Table of Contents

2003
 

Volume Eight, Number 1

Single Articles
    

1. Rethinking The Identity Of Public Administration: Interdisciplinary Reflections And Thoughts On Managerial Reconstruction
   Eran Vigoda

   Public administration is in a state of identity distress. Whereas for many years the questions of politics and policy were those which unconditionally ruled the discipline, at present public administration as a science, art, and profession is undergoing far-reaching transformations. Two major forces of rectification have increasingly augmented the conservative ones to create a more interdisciplinary orientation of the field. These are cultural and social inputs and organizational, managerial, and economical influences. This merger began many years ago, but only recently has it attained sufficient critical mass to direct the public sector through various necessary changes. This paper accordingly suggests a revision of the evolution of public administration in the modern era, and argues that interdisciplinary reflections may be beneficial for the healthy development of the field in the years to come. Based on relevant literature the paper explains how a multi-level, multi-method, and multi-system approach may revitalize our understanding of a scholarly domain that is currently in a state of some perplexity and in search of the way forward.
    

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2. The Multilevel Effect of Administration on Technical Output in Public Schools: A Cross-National Study of Managerial Behavior and Individual Performance
   Alexander W. Wiseman

   This cross-national analysis considers the influence of administrative performance accountability on technical output in public schools through the implementation of rigorous standards and administrative centralization. As a public and compulsory social institution in most nations, schools are among the most permeable public organizations in the world. This study suggests that school administrators follow legitimate models of managerial behavior, but that managerial behavior varies between and within school systems with different levels of administrative centralization. Using a three-level multivariate regression, this study finds evidence that variation in school administrators’ managerial behaviors has little consistent or significant influence on variation in the technical output of the organization. The evidence also suggests that models determined by degree of administrative centralization at the national system level add little to the influence of school administrators’ managerial behavior on the technical output of school organizations.
    

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