Public Bureaucracy (public + bureaucracy)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Urban Service Partnerships, ,Street-Level Bureaucrats' and Environmental Sanitation in Kumasi and Accra, Ghana: Coping with Organisational Change in the Public Bureaucracy

DEVELOPMENT POLICY REVIEW, Issue 1 2006
Richard Crook
This is an empirical case study of ,street-level' officials in a classic ,regulatory' public agency: the Environmental Health Department in Kumasi and Accra, Ghana, where privatisation and contracting-out of sanitary services have imposed new ways of working on Environmental Health Officers. Both internal and external organisational relationships are analysed to explain the extent to which these officers have adapted to more ,client-oriented' ways of working. Their positive organizational culture is credited with much of the positive results achieved, but was not sufficient to cope with the negative impact of politically protected privatisations on the officials' ability to enforce standards. Nor could it entirely overcome the deficiencies in training and incentive structures which should have accompanied the changes in service delivery. [source]


Spaces of Encounter: Public Bureaucracy and the Making of Client Identities

ETHOS, Issue 3 2010
Lauren J. Silver
I emphasize the material deficits, spatial barriers, and bureaucratic procedures that restrict the storylines clients and officials use to make sense of one another. This article is drawn from a two-year ethnographic study with African American young mothers (ages 16,20) under the custody of the child welfare system. I focus here on the experiences of one young mother and explore several scenarios in her struggle to obtain public housing. I argue that service deficits can be explained not by the commonly articulated narratives of client "shortcomings" but, rather, by the nature of the organizational and material conditions guiding exchanges between public service gatekeepers and young mothers. I suggest that this work advances narrative approaches to psychological anthropology by attending to the roles of social and material boundaries in framing the stories people can tell each other. [identity, adolescent mothers, public bureaucracy, service negotiation, narrative] [source]


Rent extraction, principal,agent relationships, and pricing strategies: vendor licensing during the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta

MANAGERIAL AND DECISION ECONOMICS, Issue 8 2001
Ralph C. Allen
Two-part pricing, price-discrimination, rent creation and extraction, principal,agent theory, and public choice perspectives on public bureaucracies are used to interpret a vendor-license marketing arrangement and controversy arising out of the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, GA. Containing features predicted by principal,agency theory, Atlanta's arrangement with its marketing agent was a response to the behavior of public bureaucracies and a low cost method of converting visitors' consumer surplus to rent, which could be extracted by the marketing agent and then by Atlanta. Atlanta's incentive to enforce vendor property rights was influenced by the nature of the game between Atlanta and prospective vendors. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Major Players: Bureaucracies In American Government

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW, Issue 1 2001
Herbert Kaufman
For more than 50 years, Herbert Kaufman has been an astute observer of public bureaucracies. In this essay, Kaufman draws on his extensive experience in explaining the role of public bureaucracies in the American political system. Kaufman was motivated to write the essay because of his concern that public bureaucracies are not given adequate attention in American government textbooks. We hope that PAR readers will use the essay to educate students and others about the important role of public bureaucracies in American government.,LDT [source]


Spaces of Encounter: Public Bureaucracy and the Making of Client Identities

ETHOS, Issue 3 2010
Lauren J. Silver
I emphasize the material deficits, spatial barriers, and bureaucratic procedures that restrict the storylines clients and officials use to make sense of one another. This article is drawn from a two-year ethnographic study with African American young mothers (ages 16,20) under the custody of the child welfare system. I focus here on the experiences of one young mother and explore several scenarios in her struggle to obtain public housing. I argue that service deficits can be explained not by the commonly articulated narratives of client "shortcomings" but, rather, by the nature of the organizational and material conditions guiding exchanges between public service gatekeepers and young mothers. I suggest that this work advances narrative approaches to psychological anthropology by attending to the roles of social and material boundaries in framing the stories people can tell each other. [identity, adolescent mothers, public bureaucracy, service negotiation, narrative] [source]