Table of Contents
2002
Volume Seven, Number 2
Single Articles
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E-mail: Does it Need to Be Managed? Can it be Managed?
Bruce Rocheleau, EditorAlthough e-mail is the most commonly used application, very little has been written concerning its impact on public organizations. This article reviews the existing literature and outlines the major aspects of e-mail that need the attention of public managers. Much of the existing literature has taken place in laboratories and focused on issues such as “flaming” and deindividuation and is not useful for learning how to manage e-mail in everyday organizations. For example, there is very little evidence of flaming in organizational e-mail. Another major body of literature has explored the hypotheses of media richness theory (MRT) which views e-mail as a “lean” medium compared with richer “face-to-face” (FTF) communication. However, if people know one another well, they may be able to read very much into e-mail and thus make it a richer medium. MRT hypothesizes that managers will be more effective if they use the appropriate medium for the action they want to take. But evidence from the few studies that exist indicates that managers are now using e-mail for even the most sensitive of communications. The distinguishing characteristic of e-mail is that it creates a detailed digital record unlike everyday FTF and phone communication. The existence of an unprotected digital record has legal implications that are explored in the paper. The paper also discusses how employees are now using e-mail strategically in order to document actions and, sometimes, point the finger at other employees whom they feel have not performed well. Some tentative suggestions for managers are outlined for each of these issues.
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Administrative Reform in the Federal Government: Understanding the Search for Private Sector Management
Douglas A. BrookAdministrative reform movements in American government are often characterized by the idea that government can or should be run like a business. This has resulted in repeated efforts to apply private sector business management practices to public administration. These reforms appear to assume that private and public organizations are similar and that management is generic. The literature included in this annotated bibliography contains comparisons of public and private organizations and examinations of the sectoral transferability of management practices. The bibliography also explores some current themes in public and private management reform where private sector practices are often suggested for the public sector: personnel administration and financial management. It also includes a section on privatization – private sector organizations performing public sector work.
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The Ambiguity of Results: Assessments of the New Public Management
B. Douglas SkelleyThis article embraces Guy Peters’ suggestion that those assessing organizational reform must distinguish between the theories of reform used by organizational members and the theories of reform used by social scientists in their efforts to understand reform phenomena. An examination of the findings of recent assessments of the New Public Management is guided by Peters’ categories of reform models. This study concludes that the institutional perspective may offer the most promise in understanding the ambiguous results of these appraisals. This ambiguity, however, should be neither surprising nor dismaying, for reforms are likely to have cumulative effects that make managerial and institutional differences over time.
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