Syllabus for PPA 240A Public Management - Section 1 - Fall 2005
California State University, Sacramento
Professor Robert Waste
Office Location, Phone: 3036 Tahoe Hall - 916/278-4944 Cell # 804-8185
Email address: wasterj@csus.edu
Office Hours: Mondays 3:00 - 5:00 and by appointment
Seminar Location & Time:  (Section 1) Monday 6-8:50 PM in 1032 Mendocino Hall

Course Description:              
The purpose of this course is to teach students about public organizations and the challenges facing contemporary public managers. We will learn about the evolution of the field of public administration and public policy, and how the New Public Administration and Reinventing Government movements have affected public management and spawned counter-movements. We will also examine how public managers use performance measurement and benchmarking to measure and achieve results in the public sector. There will be a specific focus on state and local government in California, and on how public managers in these sectors manage organization change, solve problems and increase agency/team cohesion. In examining these topics, we will return repeatedly to the closely related topics of leadership and ethics in public sector policy and administration, and to the assumptions about organizational behavior that are embedded in the literature on organizational theory from the classics to the present.

Learning Objectives: Nine Management Skill Modules
My larger "formative" learning objectives for PPA 240A are described in the course description above. In addition, the course has several discrete learning objectives, including the expectation that students will master the following nine skill modules:

1. Familiarity with the “Reinvention Tradition in public management.
2. Familiarity with Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and The 8^th Habit.
3.  Familiarity with Osborne & Gaebler’s 36 public sector reinvention strategies.
4. Familiarity with quasi-experimental evaluation design, summative and formative evaluation approaches, CAM Analysis, and the Bardach eight-fold path to policy analysis.
5. Familiarity with active listening and HR intervention strategies.
6. Familiarity with strategies for achieving effective management & transformational leadership.
7. Familiarity with strategies such as "Catalytic Mechanisms" and increased “Market Space” to increase public value in public agencies.
8. Familiarity with organization theory as it applies to the public sector. Subjects to be examined include: the origin of the concept of bureaucracy; the origin of the field of public sector administration; the life cycle of public agencies; differences between vertical and horizontal communication; early leadership and management theories; and contemporary theories of org behavior and human relations in public agencies. 
9. Familiarity with the complexity and importance of administrative ethics (Week 14)

Grades: Grades are based on the following assignments

Attendance Policy:
I consider enrolling in this class to be a commitment to me and to your student colleagues to attend each class session. We all benefit from everyone’s contributions. It is not okay to miss class for any but the most unavoidable of reasons Excessive absences jeopardize successful completion of the course. In addition to "seat time," the quality of your participation in class discussions will be reflected in your grade.

Seminar Format:
This is not a lecture class. If you come expecting to be told what was covered in the readings, you will be disappointed. My job is to select interesting and useful readings, orient you to them by identifying key questions, and to guide the discussion. Your job is to read the material, think about it, and come prepared to share your ideas with your classmates. We have the tremendous advantage that many of you, like me, work in the public sector. In our class discussions we will relate, whenever possible, the theories and concepts from the readings to our workday experiences. Those of you who work in public or not-for-profit sector organizations (and, after discussing your case with the instructor, those of you who work in for-profit organizations) will have the opportunity to construct your assignments around issues of importance to you in your work. This includes writing memos applying three of the nine-skill learning modules listed above to your agency, writing a two term paper projects; one applying performance measurement to your agency or program, and one describing an Organizational Development (OD) intervention for an agency or program.

Required Books (Most are available in paperback editions):

1. Eugene Bardach, A Practical Guide for Policy Analysis: The Eightfold Path to More Effective Problem Solving (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House, 2000). We will be using a free Internet version of this book.

2. Stephen R. Covey, Seven Habits of Effective People  [Abridged] Audio Tape.  Available inexpensively at used bookstores, and at http://www.Amazon.com from $1.00 for used copies to $9.95 for a new copy. Trust me. It is important that you listen to rather than read this book, even if you have already read Seven Habits once or more times earlier in your professional career.

3. Stephen R. Covey, The 8^th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness (New York: Free Press, 2004).

4. Hal Rainey, Understanding and Managing Public Organizations.

Recommended Books:

5. Diana Hacker, A Pocket Style Manual, 3^rd Edition (Boston, MA: Bedford Books).

6. David Osborne & Ted Gaebler, Reinventing Government: How the Entrepreneurial Spirit is Transforming the Public Sector (New York: Penguin-Plume, 1993).

On Course Outline and Readings:

Policy/Program Intervention Tool Kit

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