Browsing by Author "Little, John H."

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    Eight effective practices of successful human service contract managers
    Gooden, Vincent E. (Virginia Tech, 1996-02-08)
    Modern governments often rely on private, nonprofit, and other non-governmental entities for delivery of services. Specifically, state and local governments increasingly contract for social services. This dissertation identifies eight effective practices that successful human service contract managers use in the negotiating and contracting process. It compares practices of successful contract managers with those of less successful contract managers in the Massachusetts' Department of Social Services. Success was based on informed judgment of how managers conducted thE~ contracting process. Another measure was the number of debriefing sessions that did or did not lead to appeals. Interviews were held with managers. Questions were both open-ended and loosely structured. Data from interviews was processed and formatted for use in a computer-assisted analysis program. Interpretation and analysis of the interviews identified eight effective practices that successful managers use in the contracting process. Hence, contemporary government demands that public managers understand and master both technical and relationship aspects of the negotiating and contracting process in order to be successful. Managers emphasize prebid planning activities and multiple needs assessment methods to accurately reflect service needs for the area. They monitor waiting lists and utilization of services regularly to determine who use and need services. Managers rely on a large number of participants to review proposals and they use a standard tool to rate them to insure fairness and competitiveness in the proposal evaluation step. They conduct debriefings as mediation sessions and encourage bidders to become more capable to participate in future bidding. They negotiate rates based on pricing ranges not line-item details, and they assist providers with budget and program support. Also, they rely on experience and technical competence to be successful. within the eight effective practices, managers confirm that contracting is more successful when they have early, ongoing interaction and cooperative working relationships as well as providing competent technical services. Cooperative relationships and interaction especially are important as new and diverse service providers enter the contracting arena.
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    Reframing public administration: a systems-methodological analysis of governance and the role of public administration
    Little, John H. (Virginia Tech, 1994-04-09)
    Despite repeated attempts, no normative theory of public administration has emerged that fully and satisfactorily answers questions about the role of public administration, and public administrators, in the process of governance. This dissertation argues that such questions are unresolvable because they are framed in terms of overly simplistic systems metaphors relating to machines and organisms. When theories are framed in terms of these metaphors, they lead inexorably to dichotomies between politics and administration, policy and implementation, and between the society and its government. The dissertation attempts to "reframe" our concept of governance in terms of another metaphor that supports a view of governance as a process that is deeply interrelated and interconnected with its social environment.
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    Supplier-customer relationships: a study of the application of quality management in the federal government
    Bacher, Stephen E. (Virginia Tech, 1996-04-03)
    Public administrators continuously look for ways to improve administrative support processes, including the procurement of goods and services. The system of management developed by the late Dr. W. Edwards Deming has been advanced as a candidate to accomplish such improvements. His "System of Profound Knowledge" is a robust, theoretically based framework which provides the means to analyze these processes using data and facts and advances an interdependent set of activities designed to liberate and use human capital to effect continuous improvement. Included in Dr. Deming's framework is a theory for procuring goods and services which results in cooperation and trust between the supplier and the customer. In contrast, the Federal procurement system is perceived to rely heavily on competition and embody a lack of trust between the suppliers and the government. This research examined the relationships four Federal organizations implementing versions of continuous improvement are establishing with their suppliers in order to illuminate government's ability to apply Dr. Deming's theory.