Browsing by Author "Kennedy, Sheila Suess"

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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    The Civic Dimension of School Voucher Programs
    (Public Integrity, 2018-10) Merritt, Cullen C.; Kennedy, Sheila Suess; Farnworth, Morgan D.
    America’s public schools have not been exempt from the movement to privatization and contracting out that has characterized government innovations over at least the past quarter century. A number of the issues raised by school voucher programs mirror the management and efficacy questions raised by privatization generally; however, because public education is often said to be “constitutive of the public,” using tax dollars to send the nation’s children to private schools implicates the distinctive role of public education in a democratic society in ways that more traditional contracting arrangements do not. Using a content analysis, the authors explore the extent to which school choice voucher programs are mandated by state statutes to integrate civics education into their curriculum. Findings reveal that across the fourteen states (and the District of Columbia) that have enacted school choice voucher programs, statutes exempt these programs from curriculum oversight, including civics requirements, and grant them considerable autonomy in designing their curricula. This study concludes by discussing the implications for ethical and accountable governance when primary and secondary schools fail to cultivate civic competence and civic literacy.
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    The Cost of Saving Money: Public Service Motivation, Private Security Contracting, and the Salience of Employment Status
    (Public Performance & Management Review, 2018) Merritt, Cullen C.; Kennedy, Sheila Suess; Kienapple, Matt R.
    The growth of government outsourcing has triggered significant legal and social science research. That research has focused primarily on issues of cost, accountability, and management. A thus far understudied question concerns the relevance and importance of public service motivations (PSM), especially when a government agency is proposing to outsource services that are considered inherently governmental. This exploratory study centers on the use of private security guards to augment government-provided public safety, and investigates the public service motivations of part-time and full-time employees of private security firms that regularly partner with—or seek to protect the public independent of—local police. Findings reveal that the presence or absence of motivations consistent with PSM was not attributable to private sector employment, but to whether informants were part-time or full-time employees.
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    Does Ignorance Matter? The Relative Importance of Civic Knowledge and the Human Tendency to Engage in Motivated Reasoning
    (2015-03-02) Dusso, Aaron; Kennedy, Sheila Suess; Political Science, School of Liberal Arts
    It has long been understood that political knowledge in the U.S. is very low. For those who care about the quality of American democracy, this is a big problem. In attempting to find a solution, many people often blame education. While increasing civic knowledge is a laudatory goal, increased political sophistication does not necessarily turn individuals into good democratic citizens. Research in cognitive and social psychology paints a picture of people as motivated reasoners. Instead of having an open-minded engagement with issues, individuals typically only seek, see, and understand information in a manner that reinforces what they already believe. Here, we examine motivated reasoning and argue that the strongest partisans and the most committed ideologues will be the most susceptible to holding contradictory policy positions with regard to same-sex marriage and religious freedom.
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    Electoral Integrity: How Gerrymandering Matters
    (Taylor & Francis, 2017) Kennedy, Sheila Suess; School of Public and Environmental Affairs
    Gerrymandering (partisan redistricting) is widely believed to deprive citizens of meaningful participation in the democratic process. It is seen as an obvious conflict of interest because there is ample evidence that lawmakers use redistricting to protect both their personal electoral prospects and their party’s legislative advantages. The impression that an inherent conflict of interest occurs when legislators determine the composition of the population that will vote for them has revived efforts to reform the ways states handle redistricting and reignited scholarly disputes over the degree to which the ills ascribed to partisan redistricting are accurate. The U.S. Supreme Court is poised to revisit its redistricting jurisprudence, making it timely to revisit the contending academic arguments about the political effects of gerrymandering and the existing constitutional jurisprudence.
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    Representation through Lived Experience: Expanding Representative Bureaucracy Theory
    (Human Service Organizations: Management, Leadership & Governance, 2020) Merritt, Cullen C.; Farnworth, Morgan D.; Kennedy, Sheila Suess; Abner, Gordon; Wright II, James E.; Merritt, Breanca
    This study draws on the insights of managers in the behavioral health treatment system to explore the value of persons who bring lived experience to their organizational positions. Within these organizations, persons with relevant lived experience occupy various nonclinical and clinical positions. When facilities incorporate workers with lived experience, managers observe increased levels of trust between clients and service providers, an enhanced client-centered perspective among service providers, and higher quality in the services provided. This study may guide managers in considering how (or whether) human service organizations might institutionalize lived experience as a mechanism to help create a representative bureaucracy.
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    Thirty Years of Public Management Scholarship: Plenty of “How” Not Enough “Why”
    (Emerald, 2017) Kennedy, Sheila Suess; School of Public and Environmental Affairs
    Purpose The purpose of this paper is to determine the overarching lessons to be gleaned from 30 years of public management literature. Design/methodology/approach The methodology was simple: review the professional literature generated during that time period. Findings Despite important contributions to our understanding of everything from bureaucratic motivation, public budgeting processes, the promises and pitfalls of contracting out and identification of the skills needed to be an effective public manager, to the scientific arcana of sustainability and the respective responsibilities of public administrators and elected officials, the profession would benefit greatly from more sustained emphasis upon the history and philosophy of the constitutional choices made by those who framed America’s original approach to governance. Originality/value The lack of a common understanding of America’s legal culture, or even a common vocabulary for exploring our differences poses immense challenges to public administrators, whose effectiveness requires a widely shared, if necessarily superficial, agreement on the purposes of America’s governing institutions and an ability to recognize the bases of government legitimacy. In the past 30 years, however, literature that addresses the important connections between constitutional theory and management practice, between the rule of law and the exercise of public power and discretion, has been all too rare. Let us hope that the next 30 years corrects that deficiency.