WINTER 2012 - National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and ...

Yahong Zhang, Robert Lee and Kaifeng Yang
for organizational management and community development. On the contrary,
our study, with a particular focus on managers’ role in policy making, does
not highly evaluate skills of community leadership. It instead underlines the
importance of two categories. The first is communication skills, especially the
skills of listening, compromising, and negotiation toward consensus building.
The second category is about managers’ professional expertise in budgeting and
financial management, information technologies, local government structure,
and analytical skills. The first category actually reflects how managers participate
in policy making, a sphere that is much different from the internal management
of public organization. The second category of skills indeed legitimates manager’s
participation in policy making because elected officials, who are not encumbered
by economic rationality and analysis skills, would otherwise make irrational
policies if the manager’s legislative assistant is not available.
Table 3.
Knowledge and Skills Ranked by Importance in Three Studies
For Administrative Responsibilities For Policy-Making
Responsibilities
— NASPAA (2006) Lazenby (2010) This Study
1st Ethics and integrity
2nd Decision making
/problem solving
3rd Communication
skills
202 Journal of Public Affairs Education
Ethics Communication skills
(listening, compromising,
and negotiating)
Community building Budgeting and
financial management
Human relations
(communication skills)
4th Leadership Personal traits (team
building, negotiation)
Information
technologies
Local government
structure
5th Teamwork IP communications Analytical and
research skills
While Vogelsang-Coombs and Miller (1999) find that communication skills,
particularly negotiation skills, are important for elected officials to make policies,
our study shows those skills are important for public managers to participate in
the policy-making process too. This is not surprising because policy making in
local government is a collective process that involves diverse groups and interests.
To “manage” in this political process, managers must possess communication
and negotiation skills. Nevertheless, public managers are different from elected
officials. Vogelsang-Coombs and Miller (1999) highlight elected officials’