Public Management: A Three-Dimensional Approach

Managing in the public sector entails an understanding of the interaction between three distinct dimensions―administrative structures and processes, organizations and their cultures, and the skills and values of individual managers. Public managers must produce results that citizens and their representatives expect from their government while balancing these concerns within a constitutional scheme of governance.

In Public Management, authors Carolyn J. Hill and Laurence E. Lynn, Jr. show that constructing critical analyses and persuasive arguments is the principal tool for effectively managing in three dimensions. Students learn how to analyze and explain managerial strategies and decisions, critically assessing real world case studies and building their own arguments.

Four unique features further the book’s approach and reinforce practical learning:

• Rule of Law boxes showcase how public managers are affected by statutes, regulations, and court decisions.
• Concepts in Action boxes show how sense-making, deliberation and decision making are common features in everday news stories, opinion pieces, and government reports.
• How the World Works boxes aptly illustrate how human nature creates conundrums, irony, and surprise in the practice of public management―a reminder that theory cannot fully explain the variety and complexity of human and organizational behavior.
• Analysis and Argument sections at the end of every chapter guide students in case analysis and help them build the elements of an argument (Claim, Reason, Evidence, Warrant, Acknowledgment and Response).

Carolyn J. Hill is associate professor of public policy at the McCourt School of Public Policy. She is also a senior fellow at MDRC. Her research focuses on whether and why public programs are effective, and how they can be improved. Her work has been published in the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, the Review of Economics and Statistics, and other journals. With Laurence E. Lynn, Jr. and Carolyn J. Heinrich, Hill is the author of Improving Governance: A New Logic for Empirical Research.

Laurence E. Lynn, Jr. is Sydney Stein, Jr. Professor of Public Management Emeritus at the University of Chicago. His research focuses on governance, public administration, and public management. His books include Public Management as Art, Science and Profession, Madison’s Managers: Public Admiinistration and the Constitution (with Anthony M. Bertelli), and Public Management: Old and New, and he is co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Public Management. He has received the John Gaus lectureship award from the American Political Science Association, the Dwight Waldo and Paul Van Riper awards from the American Society for Public Administration, and the H. George Frederickson Award from the Public Management Research Association.