Administration & Society

Tragedy has two faces. It is a source of horror, shame, and grief. It is also the opportunity to reflect on the possibility of a different future and a different path for human social evolution. The tragedy of September 11th also provides the circumstances for considering how we might proceed once we have grieved and acknowledged our losses. It is respectful of the human condition to consider what we might learn from this horror and what new guiding principles we might set in motion because of it. A second even more compelling tragedy looms if we learn only how to better defend ourselves and not also how to create a more peaceful and democratic world from the ashes of our sorrow.

The literature of formal organizations holds that stories handed down by word of mouth are important for understanding prescribed behavior and attitudes in organizations. In this study, the author analyzes humorous stories told and retold in the U.S. Senate as a source for the inculcation of senate norms. The author asks, “Is it possible that by drawing on the oral tradition of telling humorous stories in the Senate, we can identify the same norms that Matthews identified in his pioneering study of senate folkways?” “Might these data point to the existence of still other norms?” This study suggests that stories passed along by the oral tradition are a source of useful data for understanding the informal processes in political institutions.

This article discusses the positive and negative aspects of “charitable choice.” Although the author challenges the validity of the “separation of Church and State” argument against charitable choice, perhaps the most popular argument against this concept is that it violates the separation of Church and State principles. On the other hand, the greatest value of the charitable choice concept is its inclusion of diversity and the resulting governmental responsiveness because of such diversity. The American public is becoming more diverse, and in turn, social issues concerning various communities are becoming more complex. In such an environment, a rich variety of inputs from diverse groups should be encouraged by public agencies. No one single entity (not government, education, or business) can solve all society problems alone. The WHOLE community—faith-based organizations, education, and public and private agencies, together—must all play a role in finding solutions and committing to action.

Two distinct approaches have been proposed for tackling bureaucratic inefficiency and insensitivity. One replaces political control and government supply with citizen/consumer sovereignty and market forces. The other supports greater citizen involvement in public decision making. But market forces and citizen participation can be mutually reinforcing. The author shows this by comparing the practices of charter schools and traditional public schools. Charter schools are shown to provide opportunities for yoking citizen voice with consumer choice. As such, they create spaces where deliberative democracy might be encouraged and they present organizational models that could inform other areas of public service delivery.

In his major works, Michel Foucault explored ways in which humans have been made subjects throughout history—by virtue of direct governmental control and by virtue of a more subtle power: the construction of individual identity through a design of permissible behaviors and thoughts. Foucault also explored in his works a model of governance premised on a hypothesis of networked relations of people, communication, and capacities for change. This article argues that Foucault’s model of governance can be used to discover and develop strategies for deterring Internet fraud through the network of relations and capacities within the Internet community.

This article uses an ideal stereotypical approach to examine the process of the organizational failures. Private sector stereotypes of government organizations are used to generate hypotheses about when public organizations fail. The hypotheses are tested using 1,000 school districts in Texas. In direct contrast to the hypotheses, the extent of bureaucracy is not related to failures. The only consistent results are that failures are linked to multiple goals and more difficult tasks.