Public Sector Organization Theory

Catalog description

Public policies are more often than not designed by public sector organizations and implemented by them. To understand public policy, then, students must understand public sector organizations. Why are they designed as they are? And why do they behave as they do? Several disciplines offer often competing theories to answer these questions. This course will survey these theories to provide students with a foundation for understanding public sector organizations and how they influence public policy. After first discussing the inherent link between public sector organizations and public policy and discussing how public and private sector organizations differ, this survey will examine several theories that address the internal structure of organizations: bureaucratic, structural, human relations, contingency, and new institutional theories. Behavioral decision theory and incremental theory are then examined as the most prominent views on how organizations make decisions. External influences on organizational structure and behavior are then considered in a review of organization ecology, resource dependency, and organization economics theories. The course will then move beyond isolated organizations by addressing social capital and network theory and social movement theory. In reviewing these several theoretical perspectives, special attention will be placed on public sector organizations and the application of insights from the theories to the design and implementation of public policy. The goals of the course include developing an understanding how the different theories offer critical insights for the design and implementation of public policies