administration. The library assignment and the Internet exercise are best done over several weeks rather than immediately before the due date.

Term Paper: The homework for weeks 5 and 9 consist of 6 "organizational analysis" questions. Your answers to these questions must all focus on a single organization. This organization must be the student's place of employment unless the instructor approves an alternative organization. The answers to these questions form the basis for your term paper, due at the Week 13 class. In this paper, the student consolidates and organizes his/her several answers, and the instructor's feedback on those answers, into a single analysis of management issues faced by his or her organization. Students are expected to draw upon the course textbook as well as other sources (organization charts, agency reports and budgets) to develop their papers. A "Frequently Asked Term Paper Questions" page is found at http://web.jjay.cuny.edu/~phara/TermPaperFAQ.htm.

Midterm (Week 8) and Final Exams (Week 15): Each exam will consist of essay questions based on the weekly questions in this syllabus. An essay answer consists of (1) the relevant factual information and (2) an extended discussion that shows the student understands and can apply the "facts" to real world circumstances. The instructors' detailed discussion on constructing an essay answer can be found at http://web.jjay.cuny.edu/~phara/EssayAnswerJJ.htm Read this discussion to better understand what your professors will expect on your examinations. Exams will be graded on scale of 100; clarity and grammatical correctness will affect your grade.

Denhardt, Robert. Public Administration: An Action Orientation. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1998. (You must have this book before week 2.)

Stinebricker, Bruce (ed.). Annual Editions: State and Local Government. Guilford, CT: Dushkin McGraw Hill, 2000. (You must have this book before week 2.)

Westbrook, Paul. Math Smart for Business: Essentials of Managerial Finance. New York: Random House, 1997. (This book is optional but highly recommended as an MPA Program resource for students brushing up on long-unused math skills.)

Shafritz, Jay. Dictionary of American Government and Politics. New York: Harper and Collins, 1993. (This book is not required but it is highly recommended as a resource that will facilitate your progress in this course and throughout the MPA program.)

Goddin, Neil, and Erik Palma. Grammar Smart. New York: Princeton Review/Random House, 1993. (This book is not required but it is strongly recommended as a reference source to improve student writing, along with a good standard hardcover dictionary. Students who receive negative presentation and/or clarity grades are particularly encouraged to obtain this book and use it.)

Students should also obtain a copy of the APA guide from the college library as soon as possible, and use it as a reference in all citations of course material. You may also go the Library Web Page to access the APA guide. (http://www.lib.jjay.cuny.edu/research.html) Methods of Assessment: You will be assessed on your ability to engage with and synthesize assigned readings, as evidenced by the substantive content of your weekly homework assignments, your performance on exams, your classroom participation and the quality of your term paper. Class participation grades are based on attendance (including lateness) as well as on how well each student helps the class understand and amplify assigned readings. All written assignments are graded for communications skills, as evidenced by the organization, logic, clarity and grammatical correctness of each homework, exam and paper submission. Homework grading includes separate grades for presentation factors (see below). Grading on the annotated bibliography, internet exercise, and homework assignments requiring quantitative analysis assesses your demonstration of basic research and analytical skills needed for graduate study

Late Submission Policy : As a matter of fairness to students who submit papers and take exams on time, all late submissions and exam-takings are penalized. For papers (including homework assignments), grade calculations begin at 90 for material submitted within a week after the scheduled class, 80 thereafter. For exams, grade calculations begin at 90 for students who take an exam within a week after the scheduled date and class hour, at 80 thereafter. No exceptions will be made for any reason. Students who know they will be absent on specific dates should arrange to take exams and/or submit papers before that date. Students who are unexpectedly absent should arrange to deliver or e-mail their homework (send it as "plain text" in the E-Mail rather than as an attachment) to the instructor before the class in which the material is due. Please note that "incomplete" grades are by college policy reserved ONLY for students who, having a passing grade (B or better) on the majority of assignments and prospects of a passing grade in the course, are prevented from completing one or more final assignments by circumstances beyond their control. The instructors will not entertain incomplete requests from students whose grade, including late penalties, projects to a B- or lower.

Course Web Pages: Professor O’Hara (http://web.jjay.cuny.edu/~phara/) and Professor Peters (http://web.jjay.cuny.edu/~jlpeters/html/pad_700.html) have web pages to provide additional information to their classes. All students should feel free to browse either page. This information is meant to augment, not substitute, for the readings assigned each week. Students who want to sharpen their writing skills can visit: http://webster.commnet.edu/hp/pages/darling. For help on APA documentation, visit http://juno.concordia.ca/faqs/apalynx.html

Homework Grading: Each homework submission, except the internet/bibliography exercises, will receive three marks (e.g., 85/80/90). The first mark will assess written presentation—grammar, spelling, and sentence construction. The second mark will assess clarity—did you present your points in a way that enabled the reader to clearly understand what you meant. The third mark will assess your application of the materials from the readings—did you understand the key points, did you apply those points to effectively analyze the issues. These exercises are designed to enhance your study and presentational skills. Your work will be graded and detailed feedback will be given on the assumption that you have made your best effort. To learn about Prof. O'Hara's feedback codes, go to http://web.jjay.cuny.edu/~phara/Grammargrades.htm

The three marks will range from 60 to 95 (in 5 point increments). Grades of 90 or 95 (equivalent to A- to A) indicate very good/superior performance. Grades of 80 or 85 (equivalent to B to B+) indicate acceptable/good performance. Students should work to improve such grades. Grades of 70 or 75 (equivalent to C to C+) indicate seriously deficient/deficient performance. The student must improve to achieve a "B" or better in the course. Grades of 60/65 indicate failing levels of effort and/or performance. Weak grades on early homework assignments signal that students must improve the quality of their work. Each homework grade will be the average of the three components, and the homework grade for the semester will be an average of all submissions. However, students whose homework grades improve significantly over the course of the semester will have additional weight given to later submissions.

Midterm examination 20% Homework submissions 20%

Final examination 20% Internet submission 10%

Term paper 20% Class participation 5%

Library research submission 5%

Note 1: The principal class learning mode is a dialogue relating to the issues raised by each of the weekly questions. Your written answers to weekly questions are a prerequisite for effective class participation.

Note 2: With the exception of Weeks 10 and 11, weekly readings are anchored by chapters or chapter parts from the Denhardt text. All non-Denhardt readings are from the Annual Editions reader and are identified as "Article 4", "Article 28, 29,31." Web sites are identified by the "http://" or "www" format. Students should browse the sites listed week by week in the syllabus in order to broaden their understanding of the subject matter. Additional web sites may be found in Denhardt and in "Annual Editions."

Note 3: To adjust for holidays, the Monday class will meet on Tuesday the week of October 10th and the class regularly scheduled for Tuesday will not meet that week. The Thursday class will not meet on November 23rd, Thanksgiving Day. Please note these dates so that assignments can be submitted when due.

Week 1 Course Introduction

Student survey; course introduction, participant expectations

1. Because public administration does business in a necessarily political environment, contradictory demands usually confront agency managers. Agency operations are supposed to be both efficient and responsive. The agency manager is supposed to be an expert in administration but can easily lose his/her job by misreading the politics in the community/constituencies served by the agency. First, carefully define each of the italicized words. Then, using real life examples, show how efficiency and responsiveness clash. Then, again using real life examples, show how politics can affect the administration of a program.
2. List, side by side, the rules for effective writing and the rules for effective speaking. Analyze the similarities, and the differences. Then list, side by side, the rules for effective listening and the secret weapons for organizational communications. Have you used "effective listening" techniques or the "secret weapons for organizational communications? Did they (or could they) work?

Read: Denhardt, Chapter 3; Articles 6, 44, 45

Read: Denhardt, Chapter 8

Assignment: Submit the answers to the questions below at Week5's class.

NOTE: These are the first three of the six questions whose answers are the foundation and structure of your term paper. The final three "building block" questions for the term paper are assigned in Week 9. Work hard on your answers; effort expended now saves you effort later. The first question is designed to elicit basic facts about the organization you will write about. The second question requires you to profile the culture of your organization. The third question requires you to consider the extent to which your organization possesses certain characteristics associated with successful organizations. Reading all of Chapter 8 carefully before you begin will help you to better address all of these questions. Remember: The organization you work for must be the subject of all your answers unless the instructor has given you explicit permission to select another organization.

1. You must, in no less than one typewritten page, describe your organization. What service(s) does it perform? For whom? To what larger organization (and/or jurisdiction) does your organization belong? Identify the CEO (or commissioner or whatever), as well as other important bosses between the CEO and your unit (an organization chart helps immensely here, but it may not for substituted for a narrative description). Approximately how big is the organization (in terms of personnel, dollars budgeted, quantity of services delivered)? Give any other information that you think will give the reader a good picture of your organization.
2. Assess the cultural personality of your organization using the organizational culture aspects developed by Edgar Schein (298). Your answer should address most, if not all, aspects in setting forth the key values and beliefs that bind the employees to each other and to the organization. When you perform this assessment, try hard to step outside your organization and your position. Act as a "detective-psychologist" profiling his/her subject. These two steps will best help you see things that you might--as a member of the culture--be blind to and will help keep your emotional reactivity to workplace issues from coloring your analysis.
3. Assess your organization in terms of each of Peters and Waterman’s "best company" characteristics, as described by Denhardt (300). In your assessment, consider how one or more aspects of the organizational culture you have analyzed helps or hinders the organization in achieving each "best company" standard.

Reading: Denhardt, Chapter 5, Articles 40 and 37.

This examination will consist of essay questions drawn entirely from questions that have appeared in this syllabus to date. All questions have an equal probability of appearing on the mid-term exams in the various PAD 700 classes. The instructors will not reduce the pool of eligible questions nor forecast what will appear on the exam. Students should read the instructors' discussion about constructing an essay answer, which can be found at http://web.jjay.cuny.edu/~phara/EssayAnswerJJ.htm.

NOTE: These are the last three "component questions" of your term paper. Remember to maintain your perspective as a "detective-analyst" standing outside your organization, except with respect to the last part of question 3.

1. Assess your organization in terms of its adherence to each of the steps to productivity improvement (342), giving examples of what your organization has done with respect to each step. If your organization has done little or nothing to implement a particular productivity improvement step, identify the barriers to implementation. Then, for each step that you identify as not fully realized, describe how you would (1) implement that step if no barriers existed and (2) deal with the barriers in order to make some progress towards more productivity.
2. Assess the degree to which your organization utilizes each of the incentive programs identified by Denhardt (335). For each incentive program, regardless of whether the organization uses it, identify (1) any barriers to implementation and (2) whether or not full implementation of the incentive program would enhance productivity improvement in your organization, and why.
3. Assess your chosen organization in terms FIVE of Denhardt's "burnout promoting" factors (357), giving concrete instances where each factor arises. Describe the steps the organization could and/or should take to alleviate each of the five stressors you have identified. Finally, what concrete steps could you take to minimize the stress that each of these conditions--which will not get better overnight--impose on YOU right now.

Read: Readings from Annual Editions Reader, listed below

Note: ALL of the policy articles in Weeks 10 and 11 must be read by each student. In addition, every student will be assigned one article from Week 10 and one article from Week 11. Students "assigned" to an article must know enough about the article/issue to lead/co-lead a class discussion on the topic. With two or more students assigned as experts on each article, a diversity of views is likely to enliven class discussion. A required question on the final exam will ask each student to (1) give a brief synopsis of one of their assigned "public policy" articles, (2) explain why the issue addressed by the article is important, (3) identify the decisions that the student thinks should be made about the issue and (4) provide reasons for the his or her decision choices.

Article 30 Can Cities Escape Political Isolation

Article 31 How to Save Our Shrinking Cities

Article 32 Suburban Myth

Article 33 Who Pays for Sprawl

Article 34 Levittown to Littleton: How the Suburbs Have Changed

Article 35 A Fair Share in Suburbia

Library Submission Due At Start of Week 10 Class: Submit an annotated bibliography of at least five articles on the same topic from a public administration or public policy journal from the John Jay or other CUNY library. In an annotated bibliography, each source is cited fully and properly in the APA style and is followed by a brief summary of the article's contents. Your submission will be assessed on the correctness of the citations, the clarity of the summations, and the relatedness of the articles collected. Students may choose to collect articles related to their public policy topic assigned from Week 10 or 11.

Read: Readings from Annual Editions Reader--See Week 10 Note

Article 46 New Ways of Education

Article 49 When Welfare Ends

Article 51 The Answer to Drunk Driving: Lower the Alcohol Limit?

Article 52 The Comeback of the Cops

Article 53 Making the Case for Graduated Driver Licensing

Article 54 Rescuing the Fire Department

Internet submission due: Submit to the instructor, via E-Mail, a list hot-linked web addresses of 12 or more articles on any single issue related to public administration or public policy (specific individuals are NOT issues). Your E-Mail submission must have a centered heading describing your topic, followed immediately below by your name, which should also be centered. Then, briefly explain why you chose the topic. Immediately below this explanation should be your list of hot-linked articles. Your e-mail must be sent before the start of Week 11's class in order to avoid late penalties.

Read: Chapter 7

Answer: The questions below, in writing, to submit at Week 12's class.

NOTE: Answering the questions below requires a careful, thorough reading of Chapter 12, which discusses various concepts and techniques required for deciding policy. Be especially sure to understand the distinction between outputs and outcomes.

1. Distinguish between process evaluation and outcome evaluation. In evaluating the MPA program, what factors would you measure in a process evaluation the program? Would you measure the same factors in an outcome evaluation? If not, explain why, and discuss what factors you think would be appropriate for an outcome evaluation.
2. Do case 3 (280) in Denhardt. Make a table that includes all relevant information given on alternative types of patrol. Decide which evaluation criterion or criteria are most important in evaluating the three types of patrol. Explain your choice. Then, analyze the data, and choose the type of patrol (or combination of patrols) that best suits your criteria. Explain your choice. Show all calculations that led to your decision.

Read: Denhardt, Chapter 11, page 386 to end

NOTE: These questions are not to be submitted in writing. Students, however, should be prepared to answer them in class. Also, for the "case study" question (3), answering each decision tree questions step-by-step (left to right) will help you think through the issues and facilitate your participation in class discussion.

1. What role or roles do you usually take on in work groups? Is this role comfortable for you? Is it beneficial to your career? Does it make a positive contribution to your work group’s performance?
2. Use Vroom and Yetton’s "Types of Management Decision Methods" (403) to determine the type of management decision you would use to address the following decision situation; then, assess the Vroom-Yetton model’s general utility for managers faced with difficult decisions: Your organization’s World Wide Web page has so far been tightly controlled by the Computer Resource Center. Because so many of the units in your organization want—and for organizational efficiency—need to be on the web, demand for a "piece of the page" has outstripped the Computer Resource Center’s ability to create new web page material. Most waiting units have personnel eager and able to create functional and adequate web page add-ons for their units. However, the Computer Resource Center director is adamant that this would lead to chaos in style and content. The director insists that two new web page designers be added to his staff to accomplish the needed expansion and maintain the pages in the future. The unit heads insist that their units get on the web now, with some unit heads pointedly remarking that they have had it with the center director’s tyranny. As agency head, you have decided to apply the Vroom-Yetton model to see the type or types of decision approaches to use.

Term Paper Due at the Start of Week 13 Class: Any papers delivered beyond this point will be assessed a penalty for lateness. This includes papers delivered at the end of the class by, or on behalf of, absent students and papers delivered after the class has begun by students who were not present at the outset of class.

Read: Denhardt, Chapter 4; Articles 9, 38 and 39

NOTE: These questions are not to be submitted in writing. Students, however, should be prepared to answer them in class.

1. Discuss three ethical problems public employees encounter. What steps can public employees take to deal with each of these problems?
2. List five steps an organization can take to help foster a more ethical climate. Does your organization do these things? If so, do they work? If your organization does not yet do these things, do you think they would work?
3. Using your analysis of the Annual Editions articles assigned this week, take and defend a position with respect to each of the following propositions:

Proposition 1: Lotteries are inequitable, deceptively advertised and immoral,

Proposition 2: Unlimited terms of office breed corrupt, unresponsive officials

.

This examination will consist of four essay questions drawn entirely from questions that have appeared from weeks 9 through 14 in this syllabus (with the exception of Question 3, Week 13). Each student will have to answer a required question related to one of the two "policy articles" assigned to the student for Weeks 10 and 11. With the exception of the required question, all questions have an equal probability of appearing on the final. The instructors will not reduce the pool of eligible questions nor forecast what will appear on the exam.