JOURNAL OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS EDUCATION - naspaa

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Enhancing Professional Socialization Through the Metaphor of Tradition democracy to imagine egalitarian organizations for collective action, and cooperative marketplaces for economic exchange. However, this tradition is emergent and is largely normative, as it envisions a future state of social relationships that is based on nascent practices observed today. In this role, administrators act as stewards, or facilitators of egalitarian interaction among sovereign citizens, in pursuit of the common good. In essence, society becomes a fluid whole, wherein the political, economic, and civil spheres of social action are no longer evident as distinct sectors. Organizational Behavior and Theory In terms of theory and application, the three traditions offer a way to organize the various frames (Bolman & Deal, 1997)—or the various periods of organizational theory—in terms of administrator role, authority and scope of action, responsibility and accountability, and organizing style. The way that organizational structures and relationships are envisioned shifts dramatically from tradition to tradition, and offers varying views on organization and management concepts and behavior, as well as on application to the practice of human resources management. In the Constitutional tradition, people are considered to be self-interested beings who accept the constraints of the political system in exchange for the benefits that citizenship brings. Therefore, bureaucratic hierarchy is the most effective organizing style. On the one hand, it offers the methods of control needed to mitigate self-interest. On the other hand, such control is accepted because it is authorized by the political system. Here we find the orthodox or traditional approach to bureaucracy, in which authority is delegated via a deep hierarchical structure that carries accountability up through the ranks to the executive at the top of the pyramid. This structure is designed for a bureaucrat who is a servant to the representative form of government. The only discretionary action anticipated would be to conserve the agency itself and the regime values that it is bound to uphold. In the classical approach to organizational behavior, employees are somewhat objectified and passive within the mechanistic functions motivated by economic gain. In the Discretionary tradition, however, people are considered to be selfinterested beings who need very little constraint because liberal transactions of both economic and social types produce the most efficient and effective results. Furthermore, each individual is deemed sovereign and expectant of the fullest degree of liberty possible while maintaining social equilibrium. Therefore, organizations that are freed of inordinate controls are developed. Yet, because the administration still draws on the legitimacy of representative government, it cannot recommend doing away with organizational authority altogether. Therefore, organizations are redesigned to support empowered administrators and outsourcing to the market. 308 Journal of Public Affairs Education
Enhancing Professional Socialization Through the Metaphor of Tradition Here, we find the more common contemporary form of government, where permeable boundaries between political and administrative activities empower administrators, and thus require a flattened hierarchical organizing structure, as well as more empowered forms of responsibility to desirable outcomes. This arrangement supports a more entrepreneurial administrator, who holds delegated discretionary authority in the representative form of government. In this tradition, neo-classical and early humanistic approaches to organizational behavior come into play, along with contemporary structural approaches, leadership, and organizational power theories. In a certain sense, the Discretionary tradition represents the organizational reality that “administrative man” works within—a transitional form that is moving from the classic government agency toward governance networks. The Collaborative tradition draws from direct democratic authority, and therefore it eliminates the need for hierarchical organization altogether. Instead, it calls for network forms of organizing, where all who are concerned or affected by a given issue will participate in addressing it. The only authority resides in the law of the situation (Follett, 1995). Once again, this is a demonstrably different approach to the organizational behavior and theory that is linked to many specific prescriptions for practice. Here, we find that the most advanced humanistic theories of organizational culture and systems theory combine with fluid network organizing structures to create fully empowered groups—with the caveat that they must operate under the same egalitarian rules as all other governance actors, including elected representatives and citizens. In essence, this emerging tradition requires a more direct form of democracy than our current representative system allows. Responsibility and accountability are ensured through responsiveness to those impacted by a decision or action. This arrangement calls for a facilitative and educative expert who must answer to fellow citizens as a co-producer of the common good. This arrangement also clearly challenges the status quo of representative democratic capitalism. Therefore, servant and transformational forms of leadership, and organizational change theories are prominent. Public Policy, Program Evaluation, and Applied Analysis Several listed topics have related competencies that are used throughout the various processes and activities involved in public policy. Similarly, several traditional elements have an important application to policy formulation, implementation, and evaluation. These include decision-making and problemsolving methods, as well as analysis techniques. In these areas, we might refer to practitioners as analysts with expertise in various forms of analysis and evaluation, problem-solving, and policy design. In the Constitutional tradition, the analyst puts her expertise to work specifically as guided by the bureaucratic hierarchy, and as dictated by the Journal of Public Affairs Education 309
Page 1 and 2: Summer 2009 Volume 15, No. 3 JPAE J
Page 3 and 4: EDITOR’S NOTE REFERENCES Henry, N
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Introduction of Government Process
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