Public Deliberation: An Alternative Approach to Crafting Policy and Setting Direction

Abstract

General managers are expected to strive for organizational efficiency and effectiveness. Depending on their emphasis on efficiency and effectiveness, they produce four basic approaches to public sector general management: the directive approach, the reactive approach, the generative approach, and the adaptive approach. This paper explores the generative approach, in particular its use ofpublic deliberation as an alternative way to establish public policy and set bureau direction. Two case studies help distill the basic elements ofpublic deliberation. The first case documents the use ofpublic deliberation in significantly reducing a school district budget. The second case illustrates how public deliberation aided in crafting state educational policy. Although it is risky and expensive, public deliberation in these two cases illustrates how opening up policy-making to stakeholder participation can be highly successful. The paper concludes with implications for public management theory andpractice.General managers face two basic challenges in leading and managing their public bureaus. They are expected to strive for both organizational efficiency and organizational effectiveness. Webster's Third (1971, 725) defines efficiency as the "capacity to produce results with the minimum expenditure of energy, time, money, or materials" and effectiveness as "productive of results" (1971, 724). To achieve efficiencies, managers focus on doing things well. They attend to the internal organization and center their energies on routinizing, refining, formalizing, and elaborating on existing knowledge, and on making short-run improvements. "Efficiency thrives on focus, precision, repetition, analysis, sanity, discipline, and control" (March, 1995, 5). On the other hand, to achieve effectiveness, managers must be In the competition for scarce organizational resources, the natural processes of each tend to pit one against the other. Effectiveness thrives on exploration and experimentation, but efficiency attempts to drive them out (March, 1995, 5).Depending on their pursuit of efficiency and effectiveness, managers have developed four basic approaches to general management: the directive approach; the reactive approach, the generative approach, and the adaptive approach (Figure 1). After a brief overview of the four approaches, this paper will explore the generative approach in greater depth, especially its use of public deliberation as an alternative way to establish public policy and set bureau direction. Having observed several of these deliberations to establish public policy, my goal is to distill the essence of their structure and process for the purpose of both improving future practice and building better theory. To this end, two cases will be examined: budget deliberations in a local school district and public deliberations over state educational policy. Four Approaches to General ManagementGeneral managers employing the directive approach (the first quadrant of Figure 1) resolve the tension between efficiency and effectiv...

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