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President Biden’s First 100 Days

William Resh (USC) with Christina Kinane (Yale) and Anne Joseph O’Connell (Stanford) will discuss some of the legal intricacies of the Vacancy Act, the strategic calculations that political actors might make regarding vacancies, and their impact on agency performance.

Resh publishes new article in premier Public Administration journal

by Justine Dodgen A new article co-authored by Bedrosian Faculty Affiliate Bill Resh was accepted into the  Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory. The article, entitled “A Systems Theory Approach to Innovation Implementation: Why Organizational Location Matters,” examines how the “success” of adopted innovations depends on both the source of innovation and the organizational Read more…

Government 2.0

by Peter Robertson

Government 2.0

The shift from the modern industrial era into the new, post-modern Information Age presents contemporary society with a rather significant paradox.  On one hand, there is fairly widespread agreement that the governmental apparatus established to implement public policies – the bureaucracy – is not very efficient or effective.  On the other, there is equally widespread belief that bureaucracy is necessary in order to successfully implement those policies.  We are stuck in something of a love/hate, “can’t live with it, can’t live without it” dilemma when it comes to the presence of the large bureaucratic systems, at all levels of government, that are critical to the actual delivery of services that constitute the ultimate operationalization of legislative dictates.

This paradox is not new, although the dilemma it presents has become more pressing as the societal transition into a new era proceeds.  Significant backlash to the dysfunctional features of bureaucracy emerged as early as the 1950s, when proponents of a more humanistic approach to organizational design began articulating how bureaucratic structures and processes could be revised to take into account the higher-order needs (i.e., self-esteem and self-actualization, in Maslow’s hierarchy) of the people working in bureaucratic organizations.  To a considerable extent, the slow but steady evolution of this organizational form since that time has reflected the gradual integration of some of those ideas into our collective understanding about the best ways to manage organizations.  These changes have been further stimulated by the dynamics of globalization, the diffusion of information/communication technology, and the differences among succeeding generations of workers.  Taken together, the reforms over the last half-century can be seen as leading to a transformation in the bureaucratic organizational form itself, as it evolves into a new form more appropriate for the demands of a new era. (more…)

William Resh: New article in Presidential Studies Quarterly

Resh, William G. Appointee–Careerist Relations in the Presidential Transition of 2008?2009. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 12/2014, Volume 44, Issue 4. Abstract This research takes a different approach from most studies of presidential transitions by examining transition preparations from the unique perspective of the career bureaucrats that provide a critical connection between transitions and Read more…

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