The Professional Edge: Competencies in Public Service

The new context and character of public service - shifting values, entrepreneurship, information technology, multi-sector careers - require enhanced technical, ethical, and leadership skills. This concise and readable work describes what it means to be a consummate professional public servant. It sets standards for everyone who conducts the public's business and links them with performance management, human resource administration, and information technology skills. The authors identify the ethical foundations of public service and how to integrate them in practice. They also address individual leadership, what it means, and how it is based on a foundation of technical and ethical skills. Filled with original illustrative examples and case studies from government, the non-profit sector, and business, The Professional Edge is an ideal supplement for any introductory course in Public Administration or Ethics in the Public Service.

James S. Bowman is professor of public administration at the Askew School of Public Administration and Policy, Florida State University. His primary area is human resource management. Noted for his work in ethics and quality management, Dr. Bowman has also done research in environmental administration. He is author of nearly 100 journal articles and book chapters, as well as editor of five anthologies. Bowman co-wrote, with Evan M. Berman, Jonathan P. West, and Montgomery Van Wart, Human Resource Management: Paradoxes, Processes, and Problems in 2001. He is editor-in-chief of Public Integrity, a journal sponsored by the American Society for Public Administration, the International City/County Management Association, the Council on Governmental Ethics Laws, the Ethics Resource Center, and the Council on State Governments. Bowman also serves on the editorial boards of three other professional journals. Apast national Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration Fellow, as well as a Kellogg Foundation Fellow, he has experience in the military, in the civil service, and in business.

Jonathan P. West is professor of political science and director of the Graduate Public Administration program at the University of Miami. His research interests include human resource management, productivity, local government, and ethics. He has written six books and nearly seventy-five articles and book chapters. Quality Management Today: What Local Government Managers Need to Know (1995) and The Ethics Edge (1998) were published as part of the Practical Management Series by the International City/County Management Association. His co-authored book, titled American Politics and the Environment, was released in 2002. Dr. West is managing editor of Public Integrity and a member of the editorial board of two other professional journals. He has experience as a management analyst working for the Office of the Surgeon General, Department of the Army. He is a member of the American Political Association, the American Society for Public Administration, the Western Political Science Association, and the Southern Political Science Association.

Evan M. Berman is associate professor in the Department of Public Administration at the University of Central Florida. He is active in the American Society for Public Administration and was the 1998-2000 chair of the Section of Personnel and Labor Relations. He has written more than seventy-five publications in human resource management, productivity, ethics, and local government. Berman has served on the editorial boards of Public Administration Review and the Review of Public Personnel Administration. His books include Productivity in Public and Nonprofit Organizations (1998) and Public Sector Performance (1999). Berman has been a policy analyst with the National Science Foundation and works with numerous local jurisdictions on matters of team building, productivity improvement, strategic planning, and citizen participation.

Montgomery Van Wart is associate professor and head of the Department of Public Administration at the University of Central Florida. He co-wrote The Handbook of Training and Development for the Public Sector (1994) and wrote Changing Public Sector Values (1998). His research on public sector training and development, organization change, ethics, comparative public administration, leadership, and productivity has appeared in major public administration journals.