Melvin J Dubnick
Biographic Data
| ID | 4123917 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Melvin J Dubnick |
| GIVEN NAMES | Melvin J |
| FAMILY NAME | Dubnick |
| SIGNATURE | DUBNICK M J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Kansas |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5140-8706 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 33 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 63 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 33 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1977 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Herbert Kaufman
Melvin J. Dubnick Donald F. Kettl In accepting American Society for Public Administration’s Dwight Waldo Award in 1996, Herbert Kaufman reflected on his relationships with both the award’s namesake and its previous awardee, Herbert Simon. On one hand, Kaufman throughout his career emphasized the strong influence Simon’s work on process and efficiency had on his approach to public administration. On the other hand, he deeply appreciated Waldo’s ef…
A Tribute to H. George Fredrickson
During his 50-year career, H. George Frederickson contributed on multiple fronts: to better government, to a more thoughtful and rigorous public administration field, to better scholarship, to a network of scholars, and to collaborative interaction among practitioners and scholars. He was the founding Editor of the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory as well as the Journal of Public Administration Education. He was one of the fou…
Accountability in the Public Sector
This chapter offers an alternative explanation which addresses institutional factors contributing to the shuttle accident. On January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded in mid-flight and seven crew members lost their lives. The chapter provides types of accountability systems: Bureaucratic accountability systems, legal accountability, professional accountability and political accountability. In the American political system, all four…
The Ontological Challenge
This chapter examines the emergence of accountability as a culturally significant concept that both reflects and shapes changes taking place in our understanding of contemporary governance. The author explores how its emergence as a “cultural keyword” has transformed both the form and function of accountability, and the challenges this development poses for the study of accountable governance.
Barnard's Regret
Nearly two decades after his seminal Functions of the Executive was published, Chester Barnard came to believe that moral responsibility and accountability might be a more powerful principle for guiding individual actions within organizations than the executive authority it emphasized. This article elaborates one direction in which Barnard might have developed his insight, by adopting ethical acceptance rather than self-interested indifference as…
Move Over Daniel
Professor Flinders makes a strong case that our obsession with accountability has turned “problematic” and even “pathological”. While agreeing with the gist of the argument, I contend that the essence of the problem is more ontological than political. What we require is a radical “reframing” that highlights the pervasive role accountability relationships play in governance— that is, an approach that would shift attention to the alteration of ongo…
Accountable Agents
Ordinarily research articles on public sector third-party governance, or the state of agents, turn to the subject of accountability in their conclusions. Rather than leaving it to the conclusions, this article takes up the subject of public sector third-party governance as a problem of accountability. To consider accountability, we studied contemporary performance measurement practices in the federal government, particularly as they are applied i…
All mega-projects are local? citizen participation lessons from the big dig
This paper examines the impact of managerial philosophy on public participation. Specifically the paper explores the historical development of Boston’s Central Artery/Tunnel project, more commonly known as the Big Dig, with a particular focus on how the two men most closely associated with the conception and construction of the project approached this type of administrative reform. This paper uses the concept single and double loop learning to il…
Accountability and Ethics
The relationship between "accountability" and "ethics" has long been a concern among students of public administration. Accountability has traditionally been regarded as the means used to control and direct administrative behavior by requiring "answerability" to some external authority. It has deep roots in American constitutional history, and can be linked to the principles implicit in the Magna Carta as well as to our system of checks and balan…
Accountability and the Evil of Administrative Ethics
Scholars of administrative ethics have recently been attentive to the problem of so-called administrative evil. The authors argue that evil can be understood as a socially constructed category of agents and acts specific to particular circumstances and moral communities, and the authors apply a framework of accountability to reflect the dynamics of that constructed reality. Selected examples of efforts to hold evil actors accountable or otherwise…
War Narratives
Unlike past American wars, the current war on terror has not been associated with a centrally proffered narrative providing some guidance and orientation for those administering government services under state-of-war conditions. War is as much a cultural endeavor as it is a military undertaking, and the absence of a clear sensemaking narrative was detected in this study of public administrators from three agencies with varying proximity to the co…
Nurturing Civic Lives
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Postscripts for a “State of War”
Dialogue
In September 1999 I presented a paper at the American Political Science Association meetings that drew both the attention and ire of my colleagues (I believe it was Curt Ventriss who said reading it was a vein-popping experience). It was explicitly a contentious paper, and in hindsight the argument took too many liberties with the literature I was critiquing. Were I revising the paper for publication today, several of my interpretations would be …
Spirited Dialogue
Oklahoma City
Management of Expectations
Accountability in the Public Sector
This chapter offers an alternative explanation which addresses institutional factors contributing to the shuttle accident. On January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded in mid-flight and seven crew members lost their lives. The chapter provides types of accountability systems: Bureaucratic accountability systems, legal accountability, professional accountability and political accountability. In the American political system, all four…
A. Comments
C. Book Notes
A. Comments
A. Comments
A. Comments
A. Comments
C. Book Notes
Accountable Agents
Ordinarily research articles on public sector third-party governance, or the state of agents, turn to the subject of accountability in their conclusions. Rather than leaving it to the conclusions, this article takes up the subject of public sector third-party governance as a problem of accountability. To consider accountability, we studied contemporary performance measurement practices in the federal government, particularly as they are applied i…
Move Over Daniel
Professor Flinders makes a strong case that our obsession with accountability has turned “problematic” and even “pathological”. While agreeing with the gist of the argument, I contend that the essence of the problem is more ontological than political. What we require is a radical “reframing” that highlights the pervasive role accountability relationships play in governance— that is, an approach that would shift attention to the alteration of ongo…
Accountability and the Evil of Administrative Ethics
Scholars of administrative ethics have recently been attentive to the problem of so-called administrative evil. The authors argue that evil can be understood as a socially constructed category of agents and acts specific to particular circumstances and moral communities, and the authors apply a framework of accountability to reflect the dynamics of that constructed reality. Selected examples of efforts to hold evil actors accountable or otherwise…
Regulatory Policy Analysis
The authors review five "definitions-in-use" that characterize regulatory policymaking and policy analysis. They survey these contradictory meanings and argue that the common use of all five has adversely affected efforts to reform and study government regulation
Postscripts for a “State of War”
Barnard's Regret
Nearly two decades after his seminal Functions of the Executive was published, Chester Barnard came to believe that moral responsibility and accountability might be a more powerful principle for guiding individual actions within organizations than the executive authority it emphasized. This article elaborates one direction in which Barnard might have developed his insight, by adopting ethical acceptance rather than self-interested indifference as…
Nurturing Civic Lives
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Dialogue
In September 1999 I presented a paper at the American Political Science Association meetings that drew both the attention and ire of my colleagues (I believe it was Curt Ventriss who said reading it was a vein-popping experience). It was explicitly a contentious paper, and in hindsight the argument took too many liberties with the literature I was critiquing. Were I revising the paper for publication today, several of my interpretations would be …
C. Book Notes
Government Regulation
Comparing Policy Alternatives
Comparing Policy Alternatives
The why and how of policy analysis
Government Regulation
Regulatory Policy Analysis
The authors review five "definitions-in-use" that characterize regulatory policymaking and policy analysis. They survey these contradictory meanings and argue that the common use of all five has adversely affected efforts to reform and study government regulation
A. Comments
A. Comments
Literature Reviews
A. Comments
A. Comments
A. Comments
C. Book Notes
Literature Reviews
A. Comments
C. Book Notes
A. Comments
Accountability in the Public Sector
This chapter offers an alternative explanation which addresses institutional factors contributing to the shuttle accident. On January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded in mid-flight and seven crew members lost their lives. The chapter provides types of accountability systems: Bureaucratic accountability systems, legal accountability, professional accountability and political accountability. In the American political system, all four…
Management of Expectations
Oklahoma City
Dialogue
In September 1999 I presented a paper at the American Political Science Association meetings that drew both the attention and ire of my colleagues (I believe it was Curt Ventriss who said reading it was a vein-popping experience). It was explicitly a contentious paper, and in hindsight the argument took too many liberties with the literature I was critiquing. Were I revising the paper for publication today, several of my interpretations would be …
Spirited Dialogue
Postscripts for a “State of War”
Nurturing Civic Lives
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Accountability and the Evil of Administrative Ethics
Scholars of administrative ethics have recently been attentive to the problem of so-called administrative evil. The authors argue that evil can be understood as a socially constructed category of agents and acts specific to particular circumstances and moral communities, and the authors apply a framework of accountability to reflect the dynamics of that constructed reality. Selected examples of efforts to hold evil actors accountable or otherwise…
War Narratives
Unlike past American wars, the current war on terror has not been associated with a centrally proffered narrative providing some guidance and orientation for those administering government services under state-of-war conditions. War is as much a cultural endeavor as it is a military undertaking, and the absence of a clear sensemaking narrative was detected in this study of public administrators from three agencies with varying proximity to the co…
Accountability and Ethics
The relationship between "accountability" and "ethics" has long been a concern among students of public administration. Accountability has traditionally been regarded as the means used to control and direct administrative behavior by requiring "answerability" to some external authority. It has deep roots in American constitutional history, and can be linked to the principles implicit in the Magna Carta as well as to our system of checks and balan…
Political science (25 works) · Sociology (22 works) · Computer Science (16 works) · Law (16 works) · Citation (14 works) · Law (14 works) · Library science (14 works) · Public Policy and Administration Research (14 works) · Public Administration (12 works) · Public Administration (11 works)