The Growth of Field Administration and
Its Implications for Accountability
Sally Coleman Selden, Lynchburg College
In the tragic wake of the terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington D.C., we realize the prominent role of and need for field administrators. Field administrators encompass a spectrum of persons "who are granted authority in the field," including but certainly not limited to fire fighters, police officers, Federal Emergency Management Agency employees, military, social workers, and volunteers assisting public agencies (Holden 2000). This body of individuals impacts the daily lives of citizens directly and indirectly through the programs they implement and the services they provide. Matthew Holden (2000, 8) astutely observed, "One cannot conceive a world without field administration any more than one can conceive a world without some system for food distribution." In times of crises, such as the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, we tend to forgot our obsession of holding field administrators accountable because our need for them and for their services overrides our concerns of whether they are using their time and resources effectively and efficiently. In those moments of national vulnerability, we are willing to give field administrators what they need to get their jobs done. We are thankful that they are well trained, courageous, and willing to guide us through a time of great difficulty. Their expertise and experience give us hope and to some extent lessen our worst fears. We trust them. Between points of crisis, the public's attitudes toward field administration is oft less positive.
As scholars, we have focused considerable attention on understanding the institutions that field administrators work and the systems that ensure their accountability to the public. Much less attention has been oriented toward field administrators as individual public servants - those individuals willing to work for less money, risk their lives, and commit their careers to protecting values we all cherish - freedom, individual rights, and choice. In a rare example, Charles Goodsell (1994) wrote a moving polemic exclaiming the virtues of public service and servants. In one of my most rewarding research experiences to date, two colleagues and I undertook an intensive study of a small group of public servants to better understand their motives or callings to service (Brewer, Selden, and Facer, 2000). This group of individuals showed themselves to be true assets, as they believed that they had a primary responsibility to the people they serve and to the nation. One participant stated: "I love my country and the freedom we have like no other country. I will do anything to keep the freedom we have so duty, honor, and country raise my emotions." Another participant shared: "Character and ethical behavior are stronger influences on what you will do when the 'chips are down' than any other factor. I feel it is important for officials to do 'the right thing' in their work whenever possible. Otherwise, our society will have nobody looking out for what is right as his or her main duty."
Despite the commitment to democratic values exhibited by many
public servants, the field continues to ponder the question of how to
hold field administrators accountable. While the question remains the
same, the circumstances involving field administration change. For
example, the most recent devolution of social program, specifically
welfare, has significantly changed the nature of who is responsibility
for delivering particular social programs. A largely Republican
Congress converted a number of entitlement and income security programs
into block grants and placed the responsibility with the states to
implement these programs and services. States have made different
choices over how to deliver these programs - some are doing it
themselves and others are contracting with local governments, non-profit
agencies, and for-profit firms to provide services. Clearly these
choices impact our concept of field administration, and subsequently our
systems of accountability. For example, if the choice is made to
deliver services directly, overhead accountability is likely to function
effectively. However, if the decision is to use a private, for-profit
or non-profit provider, the most likely accountability tools include a
written contract and reporting requirements relating to outcomes.
Accountability tools have changed as government has grown, shifted
operations, and reinvented itself.
At the turn of the century, the field of political science focused
on a non-political or business approach to administration. Field
administrators were tasked with implementing the policies of elected
officials. The concept of accountability was relatively simplistic - an
executive core of agencies and agents were accountable to the president.
Toward the late nineteenth century, institutional arrangements evolved
and an increasing number of independent agencies were established (such
as Civil Service Commission in 1883 and the Tennessee Valley Authority
in 1933). These agencies, however, were still governed by the body of
law governing the administration of federal agencies (unless explicitly
exempted). As larger, more complex systems developed, with more
agencies and more organizational layers, the division between politics
and administration became less apparent. In the mid-1930s, the Brownlow
Committee, under a directive from President Franklin D. Roosevelt,
examined the issue of how the president could strengthen his management
of the government. Less than a decade later, President Harry Truman
created the Commission on Government Organization (referred to as the
First Hoover commission) to determine how to increase the president's
capacity to govern the executive branch. Both the Brownlow Committee
and First Hoover Commission reported that the executive branch was
unwieldy and difficult to manage; the solutions offered by both
suggested creating a strong centralized, hierarchical executive
structure. The perspective that authority should be delegated from the
top (president, agency director) down was the dominant paradigm until
the 1960s (Moe 2001). Until this period, as the chief operating
officer, the president led in a sector that was distinct from the
private sector (Moe 2001). The dominant tools of accountability
included executive oversight (overhead democracy), budgeting, and legal
doctrine.
Field Administration, No Longer Purely Public:
The Rise of "Third Party" and Hybrid Government
In the 1960s, the mutually distinguishable nature of the public, non-profit, and private sectors began to erode. For example, prior to the 1960s, both human service nonprofits and public sector organizations provided services to the needy, the first funded by philanthropic donations and the latter funded by taxpayers. Today, the government provides less human services directly, and is more likely to provide funding to nonprofit agencies to provide services. Nonprofit organizations form a critical link between government, communities, and citizens in need by providing services and increasing the public sector's capacity to serve citizens. This phenomenon has been coined "third-party government"; that is, it represents the institutionalization of publicly funded but privately provided human services. Nonprofit agencies often share political characteristics with public agencies, such as organizing communities, responding to community needs, or articulating those needs through advocacy.
In addition to the increased use of non-profit and for-profit organizations to provide services, the number of "hybrid organizations," such as Fannie Mae and the National Park Association, has grown. These hybrid organizations implement programs and services previously carried out by executive departments and agencies (Moe 2001. Hybrid organizations possess legal characteristics of both government and private entities (Moe 2001). Moe observed that traditional tools of accountability, such as budget and general management law, are often inapplicable, leaving much discretion in the operations to the organization. In fact, he notes that the appeal of this growing sector is its lack of accountability (Moe 2001, 291).
Choices to operate outside the executive branch or to contract (outsource) services are founded upon the assumptions that the efficiency of markets, the value of competition, and the debureaucratization of organizations will improve organizational performance. Furthermore, such decisions suggest that private-sector principles and technologies are superior to those used by public agencies (John, Kettl, Dyer, and Lovan 1994). We cannot assume that "those who are granted authority in the field…[will] act upon decisions adopted by central [public sector] decision makers" (Holden 2000, 8). Even under the emerging new paradigm, scholars and practitioners acknowledge the importance of accountability. The shift, however, is from an orientation of legal processes toward achieving results. The increased interest in determining the value-added performance as measured by outcomes and results has affected all entities providing public services either directly or indirectly (Kearns 1994). Some programs, such as Head Start, that contract with community organizations require extensive reporting, including appropriate measures of performance. Similarly, the United Way of America institutionalized a process for ensuring accountability of its funded agencies, requiring outcome-based performance measures for all programs it funds.
Partnership and collaboration are the future of public service delivery. The demands are too great and the resources too limited for government agencies to provide all of the needed services directly, without increasing its size substantially. The current political environment is not likely to embrace a substantially larger government, at least not a larger executive branch. As a result, community organizations are acting from the grass roots by collaborating with other organizations and seeking funds or partnering with public agencies to meet their constituents' needs. As policy initiatives converge at the grassroots and national levels, conditions are created where professionals can collaborate across programmatic and professional divides. The nature of these partnerships may range from fiscal blending to administrative integration. There is considerable interdependence within and across the traditional tri-sectors (public, private, and not-for-profits). As the mutual exclusiveness of the sectors continues to diminish, our ability to limit our definition of field administration to public agencies declines. A contemporary definition of field administration must acknowledge that field administrators reside in a number of different types of institutional arrangements - some public, some private, some nonprofit, and some a mix of the three. This trend is not likely to change. Figure 1 depicts a simplistic continuum of field administration at the start of the twenty-first century:
Figure : A Continuum of Field Administration
| Services provided by private, for-profit & non-profit organizations (fiscal blending - supported by public funds) | Services provided through formal partnerships / collaborations (administrative integration and partnerships) | Services provided by public agencies |
For all organizations involved in the delivery of public services there is pressure to demonstrate performance to ensure that all organizations delivering public services are achieving their designated objectives. By knowing whether an organization is achieving its objectives, public agencies, either funding or partnering with outside organizations, are able to evaluate a service provider's performance and determine whether to continue the relationship. This approach to accountability is oriented primarily toward results or outcomes, rather than toward the legal and management processes that are thought to promote specific outcomes. The challenge, however, is that practitioners and scholars are still grappling with both how to conceptualize and how to measure organization-level performance in organizations providing many public services (Forbes 1998; Herman and Renz 1999). Several comprehensive reviews of the literature on organizational effectiveness have illustrated that few coherent frameworks exist that specify comprehensively the facets of performance (Herman 1990; Herman and Renz 1999; Kanter and Summers 1987).
Thus the challenge to the field is substantial. Since field administration encompasses individuals working outside traditional public institutions, the field cannot rely solely on traditional notions of accountability. However, the implementation of new public management principles and our desire for increased flexibility must not come at the expense of democratic values. The means may not always justify the ends. All field administrators, regardless of what sector they work, should be expected to inculcate the values upon which our government is founded. A mere focus on results will not ensure this. Instead, scholars need to work from the assumption that partnerships and collaborations between public agencies and nonprofit and for-profit organizations provide opportunities to take the best that each sector has to offer. From this perspective, designing a modernized accountability framework that combines a focus on results and processes will promote synergy without erecting barriers between the sectors.
References
Brewer, G. A., S.C. Selden, and R.L. Facer, II. 2000. "Individual Conceptions of Public Service Motivation." Public Administration Review 60: 254-264.
Forbes, D. P. 1998. "Measuring the Unmeasurable: Empirical Studies of Nonprofit Organizational Effectiveness from 1977 to 1997." Nonprofit and Voluntary Research Quarterly 27: 183-202.
Goodsell, C.T. 1994. The Case for Bureaucracy: A Public Administration Polemic. New York: Chatham House.
Herman, R. D. 1990. "Methodological Issues in Studying the Effectiveness of Nongovernmental and Nonprofit Organizations." Nonprofit and Voluntary Research Quarterly 19: 293-306.
Herman, R. D. and D. O. Renz. 1999. "Theses on Nonprofit Organizational Effectiveness." Nonprofit and Voluntary Research Quarterly 28: 107-126.
Holden, M., Jr. 2000. "The Competence of Political Science: 'Progress in Political Research' Revisited. American Political Science Review 94: 1-20.
John, DeWitt, Donald F. Kettle, Barbara Dyer, and W. Robert Lovan. 1994. "What Will New Governance Mean for the Federal Government?" Public Administration Review 54: 170-175.
Kanter, R. and D. Summers. 1987. "Doing Well While Doing Good: Dilemmas of Performance Measurement in Nonprofit Organizations and the Need for a Multiple Constituency Approach." In W. W. Powell, ed. The Nonprofit Sector: A Research Handbook (154-166). New Haven: Yale University Press.
Kearns, K.P. "The Strategic Management of Accountability in Nonprofit Organizations: An Analytical Framework." Public Administration Review 54: 185-192.
Moe, R.C. 2001. "The Emerging Federal Quasi Government: Issues of Management and Accountability." Public Administration Review 61: 290-312.
