SYLLABUS
Political Science 420
(Public Management, spring 2016)
Instructor: Craig Curtis (Bradley Hall 486, 677-2492),
e-mail: rcc@fsmail.bradley.edu
Text: Berman, Evan, James S. Bowman, Jonathan P. West, and Montgomery
R. Van Wart. (2016 5th ed.) Human Resource
Management in Public Service: Paradoxes,
Processes, and Problems. Sage Publications.
(ISBN: 978-1-4833-4003-6).
Class Meeting
Information: M W 3:00 to 4:15 pm, Bradley 100
Instructor's Office Hours: Monday, Wednesday: 8:30 to 9:50 am, 2:00 to 2:50 pm,
Pre-Law office hours (Tuesday, Thursday: 8 to 11 am, Tuesday, 2 to 4 pm).
Description:
This course is designed to familiarize you with the basic issues and techniques
of public management. We will focus on the distinctive setting in which
public personnelists function and on the basic
philosophy which guides human resource managers in the public sector. We
will spend considerable time linking organization theory and organizational
behavior. We will also take a hard look at the techniques employed in the
completion of the tasks commonly faced by public human resources managers.
In short, this will be a course which is partly theoretical and partly
applied. After taking this course, you should understand better why
organizations function as they do, and be better prepared to work in the public
sector, should you choose to do so.
Grading:
The final Grade will be based on the following:
The final letter grade will be assigned according to the
following scale:
|
A 90-100% |
D 60-69% |
|
B 80-89% |
F below 60% |
|
C 70-79% |
|
Class
policies: All students are expected to come to class prepared to discuss
the reading material assigned for that week. Discussion is much more
fruitful as a way to explore the kind of material covered in this course than
lecture, and makes for more interesting class periods. There is no bad
time to ask a question, and there are no stupid questions. If you have
any questions about the reading material, or something you read about or heard
about in the news or on the job, I would appreciate it if you would ask at the
beginning of class. Very frequently, this is a good way to begin to cover
the material at hand.
I
will use Sakai to post grades, class agendas, and assignments. I will also communicate to you via the e-mail
address listed in
I
intend to try to avoid lectures of more than 10 minutes during this class. Any student who believes that I have exceeded
that limit is invited to raise their hand and stop me. It is my intention to
employ a modified version of the Socratic Method in this class, which means
that I will ask you questions and present you with hypothetical situations. You have to participate willingly and often
for this teaching method to work. Sometimes,
we will break into small groups and engage in role playing exercises.
I
will post class agendas in the form of power point slides. Because class participation is a part of your
grade, I will track attendance via the use of a sign-up sheet. I will take into
account both attendance and quality of participation in assigning the
participation grades.
During
the course of this class, I will likely introduce concepts and use words with
which you are not familiar. I will try to anticipate these occasions and
provide definitions and explanations; however, it is virtually inevitable that
I will assume that you know something that you do not. Stop me when I do
this and ask for an explanation! Others are likely in the same situation,
and you will help them as well as yourself.
The
due dates for your papers, except for the final assignment, which is governed
by university policy regarding final exams, as listed in this syllabus are
subject to change if the needs of the class so indicate; any changes will
be made by the instructor in consultation with the class. I take these
due dates seriously. Individual exceptions will be made before the fact
on good reason with little hassle. Individual exceptions will be made
after the fact with great reluctance and only in well documented emergencies.
Course Outline:
Week I (W, 1-20) Housekeeping Chores and
Introduction to HRM, text, Ch 1
Week
II (M, 1-25 The political and ethical history and
environment of personnel management in the federal system, an outline is posted
for your information and use.
Week
III (M, 2-1 A brief history of Organization theory, a detailed outline is
posted for your information and use.
Week
IV (M, 2-8) The Law, or can I actually do that?” text, Ch
2.
Week V (M, 2-15) Recruitment,
text, Ch 3.
Week VI (M, 2-22) Selection, text, Ch
4.
Week VII (M, 2-29) Position Management, text, Ch 5.
First take home assignment posted
on or before 3-2
Week VIII (M, 3-7) Employee Motivation, text, Ch
6. Wednesday - time will be spent on how
to construct an annotated bibliography using APSA style
First take home assignment due on Friday,
3-11, at 5 pm
Spring
Break
Week IX (M, 3-21) Compensation,
text, Ch 7.
Annotated
bibliographies due on 3-23 at 5 pm
Week X (M, 3-28) Employee friendly and family friendly
practices, text, Ch 8.
Week XI (M, 4-4) Training, text, Ch
9. Wednesday - time will be spent on how to construct a review of the
literature in APSA style
Week XII (M, 4-11) Performance
Appraisal, text, Ch 10.
Week
XIII (M, 4-18) Unions in the political context, text, Ch
11.
Proposed final
drafts of research papers due on 4-20, at 5 pm
Week XIV (M, 4-25) Mechanics of collective Bargaining,
text, Ch. 12.
Final take
home assignment will be posted on or before 4-29
Week XV (M, 5-2) Review for final.
Research papers due
Wednesday, 5-4, at 5 pm
Week XVI (Tuesday, 5-10) Final take home assignment due
at 2:00 pm -- University rules do not allow me to accept late final assignments!
|
Take
Home Assignments |
Research
Paper |
|
Annotated
bibliography, 3-23, 5 pm |
|
|
1st -- 3-11,
5 pm |
Proposed
final Drafts, 4-20, 5 pm |
|
Final -- 5-10,
2:00 pm (no late papers accepted) |
Final
Version, 5-4, 5 pm |
There are no traditional in-class exams in this class. Instead, there are take home assignments in
which you will be asked to apply what you have learned to respond to novel
problems. The final assignment will be cumulative in that it will cover all of
the class, but will emphasize topics covered in the last half of the semester.
You will have choices of questions. You can expect to be given a
list of four or more items from which you will choose two.
My
assignment items are a bit unusual at times. Please pay careful attention
to the call of the question. I may ask you to play a role or respond to a
hypothetical situation. It is your task to play the role as realistically
as you can. If dialogue is required, write it. If a letter or memo
is required, write it. Believe it or not, the best students rather enjoy
the opportunity to be creative, and find the assignment itself to be a beneficial
learning experience.
All
assignments are to be turned in using the assignments function in Sakai. I will be using the “turnitin”
anti-plagiarism software. You will have
access to the originality report.
Sometimes the report takes a few hours to generate. I will allow two submissions of the
assignments so that you can turn the essays in early and then use the turnitin originality report to address any problems that
may be revealed.
Length
of the essays is largely irrelevant beyond a certain minimum, and the
correlation between length and grades is not very strong. The total
length of each essay should not exceed 1000 words, and 500 to 800 words is
probably about the normal length. Because you have a week, or more, to
work on these assignments I expect a polished document. While a formal
bibliography is not needed when you only cite your notes and the text, I do
expect citation of the source of ideas other than the class materials. Of
course, you never directly quote language from someone else without full
citation. Please use APSA style for your citations – a copy of the APSA
style manual is available as a pdf file in the resources area of Sakai.
Please
note that there are grading rubrics – documents setting out the criteria that I
will use to grade your essays. The
rubrics will be posted with each assignment.
Please read the rubric before you attempt any assignment in this
class. All rubrics will include
presentation as a significant part of the grade criteria. Typographical errors and errors of usage and
grammar will result in deductions from the grade. I do this because, in
the real world, such errors do reduce the value of your work. Edit your
essays carefully.
It
is my firm belief that anyone of average intelligence can memorize
details. What separates the good students from the ordinary ones, and
those who are successful in later life from those who merely survive, is the
ability to manipulate knowledge of concepts in creative ways to solve complex
problems. Thus, merely listing concepts learned in a section of the
course in response to an essay question may get you a few points, but will not
earn a passing grade. In order to earn a passing grade, you must use the
concepts to solve the problem set out in the test item. You are
required to apply concepts to meet the goal of political science, which is to
describe, explain and predict human behavior in the political arena.
Your
opinion and analysis are not equivalent. Political science is based on
rational, dispassionate analysis of qualitative and quantitative data, informed
by theory. I want your opinions to be informed by rational political
science analysis, but experience has taught me that they are not always so
informed. Your opinion is what you feel. It is informed by emotion
as well as by rational analysis. Your opinion is important to me as a
citizen. It is irrelevant to me when I grade your work. What
matters is the quality of your analysis. Please note that there are times when
I expect you to take a particular ideological point of view in an essay. If you
are liberal and I have specified a conservative point of view, please make sure
that you take the appropriate point of view for that essay. I will make every effort to make it quite
clear what the expectations are in such a cases, and to give opportunities for
both liberals and conservatives to apply their beliefs.
If,
in my judgment, a poor grade is due to a failure to understand the exam item
itself and not from lack of preparation of understanding of the material, I
will make an offer to that particular student to rewrite an exam essay.
In all case of revisions, the grade posted in the grade book will be the
average of the first test score and the revised test score. If you have a
documented learning disability that requires alternative evaluation
arrangements, please let me know well before the first assignment is due.
GUIDELINES FOR THE RESEARCH PAPER
You are expected to conduct scholarly research and write an 8
to 12 page paper based on the following focus question:
What is the appropriate balance
between political accountability and politically neutral competence in the
management of government bureaucracies?
Conceptual Background:
Frequently, political liberals want government decisions to be based on
data provided by political neutral technocrats.
As such, they prefer to have a bureaucracy in which merit appointees are
free to express dissent from the opinions of their elected, and politically
appointed, supervisors so long as this dissent is in the form of cause and
effect analysis. Employees with tenure
would be protected from retaliation from their political supervisors by the
civil service rules and procedures that exist.
These types of politicians see civil services rules and procedures as a
way to guarantee that rationality is the main criterion by which policy is
made. In addition, civil service rules are
seen as protective of important constitutional values, including equal
protection and due process of law.
By contrast, political conservatives frequently distrust
policy based on data analysis and prefer that policy be based on moral
principles. Thus, social science is
distrusted and technocrats and their data are similarly distrusted. These types of politicians see civil service
rules and procedures as a hindrance to political control over a bureaucracy
which is not to be trusted.
As with most things, an uneasy balance exists, with events
pushing the system either towards more accountability or towards more politically
neutral competence. There is no true
static equilibrium as both Parties constantly push for public bureaucracies to
be managed according to their own preferences.
The result is a continual state of flux between competing values.
Events in the public square provide a constantly shifting
set of public supports and demands with regard to how public bureaucracies should
function. For example, the existence of
growing fiscal stress in state and local governments, coupled with widespread
dissatisfaction with the state of public schools, provided Wisconsin Governor
Scott Walker, and some other Tea Party leaders, with an opportunity to shift
the balance between accountability and politically neutral competence with
regard to how public schools function.
Blaming unions for government overspending worked well for him and
enabled long term reductions in the power of unions to use civil service
protections to the benefit of their members.
You should be aware that presidents of both Parties have
bemoaned the difficulty of holding the federal bureaucracy accountable. President Carter made increasing the ability
of the president to control the federal bureaucracy a key issue in his push for
Civil Service Reform in 1978. Clinton
and Obama both kept a Reagan era tool for controlling the regulatory
bureaucracy in place, with slight modifications, but with the essential tools
kit Reagan developed kept intact.
Your task is to do research on this phenomenon and come up
with a set of recommendations for how to best balance these two competing sets
of values in our political system. You
should present your research in a paper that includes sections on each of the
following subtopics:
1)
Introduction
a.
The nature of competing values
b.
The policies that will be used to illustrate this
phenomenon
2)
Theory – review of the literature
a.
The history of civil services rules in America,
b.
The nature of the balance between competing pressures,
and
c.
The effect of the shifting balance on democratic
accountability to the citizens.
3)
The factors that put pressure on the political system,
forcing the balance to shift.
4)
The ways that unions, liberals, and conservatives have worked
to frame recent events with regard to these competing values.
5)
Illustrative examples -- identify and describe two or
three current policy issues that serve to illustrate the nature of the competing
values, and
6)
Your conclusion on how best to balance the competing
values of political accountability and politically neutral competence in terms
of promoting democratic accountability of government to the citizens as a
whole.
The first place to start is with the survey of the classic
literature on the history of civil service reform in the America. You will have to access the scholarly
literature on this topic. Once you have
found the theory and understood the nature of the competing values in our
system, then you should seek to apply that knowledge to a current policy
problems. You will present your work in
the form of an 8 to 12 page paper that contains the results of your research following
the organization set out above.
Information about civil service rules and reforms, control
over public sector organizations by elected officials and political appointees,
and public sector unions can be found in a variety of sources, including scholarly
journals and books. I expect a thorough
bibliography, with significant use of scholarly, refereed publications such as Public Administration Review, Review of Public Personnel Administration, Administration and Society, American
Journal of Political Science, and others. If you have any doubt as to
whether a journal is refereed, check the guidelines for submission of
manuscripts to that journal, or ask me. If
the guidelines for prospective authors mandate a blind review process, then it
is considered a refereed journal. Access
to full text online resources in our library is more than sufficient for this
assignment, and our reference librarians will help you if you go to them and
ask. You are required to use the APSA
citation style. A copy of the APSA style
manual can be found in the resources section of Sakai.
Students often want to know how many sources are
required. The answer should be, “enough
to do the job thoroughly.” Unfortunately,
I find that unless I specify a minimum number of citations, I rarely get a
thorough job of research. So, the
minimum is 20 total sources, with at least 10 of those coming from referred
publications. More would be better. Use the lists of references in your sources
to identify the papers and books that are cited repeatedly in multiple articles
as these are likely important sources.
Students also often have a distorted idea of how to use
sources. Avoid direct quotations, unless
the language itself is essential to convey your message. You can garner facts from your sources, ideas
about what something means, analytical schemes, the history of thought about a
topic, or what important people have had to say. All uses are valid, but don’t include a
source just to pad your list of references.
By the way, if you don’t cite to it, it doesn’t belong in the list of
references. Look at the way that the
authors of your scholarly sources use the sources that they have found in their
research for a model of how to use the sources that you have found.
All preliminary assignments, and the final research paper,
are to be turned in electronically as Microsoft Word files, using assignments
function of Sakai. I will be using “turnitin” which mandates that everything be submitted in a
single file. Word files are preferred,
but you can use rtf, txt, and pdf files as well. As with the take home essays, I will allow
two submissions so that you can submit and then obtain and use the originality
reports that turnitin will generate.
Although I know that students find research papers to be
burdensome, the feedback from our alumni and the lessons learned from our
accreditation process are quite clear that newly minted college students often do
not have the kinds of written expression and research skills needed to succeed
in the working world. Assignments like
this one have been suggested repeatedly by prospective employers and alumni, and
I agree with the need. A high level of
detail and professionalism in conducting research assignments has been linked
with a variety of success factors in public and private organizations.
As a way of making sure that all of you have the chance to
succeed with this assignment, which is difficult, it is strongly suggested that
you submit an annotated bibliography on or before March 23. I will review your list of references, and
your reasons for including them (that’s what the annotations are), and make
suggestions for you within a week. I
will also review proposed final drafts (I do not like the term
"rough" draft) if they are given to me in a timely fashion (due on or
before 4-20) and if they are complete enough for me to provide feedback. I
will not read partial papers. If there
is not a full list of references, the paper is not complete.
Technically, the syllabus does not assign any portion of the
final grade for the annotated bibliography or the proposed final draft. Students who do not submit these assignments
will not be penalized overtly, but the early submission of a completed polished
draft and editing the paper in accordance with my suggestions makes a good
grade much more likely. The failure to do so is strongly associated with
failure to earn a passing grade on this assignment.
You must understand that a proposed final draft is not just
a few paragraphs to see if you are on the right track. Rather, it is a
virtually completed paper (hence the use of the term "proposed final
draft" instead of "rough draft") containing a complete list of
references. No partial proposed final drafts will be accepted, nor will
any proposed final draft that does not contain a complete list of references be
accepted. Careful review of such
papers takes time. No drafts will be reviewed if received after the 4-20
due date. The final version of the paper is due at 5 pm on May 4, 2016.
Late submission of the final version of a paper will be penalized at the rate
of 10% for each business day late.
I
am not an English professor; however, as the grading rubric posted below
indicates, multiple, obvious errors of grammar or usage will result in
deductions from your grade. Obvious errors include, among others,
misspelled words, subject-verb disagreement, sentence fragments or run-on
sentences, misuse of homophones (such as "their," "there"
and "they're" or "your" and "you're." I
include confusion of the words "effect" and "affect" in
this category), failure to use the apostrophe to signify the possessive,
failure to use proper punctuation (e.g., failure to place a question mark at
the end of an interrogatory sentence, or failure to properly use quotation
marks), and use of the four letters "A," "L,"
"O," and "T" taken together as a word. You should know
that I disfavor ending of sentences with a preposition in a formal essay. I know that there is no hard and fast grammar
rule on ending sentences with a preposition, but I require adherence to this
rule because the spell check will not pick up on this and, thus, it forces you
to actually proofread your paper. You
should also know that I still take “data” to be a plural noun, and that the
proper usage is “with regard to” not “in regards to.” I require this level of attention to the
details in the mechanics of your use of the language because your work once you
leave Bradley will be judged largely by how well use the language. The Writing
Center can provide you with valuable assistance in learning how to edit your
work.
Grading Rubric for Research Paper, PLS 420, spring 2016
Research: 20% (Please note that any source included in
the references but not actually cited in the body of the paper will not count
towards the minimum number of sources and will result in a deduction of 1% of
the overall paper grade for each documented instance.)
Substance
of Analysis: 20%
Illustrative Examples:
15%
Conclusion: Balancing
values and democratic theory: 5%
Presentation: 30%
Organization: 15%
·
Well organized answer, easy to follow the logic
of the argument – 15%
·
Some weaknesses, either in the conclusion,
introduction, or logical arrangement of the paragraphs – 12%
·
Weak organization, hard to follow the logic of
the argument – 8%
·
Almost unreadable, not responsive to the call of
the question – 5%
Language mechanics: 15%
·
Few or no errors and awkward usages that detract
from the essay’s content – 15%
·
A few errors, but enough to detract somewhat
from the essay’s content – 12%
·
Repeated and obvious errors should have been
caught by proofreading, errors detract significantly from the essay’s content –
8%
·
Errors and problems with mechanics make it
almost impossible to follow the essay’s content – 0%
Citation format: 10%
Academic Dishonesty Policy
Any instance of academic dishonesty, e.g., cheating on exams
or plagiarism of term papers, will be dealt with as severely as university
rules allow.
You are expected to do your own work on your research paper
and your take home assignments. Plagiarism will be punished as severely
as university rules allow, i.e., a zero for the essay in question will be
awarded and the matter will be reported to the Chair of Political Science and
the Executive Director of Housing, Residential Life and Student Judicial
System.
Plagiarism, according to the Random House Dictionary of the
English Language (unabridged edition), means, "appropriation or imitation
of the language, ideas and thoughts of another author, and representation of
them as one's own work." Any of the following examples of academic
dishonesty constitutes plagiarism:
1. Directly copying a phrase,
sentence, passage or paragraph from another author and presenting it as one's
own (i.e., without proper quotation marks and full citation. You are
assumed to know how to properly use quotation marks and citations).
2. Paraphrasing a sentence, passage
or paragraph from another author without so indicating by proper citation to
authority. When in doubt, cite!
3. Knowingly presenting, as one's own, a thought, idea,
analytical framework, or theory advanced by another author. Turning in a
term paper you did not write, e.g., one you bought or copied is plagiarism.
I
am well aware that there are Web sites with papers that you can download and
have the ability to check to see if a paper comes from such a source. I am also aware that many high school
students learn to write papers by cutting and pasting text from web sites. Whenever you use language written by someone
else, you must fully credit the author by a complete citation. Try to limit the use of direct quotes in any
event. I want your words, not a bunch of
related quotations.
If
you paraphrase text from a source, you are using the ideas of someone
else. Whenever you rely on ideas from
someone else, you must give credit to the originator of the idea. When in doubt, you should cite. The unit of analysis for determining whether
to cite is the sentence, not the paragraph.
The
university’s new plagiarism awareness module and quiz (http://www.bradley.edu/sites/plagiarism/)
is a valuable tool. If you have not reviewed the module and taken the quiz,
please do so, even if you are not required to do so by the university. The existence of this module means that
ignorance of what constitutes plagiarism is not a valid excuse for engaging in
academic dishonesty.