Public Management in an Interconnected World: Essays in the Minnowbrook Tradition

This collection of essays seeks to improve decision making among public administrators who operate organizations in an increasingly complex and interdependent world. Contributors with different expertise examine the theories and experience of public management in an effort to find ways to deal more effectively with the complex programs, policies, and problems confronting academecians and professionals in all the social and behavioral sciences.

This entirely new analysis builds upon the thinking of two Minnowbrook conferences that have studied basic theory and decision making in public administration. An introduction looks back toward these conferences, and an epilogue looks ahead. The first part of the work finds a new multiversalist paradigm by studying the implications of interconnectedness for public managers. The second part of the book analyzes the reality and other challenges to the emergence of new public administration practice. Interconnectness, democracy, and epistemology is the subject of the third part of this study of major new directions in the field. A lengthy bibliography completes the overview that the book offers.

MARY TIMNEY BAILEY is Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Master of Public Administration Program at the University of Cincinnati. She specializes in public administration theory and environmental policy. Her work has appeared in Public Administration Review, Public Productivity Review, and New Directions in Public Administration Research.

RICHARD T. MAYER is Visiting Professor of Public Affairs at George Mason University and managing editor of Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory. He coedited with H. George Frederickson, the symposium Minnowbrook II: Changing Epochs of Public Administration in Public Administration Review.