Faces of Policy: Civil Servants in Public Organizations

Catalog description

Three hours lecture per week Prerequisite(s): POLS 150 Examines the work of civil servants in public institutions. Specific focus is on whether frontline public servants implement policy, or whether they, by their decisions, create policy; the relationship among the organizations’ rules and procedures and the employees’ professional norms and values; the tension(s) of being situated between management, rules and policies and the clients’ needs; how the employees cope with often scarce resources to get the job done; and the conditions of bureaucratic discretion and consequences for policy implementation.