journal of public affairs education - NASPAA *The Global Standard ...

Enhancing Professional Socialization Through the Metaphor of TraditionHere, we find the more common contemporary form of government, wherepermeable boundaries between political and administrative activities empoweradministrators, and thus require a flattened hierarchical organizing structure, aswell as more empowered forms of responsibility to desirable outcomes. Thisarrangement supports a more entrepreneurial administrator, who holdsdelegated discretionary authority in the representative form of government. Inthis tradition, neo-classical and early humanistic approaches to organizationalbehavior come into play, along with contemporary structural approaches,leadership, and organizational power theories. In a certain sense, theDiscretionary tradition represents the organizational reality that “administrativeman” works within—a transitional form that is moving from the classicgovernment agency toward governance networks.The Collaborative tradition draws from direct democratic authority, andtherefore it eliminates the need for hierarchical organization altogether. Instead,it calls for network forms of organizing, where all who are concerned oraffected by a given issue will participate in addressing it. The only authorityresides in the law of the situation (Follett, 1995). Once again, this is ademonstrably different approach to the organizational behavior and theory thatis linked to many specific prescriptions for practice. Here, we find that themost advanced humanistic theories of organizational culture and systemstheory combine with fluid network organizing structures to create fullyempowered groups—with the caveat that they must operate under the sameegalitarian rules as all other governance actors, including elected representativesand citizens. In essence, this emerging tradition requires a more direct form ofdemocracy than our current representative system allows. Responsibility andaccountability are ensured through responsiveness to those impacted by adecision or action. This arrangement calls for a facilitative and educative expertwho must answer to fellow citizens as a co-producer of the common good. Thisarrangement also clearly challenges the status quo of representative democraticcapitalism. Therefore, servant and transformational forms of leadership, andorganizational change theories are prominent.Public Policy, Program Evaluation, and Applied AnalysisSeveral listed topics have related competencies that are used throughout thevarious processes and activities involved in public policy. Similarly, severaltraditional elements have an important application to policy formulation,implementation, and evaluation. These include decision-making and problemsolvingmethods, as well as analysis techniques. In these areas, we might refer topractitioners as analysts with expertise in various forms of analysis andevaluation, problem-solving, and policy design.In the Constitutional tradition, the analyst puts her expertise to workspecifically as guided by the bureaucratic hierarchy, and as dictated by theJournal of Public Affairs Education 309