Expert analysis of American governance challenges and recommendations for reform Two big ideas serve as the catalyst for the essays collected in this book. The first is the state of governance in the United States, which Americans variously perceive as broken, frustrating, and unresponsive. Editor James Perry observes in his Introduction that this perception is rooted in three simultaneous developments: government's failure to perform basic tasks that once were taken for granted, an accelerating pace of change that quickly makes past standards of performance antiquated, and a dearth of intellectual capital that generate the capacity to bridge the gulf between expectations and performance. The second idea hearkens back to the Progressive era, when Americans revealed themselves to be committed to better administration of their government at all levels—federal, state, and local. These two ideas—the diminishing capacity for effective governance and Americans' expectations for reform—are veering in opposite directions. Contributors to Public Service and Good Governance for the Twenty-First Century explore these central ideas by addressing such questions as: what is the state of government today? Can future disruptions of governance and public service be anticipated? What forms of government will emerge from the past and what institutions and structures will be needed to meet future challenges? And lastly, and perhaps most importantly, what knowledge, skills, and abilities will need to be fostered for tomorrow's civil servants to lead and execute effectively? Public Service and Good Governance for the Twenty-First Century offers recommendations for bending the trajectories of governance capacity and reform expectations toward convergence, including reversing the trend of administrative disinvestment, developing talent for public leadership through higher education, creating a federal civil service to meet future needs, and rebuilding bipartisanship so that the sweeping changes needed to restore good government become possible. Contributors: Sheila Bair, William W. Bradley, John J. DiIulio, Jr., Angela Evans, Francis Fukuyama, Donald F. Kettl, Ramayya Krishnan, Paul C. Light, Shelley Metzenbaum, Norman J. Ornstein, James L. Perry, Norma M. Riccucci, Paul R. Verkuil, Paul A. Volcker.

"During the last three decades, social and behavioral scientists have intensively studied the motivating power of public service. The research focuses on varied concepts-public service motivation, altruism, and prosocial motivation and behavior. This research has produced a critical mass of new knowledge for transforming the motivation of public employees, civil service policies and management practices. The book is the first to look systematically across the different streams of other-oriented motivation research. It is also the first to synthesize research across applied questions that public organizations and their leaders confront, including: recruiting and selecting staff who will ethically and competently pursue public service; designing public work to leverage its meaningfulness; creating work environments that support intrinsically-motivated, prosocial behavior; compensating and rewarding employees to energize and sustain public service; socializing employees for public service missions and values; and leading employees for causes great than themselves"--

Are public servants self-interested, or motivated by a sense of duty and commitment far above what we would expect given their often modest compensation and frequent public criticism? This book looks at research on this and related questions in assessing the current state of our scientific knowledge.

A guide to the nature, purpose, and place of public service television within a multi-platform, multichannel ecology. Television is on the verge of both decline and rebirth. Vast technological change has brought about financial uncertainty as well as new creative possibilities for producers, distributors, and viewers. This volume from Goldsmiths Press examines not only the unexpected resilience of TV as cultural pastime and aesthetic practice but also the prospects for public service television in a digital, multichannel ecology. The proliferation of platforms from Amazon and Netflix to YouTube and the vlogosphere means intense competition for audiences traditionally dominated by legacy broadcasters. Public service broadcasters—whether the BBC, the German ARD, or the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation—are particularly vulnerable to this volatility. Born in the more stable political and cultural conditions of the twentieth century, they face a range of pressures on their revenue, their remits, and indeed their very futures. This book reflects on the issues raised in Lord Puttnam's 2016 Public Service TV Inquiry Report, with contributions from leading broadcasters, academics, and regulators. With resonance for students, professionals, and consumers with a stake in British media, it serves both as historical record and as a look at the future of television in an on-demand age. Contributors include Tess Alps, Patrick Barwise, James Bennett, Georgie Born, Natasha Cox, Gunn Enli, Des Freedman, Vana Goblot, David Hendy, Jennifer Holt, Amanda D. Lotz, Sarita Malik, Matthew Powers, Lord Puttnam, Trine Syvertsen, Jon Thoday, Mark Thompson

This widely praised work provides a framework for the many voices calling for the reaffirmation of democratic values, citizenship, and service in the public interest. The expanded edition includes an all-new chapter that addresses the practical issues of applying these ideals in actual, real-life situations. "The New Public Service, Expanded Edition" is organized around a set of seven core principles: serve citizens, not customers; seek the public interest; value citizenship and public service above entrepreneurship; think strategically, act democratically; recognize that accountability isn't simple; serve, rather than steer; and value people, not just productivity. The book asks us to think carefully and critically about what public service is, why it is important, and what values ought to guide what we do and how we do it. It celebrates what is distinctive, important and meaningful about public service and considers how we might better live up to those ideals and values. All students and serious practitioners in public administration and public policy should read this book. While debates about public policy issues will surely continue, this compact, clearly written volume provides an important framework for public service based on and fully integrated with citizen discourse and the public interest.

Public service values are too rarely discussed in public administration courses and scholarship, despite recent research demonstrating the importance of these values in the daily decision making processes of public service professionals. A discussion of these very tenets and their relevance to core public functions, as well as which areas might elicit value conflicts for public professionals, is central to any comprehensive understanding of budget and finance, human resource management, and strategic planning in the public sector. Public Service Values is written specifically for graduate and undergraduate courses in public administration, wherever a discussion of public service ideals might enrich the learning experience and offer students a better understanding of daily practice. Exploring the meaning and application of specific values, such as Neutrality, Efficiency, Accountability, Public Service, and Public Interest, provides students and future professionals with a ‘workplace toolkit’ for the ethical delivery of public services. Well-grounded in scholarly literature and with a relentless focus on the public service professional, Public Service Values highlights the importance of values in professional life and encourages a more self-aware and reflective public practice. Case studies to stimulate reflection are interwoven throughout the book and application to practice is cemented in a final section devoted to value themes in professional life as well as a chapter dedicated to holding oneself accountable. The result is a book that challenges us to embrace the necessity of public service values in our public affairs curricula and that asks the important questions current public service professionals should make a habit of routinely applying in their daily decision making.

Essays, dialogues, and art projects that illuminate the changing role of art as it responds to radical economic, political, and global shifts. How should we understand the purpose of publicly engaged art in the twenty-first century, when the very term “public art” is largely insufficient to describe such practices? Concepts such as “new genre public art,” “social practice,” or “socially engaged art” may imply a synergy between the role of art and the role of government in providing social services. Yet the arts and social services differ crucially in terms of their methods and metrics. Socially engaged artists need not be aligned (and may often be opposed) to the public sector and to institutionalized systems. In many countries, structures of democratic governance and public responsibility are shifting, eroding, and being remade in profound ways—driven by radical economic, political, and global forces. According to what terms and through what means can art engage with these changes? This volume gathers essays, dialogues, and art projects—some previously published and some newly commissioned—to illuminate the ways the arts shape and reshape a rapidly changing social and governmental landscape. An artist portfolio section presents original statements and projects by some of the key figures grappling with these ideas.

Why Public Service Matters conveys the importance, purpose, and nobility of a career as a civil servant in the United States. It does so, however, with an unflinching eye on the realpolitik that drives public administration in America's "compensatory state" and on the pitfalls of reformers' focus on bureaucratic, rather than democratic, administration. The book links the nation's ability to handle contemporary policy problems with the strategic, tactical, and normative quality of public management. In doing so, it offers newcomers a rare, concise, and accessible overview of the field. Readers will gain an appreciation for the challenges, choices, and opportunities facing public managers as they help advance a sense of common purpose informed by democratic constitutional values in twenty-first century America.

Public service professionals government officials, those in the legal system, first responders, and investigators confront ethical issues every day. In an environment where each decision can mean the difference between life and death or freedom and imprisonment, deciding on an ethical course of action can pose challenges to even the most season

How can management make a meaningful contribution to the performance of public services? Around the world, public organizations face increasingly complex social issues related to globalization, migration, health crises, national security, and climate change. To meet these challenges, we need a better understanding of what managing for public service performance means, and what it requires from public managers and public servants. This book takes a multidisciplinary, critical, and context-sensitive approach to address such questions. Through a comparative review of public administration research, it examines a variety of management aspects such as leadership behavior, human resource management, performance, diversity, and change management. It also critically reflects on how the context of the public sector affects the management-performance relationship in democratic societies, as well as the influence of numerous stakeholders and their beliefs about the nature and purpose of public service. By clarifying conceptual issues and taking a theoretical and evidence-based approach to the relationships between management and performance, this book offers new directions for research and a framework to help improve public services in practice.