Chapter Three: The Anatomy of Public Organizations: Bureaucratic Power and Politics

Key Terms:

1.      Acronyms: words formed from the first (or first few) letters of a series of words

2.     Administrative Decentralization: the delegation of authority to subordinate levels within a department or agency

3.      Bureaucratic Ideology: a verbal image of that portion of the good society that is revelant to the functions of a particular bureau as well as the chief means of contstructing that portion.

4.     Groupthink: a mode of thinking within a cohesive group; a practice engaged in by people whose agreement seeking overrides a realistic appraisal of alternative courses of action. The drive for consensus at any costs suppresses dissent.

5.      GSPs: government service providers; entrepreneurial electronic communications ventures wherin one government sells its IT services to another.

6.     Ideology: a verbal image of the good society and chief means of construction such a society.

7.      Jargon: The specialized vocabulary and idioms of those who are in the same type of work or profession.

8.     Organizational culture: how an organization views its role in broader society; a complex of assumptions, attitudes, beliefs, norms and values that guide an organization.

9.     Place-based ownership models of economic enterprises: a variety of models or approaches used by local governments to promote economic development which are based on the local geographic locale of the enterprise.

10.   Political decentralization: the allocation of powers among territories or areas governed by subunits.

11.    Privatization: the process of returning to the private sector certain property or functions previously owned or performed by government.

12.   Reinventing government: the latest manifestation of the progressive tradition of continually improving government by tinkering with its operations—in this case, by emphasizing privatization.

13.   results-based budgeting: approach to the budgeting process that eschews incrementalism and scross the board cuts and instead asks fundamental questions about the priorities in governmental servies.

14.   Stovepipes: beltway jagon for the inability of different agencies to share information.

15.   Subsystem: a political alliance of an agency, related interest groups, and legislative committees that shares values and preferences in a particular area of public policy making.

Review Questions:

s1.      Compare and contrast internal versus external foundations of bureaucratic power. How does the nature of an organization’s structure influence its reliance or internal versus external sources of power?

2.      What roles does bureaucratic ideology play in an organization’s culture? How is a bureau’s ideology used to influence the external environment of an agency? How is it used to support internal cohesion?

           The role Bureaucratic ideology is helping bureaucracy cope with uncertainty by providing shortcuts to calculating which policies, procedures, and programs will be most acceptable to its external society. A bureaucratic ideology flows downward from the organization’s higher levels of formal authority and infuses its communication systems, both formal and informal. Top-level officials develop the ideology to provide an efficient means of communicating with both the external environment and bureau insiders. Higher management faces pressing needs to communicate to people who might not be disposed to listen carefully and well, especially when a crisis develops or an environment rapidly changes. The bureau ideology states agency goals in terms of the organization’s ultimate policy objectives in serving the broader society. The verbal images of the bureau’s ideology enable others- legislators, voters, officials with other relevant agencies, related interest group members, and even lower-level bureau members-to use the ideology in decision making without paying excessively high information costs.

3.      How do acronyms and jargon enhance bureaucratic expertise and power? How do they contribute to the problem of stovepiping?

           Acronyms help enhance bureaucratic expertise and power through shortcuts and providing meaning to those familiar with them; but to those who do not know them, they can seem incoherent, incomprehensible, and occasionally outlandish. Jargon helps enhance bureaucratic ideology by creating new words carry certain value connotations.

4.      Compare and contrast an agency’s internal and external sources of values. Is value conflict the result of different values coming from internal versus external sources? Can value conflicts emerge within both internal and external sources?

           Yes, value conflicts can emerge because working with different people with different nationalities, religion, point of view about life, and the ways of doing and thinking in approaching things and idea.