Posts Tagged Market
Theory of Strategic Action for Public Policy
Strategic scenarios, concepts that assist business managers in developing market interventions, represent the action component of strategic management. In some fields of public policy (especially national defense and electoral politics) scenarios have been discussed for years. For the most part, however, a theory of action involving specific scenarios has not been given attention by scholars of public policy and administration. In this article, the literature of these fields, along with that of business strategy, is reviewed and synthesized for the purpose of beginning the process of developing a theory of action for managers of public policy. Two concepts in particular – the agency power matrix and the change scenario – are presented as necessary components of this theory. When completed, the theory of strategic action should be viewed as an integral part of the literature of strategic management.
Strategic management literature written for business firms provides executives with a sequence of sophisticated procedures for achieving corporate objectives in their chosen markets. Beyond procedures, however, this particular body of literature also conceptualizes possible scenarios that the firm may choose to follow (Leontiades, 1982; Tourangeau, 1981). Scenarios are stimulated courses of action that map alternative moves by the firm and likely reactions of competitors. In short, strategic management procedures allow business executives to plan and implement courses of action in the form of “if … then” propositions.
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The Uneasy Public Policy Triangle in Higher Education: Quality, Diversity, and Budgetary Efficiency
This publication takes up the challenge of describing and analyzing the internal and external dynamics of United States higher education policy with regard to three global and often conflicting goals of higher education policy: quality, diversity, and efficiency. The issue of diversity, on the one hand, which covers many others, such as access, participation, equity and opportunity, is indeed the oldest among these goals and was a predominant objective of public policy over the long period of expansion of higher education in the United States after the Second World War. The themes of quality and budgetary efficiency, on the other, have both more recently moved up on the political agenda within a context of increasing globalization of markets and international competition, tightness of public budgets, and changes in the political, social, and economic climates. The book aims at pointing out critical issues in the tensions that exist among these basic policy options and tries to give some direction and recommendations for future priority setting in higher education.
The publication is in fact a collection of discussion papers presented in October 1988 at the College of William and Mary on the interaction of public policy and higher education. Fourteen papers have been grouped together in five sections of which the first one sets the historical scene of higher education policy making in the United States. Changes in the interaction of federal and state involvement in higher education policy are discussed. From a rather limited and haphazard involvement of government in higher education policy in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the federal government has become massively involved in need-based student aid and research subsidization from the seventies onwards without being able, however, to embrace institutional financing. The states on the contrary, traditionally in charge of institutional support, have started to supplement federal student aid over the seventies.
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Global public policy, partnership, and the case of the World Commission on Dams.
Recent articles and reflections in Public Administration Review illustrate the struggle to understand the place of public administration, its relevance, and its practice in a rapidly changing, globalized world. Chester Newland (2000) argues that this challenge encompasses three interrelated notions: facilitation of collective actions by public institutions, public-values-oriented social self-governance (where individuals and communities organize to express and pursue their collective values and priorities), and reliance on the disciplines of market systems. All this occurs in a context of complex understandings and the implications of globalization–complete with interdependence, process, and ideological perspectives (Farazmand 1999), and exacerbating global trends–economic and financial, technological, environmental, and sociopolitical (Brinkerhoff and Coston 1999)–which create both new opportunities and new challenges.
Globalization has led to closer integration among the countries of the world, increasing their recognition of the challenges and implications that cross national borders and demand cross-border solutions, and continuing efforts to refine the processes for establishing global public policy. At the same time, citizens are increasingly coming together and organizing to represent their own interests, express their views, and undertake actions to assist themselves and others, either independent of, in conflict with, or in partnership with governments and other actors. The emergence of a transnational civil society, with its demonstrated successes in influencing national, donor, and international policy, can improve the outcomes of public policy. (1) At the same time, the emergence and growing strength of this sometimes well-organized, sometimes disparate advocate may exacerbate conflict and complexity, precluding the identification of workable solutions. The rise of transnational civil society further raises questions about these actors’ accountability: For whom do they speak? Are they legitimate representatives? And how transparent are they in their own processes? (2) The 1999 protests in Seattle over the World Trade Organization illustrate these challenges and point to the need to explore new processes and approaches to resolving multistakeholder, conflictive public policy issues, particularly those that are global in scope.
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