Through a foundation of strong public organizations, government can aspire to fulfill societal demands. However, the strength of any organization is dependent on the strength and capabilities of a leader. With a consideration of increasing demands of a more effective and efficient government, accountability is distributed through foundational ethics and ideologies of individual administrators including leaders. This moralistic accountability can be understood through various, differing lenses—and each leader is different in emphasizing each perspective.
Gortner et al., (2007) explain, “Analyzing leadership yields an amazing number of definitions. James MacGregor Burns, his study of leadership, found 130 definitions of the word” (pg. 334).
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Thus, with an establishment of redundancy in sharing oversight tasks and duties among leaders of various levels in an organization, these varying moral outlooks can be counterbalanced. Redundancy serves as a form of checks and balances to ensure the accountability of public organizations, and further acts as a neutral meditator with the different personal philosophies of individual leaders (Landau, 1969).
There are additional issues with the concept of ambiguity in leadership—when the definition of a leader remains ambiguous throughout an organization, roles of power and authority may be diluted. Defined characteristics and roles of leaders should be established within an organization. It is significant for some form of hierarchy or line of authority within an organization, as this ensures accountability and oversight in
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These societal issues are often referred to as wicked problems. Wicked problems are a set of interconnected situations and conditions that often disregard and oppose resolution—these are complex issues with no identifiable answer because they have various, sometimes conflicting factors at play. Additionally, society can only tolerate and accept so much trial and error, so this must be a consideration during actual practice of theory in public administration (Rittel & Webber,
Kenneth Ashworth, a public servant, has served Texas and its fine education for more than thirty years and knows all the ins and outs of how the government works. He has written his book to benefit his niece, who has decided to follow in his footsteps, of all of his dealings from problematic politicians to many life lessons that have shaped him. Intended for his niece, this book has opened the minds for not only me and my peers, but for students around the state. After reading Caught between the Dog and the Fireplug, or How to Survive Public Service, Kenneth Ashworth makes a truthful point of knowing what the differences of personal responsibility and social responsibility is as a bureaucrat. Ashworth shows that social and personal responsibility can be two of the same if the morals of the person acting upon them are in good conscious.
Accountable and transparent to the public it is serving is a key feature of a public manager. These two concepts greatly measures the effectiveness of government. Being accountable simply implies being answerable to your actions as a public servant. Transparent on the other hand clearly implies the act of being open to the people. Organizations should abide by law and directives issued by government. This provides accounts of their compliance (Rainey, p 105). An effective government is one that is both accountable and transparent. “Public agencies receive request for helpful, reasonable, and flexible responses to the needs of client, their activities are public business, and citizens and the media demand relative openness to scrutiny” (Rainey,
Denisco & Barker, (2016) discusses the foundation of leadership and the four conceptual pillars that comprise it. Understanding the leadership is a responsibility of an APN, the following final question was posed to Ms. Gordner. “Of the four pillars of leadership; professionalism, inspirational motivation, interpersonal relationships, and business skills, do you feel that one is more important than another, and why?” She responded,
Sharp, B., Aguirre, G., & Kickham, K. (Eds.) (2011). Managing in the Public Sector: A Casebook in Ethics and Leadership. Boston: Longman.
In the field of Public Administration there is a highly-defined structure of constitutional, legal, and procedural requirements that are in place to keep those in power in check. That being said, no matter how stringent the oversight, or how well-meaning the intentions of those who serve, Public Service is a complicated field with many landmines to navigate. As the Iran-Contra Affair illustrates, duties, orders, and responsibilities and can easily conflict with each other because there are so many areas of
As a leader who views accountability as crucial to the success of my business, there are a few strategies that I will need to put in place. Knowing that if there is compatibility between what I say and what I do, people will trust what I say, I realize that I need to walk the talk (Johnson & Phillips, 2003). My actions must reflect the values and mission of my business. Bustin (2014) presented the Seven Pillars of Accountability as a model for building a culture of accountability in our enterprise: Character, Unity, Learning, Tracking, Urgency, Reputation, and Evolving. As a leader in my business, my responsibility would be to implement these pillars to the best of my
Overall, the prospects of accountability-based reforms taking hold and becoming institutionalized are fairly good. Based on the Fernandez and Rainey framework for organizational change we see that the two steps chosen to assess accountability-based reforms in the OPD show that reforms have internal support because it improves collaboration between top managers and lower level officers by creating more manageable districts that have one go-to person that has all the responsibility. The two accountability-related tasks I chose to examine also show signs that the requirements by the court-ordered monitor show either partial or full compliancy, pointing to an upward trajectory of the institutionalization of accountability-based reforms.
The success of the organization depends on how the leaders utilize their management and leadership skills in the organization. Mission, vision and core values of the organization are posted everywhere in the organization to remind every stakeholder about their accountability and responsibility in accordance to the corporate goals. This can’t be effective without successful leadership approach. Effective leader must know how, when and where to communicate the shared vision of the organization to its stakeholders. The goal is to align personal values with the corporate values to reach optimum level of satisfaction towards the work, and the company expectations to its stakeholders. Ineffective leaders are not capable of employing this. They are not capable of employing management by objective or the ability of the managers to align the objective of the all the units and departments of the organization into the organizational goals and values. MBO starts with setting organizational objectives, followed by cascading objectives down to employees-cascading objectives down to employees requires adoption of SMART approach to ensure that goals are attainable and accountable (Mindtools, 2014)
Leadership has been defined in different ways, a definitaion of leadership that would be most commonly accepted would be “the ability of an individual to influence, motivate, and enable others to contribute toward the effectiveness and success of the organization…”(House et al., 1999, p. 184 as cited in Yukl, 2013, p. 19). After a comprehensive review of different leadership literature, Stogdill (1974, p. 259, as cited in Yukl, 2013, p. 18) concluded that “There are almost as many definitions of leadership as there are persons who have attempted to define the concept." Leadership can be viewed from two different angles one is shared influence process and other as a specialized role. Researcher who view leadership as a specialized role consider attributes as a factor in selecting a designated leader. On the contrast, theorist who emphasises on influence process considers “Leadership” as a social process or a pattern of relationship.
As our text says, there is no one definitive definition that best encapsulates the true nature of what “leadership” really is. For me, I would define leadership as the ability to influence and share with others the understanding of how something is to be done in order to accomplish a particular goal, task, or objective. Leadership doesn’t necessarily mean “to lead”. As mentioned in our previous class, anyone can be a leader. You don’t have to be in a position of power to display active leadership. Leadership is an ability that we can learn, improve upon, and share as we grow as individuals. Leaders may not all share the same vision and purpose but they all have the power to influence others in the way they choose to act, behave, and make decisions. This is how I see leadership to be based on my own beliefs and experiences.
Joseph, James A. "Leadership And The Changing Role Of Ethics In Public Life." Lecture. Models of Ethical Leadership for a Changing World. University of Texas. Jan. 2001. Web.
Romzek and Dubnick identified four different forms of accountability in the forms of bureaucratic, professional, legal, and political, each of which are used throughout projects to hold people to keeping their word, finishing projects, and making sure they are held accountable for any failures. In the case of the Challenger tragedy, the four are discussed in detail, however this shall go into covering bureaucratic and professional accountability and comparing what is covered by each form. Starting with bureaucratic accountability, in which those at the top of the bureaucratic organization are held accountable for their actions, whether successes or failures, as they are the ones elected to lead them. This form of accountability is seen in when leaders step down from their positions following scandals in their organizations, scandals that they as the leader are held responsible in preventing and properly fixing before and when the public become aware of the scandal. In the case of the Challenger tragedy, such bureaucratic shortcomings came from lack of communications up the bureaucratic ladder,
Public Administration involves the development, implementation and management of policies for the attainment of set goals and objectives that will be to the benefit of the general public. Since Public Administration involves taking decisions that affect the use of public resources there is often the question of how to utilize public resources for maximum public good. The National Association of Public Administration has identified four pillars of public administration: economy, efficiency, effectiveness and social equity. These pillars are equally important in the practice of public administration and to its success. This paper seeks to explain the role of each of the pillars in the practice of public administration.
In order to understand how the republican form of government, federalism, separation- of-power principle and constitutionalism affect the practice of public administration you must first understand what public administration is. According to our book, The Craft of Public Administration, “Pubic Administration is grounded in partisan, policy and systems politics” (Berkley, Rouse, pg.3). What this is saying is that the principle of the constitution dictate activities of public communities under the federal state and local governments. It cannot operate without personnel that is monitored by administrative laws. In this paper it shall be discussed how the four constitutional principles help shape administration.
It is very common in this day and age to become discontent with where you are at in leadership. One of the reasons for this discontentment can be because influencing all of those around us is not an easy thing to do. If we are to not only stay content, but also excel in leadership we must keep in mind that ninety-nine percent of leadership does not come from the top of any given organization, but the middle. John C. Maxwell, author of The 360-Degree Leader, speaks to us about the principles that leaders can use to bring value and influence to any organization from any level within the organization, enabling them to do, what John C. Maxwell describes as leading up, leading across, and leading down.