Creating Effective Rules in Public Sector Organizations

Leisha DeHart Davis

ISBN 10: 1626164479 / ISBN 13: 9781626164475

Published by Georgetown University Press Jul 2017, 2017

About this Item

Neuware - Rules in public sector organizations are both indispensable and disliked. Rules direct an array of critical tasks such as managing employees, controlling public finances, and structuring interactions with citizens. Yet scholars and practitioners alike tend to focus on the consequences of bad rules, such as inefficiency, rigidity, or unintended consequences. This focus on bad rules overlooks the need to craft the right rules. This book provides a comprehensive portrait of rules in public organizations, and it explains the characteristics of beneficial rules that help public organizations function effectively, what the author calls 'green-tape.' Drawing on a decade of original research and interdisciplinary scholarship, DeHart-Davis builds a framework of three perspectives. The organizational perspective, which sees rules as a tool for achieving managerial goals and organizational functions; the individual perspective, which examines how rule design and implementation impact employees; and the behavioral perspective, which explores human responses to the intersection of the first two perspectives. The author uses this framework to analyze a local-government case study of non-union employee grievance policy. The book concludes with summarizing key findings for practitioners as well as suggesting directions for future research.

Seller Inventory # 9781626164475

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Creating Effective Rules in Public Sector Organizations
• Publisher: Georgetown University Press Jul 2017
• Publication Date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1626164479
• ISBN 13: 9781626164475
• Binding: Taschenbuch
• Condition: Neu

About this title

Synopsis

The creation of rules that govern processes or behavior is essential to any organization, but these rules are often maligned for creating inefficiencies. This book provides the first comprehensive portrait of rules in public organizations and seeks to find the balance between rules that create red tape and rules that help public organizations function effectively, what the author calls "green tape."

Drawing on a decade of original research and interdisciplinary scholarship, Leisha DeHart-Davis builds a framework of three perspectives on rules: the organizational perspective, which sees rules as a tool for achieving managerial goals and organizational functions; the individual perspective, which examines how rule design and implementation affect employees; and the behavioral perspective, which explores human responses to the intersection of the first two perspectives. The book then considers the effectiveness of rules, applying these perspectives to a case study of employee grievance policies in North Carolina local government. Finally, the book concludes by outlining five attributes of effective rules-green tape-to guide future rule creation in public organizations. It applies green tape principles to the Five-Second Rule, a crowd control policy Missouri police implemented in the wake of protests following the Michael Brown shooting. Government managers and scholars of public administration will benefit from DeHart-Davis's investigation and guidance.

About the Author

Leisha Dehart-Davis is an Albert and Gladys Coates Distinguished Term Associate Professor at the School of Government at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Her articles have appeared in the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Public Administration Review, International Public Management Journal, and elsewhere.