Serving the Public InterestAuthor(s): Terry L. CooperSource: Public Administration Review, Vol. 44, No. 6 (Nov. - Dec., 1984), pp. 555-556Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Society for Public AdministrationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3110428 .

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COMMUNICATIONS 555

models, each designed to test specific alternatives to existing recruitment, promotion and retirement policies. The models also allow various simulations, e.g., of reductions-in-force or sudden increases in hiring and their short- and medium-term effect on the organiza- tion's workforce as a whole, the general aim being to achieve and maintain the individual organization's optimal balanced age-grade structure.

All this sounds very technical, I know, but during my recent association with the Institute of Manpower Studies at the University of Sussex and London School of Economics, I have seen it actually work in many dif- ferent organizational settings, large and small, public and private.

For those of your readers who are interested in the subject of applied organizational manpower planning in the public sector, I recommend a book published by the British government, "Manpower Planning in the Civil Service," HMSO, London, 1976, or a more recent edi- tion. Also, many of the Institute's papers are now avail- able through the NTIS and listed in recent announce- ments under the Institute of Manpower Studies iden- tifier. I really believe that it is worthwhile to explore what applied organizational manpower planning is or at least can be.

Klaus D. Grimm San Francisco, Calif.

Shifting Interpretations

To the Editor: Klaus Grimm's letter surfaced a concern not ad-

dressed in the mini-symposium on Manpower Planning. Manpower planning seems to have a variety of inter- pretations depending on the particular organization utilizing the term. The objectives of the series did not focus on a comprehensive overview of manpower plan- ning, but rather a description of how three local entities are addressing their specific needs.

I have conducted limited research for Dade County, confined by the realities of fiscal and political concerns, on other systems of manpower planning. It is hard to imagine jumping from the environment in which most local governments find themselves, to the world of multi-national organizations without preparing a solid foundation. We have determined a need to develop a basic system within our organization which, hopefully, will result in the addition of the more sophisticated ele- ments found in other settings.

Alyce M. Kwiecinski Assistant to the Director

Employee Relations Department Miami, Fla.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1984

Serving the Public Interest

To the Editor: I wish to express appreciation for Ventriss' and Peco-

rella's "Community Participation and Modernization: A Reexamination of Political Choices" (PAR, May/ June 1984). They have addressed an extremely crucial issue for the public administration community in this article and it pleases me greatly that they found my earlier work to be of some value in their efforts. How- ever, in the interests of intellectual dialogue I would like to respond to some of their comments about my "Bureaucracy and Community Organization: The Metamorphosis of a Relationship" (Administration and Society, February 1980), and offer some observations about Ventriss' and Pecorella's own conclusions.

First, I want to point out that my article was directed toward practitioners and scholars of public administra- tion, not toward community organizations and their leaders. As such, my recommendations were oriented toward what might be done by public administrators to mitigate the destructive impacts of their interactions with community organizations. Ventriss and Pecorella describe this approach as "institutional philanthropy." If by this terminology they intend to suggest a kind of naive belief in the virtue of organizations and a lack of awareness of the power relationships involved, I would reject this language as an accurate description of my point of view. However, if they use the word "philan- thropy" more carefully to suggest "The effort or in- clination to increase the well-being of mankind," or "An action or institution designed to promote human welfare" (American Heritage Dictionary) then I accept the label proudly. It seems altogether appropriate to remind public administrators and their agencies of their obligations to the public they are established to serve, as well as to suggest measures which they might undertake to do so. Usually we refer to that obligation as one of serving the public interest, but if Ventriss and Pecorella prefer "institutional philanthropy," so be it.

However, if my chosen audience has been that of community organizers and the leaders of community organizations my advice would have been quite dif- ferent. It would have emphasized the necessity for organized power and the importance of political sophis- tication. While one must project expectations that public agencies will respond to exhortations to serve the citizenry power, community organizations must back up those expectations with power, strategy and tactics.

As for Ventriss' and Pecorella's analysis of UNO and TELACU, I would suggest that both their theoretical framework and their understanding of the array of ap- propriate roles for community organizations is simplis- tic. It is not that UNO is a "learning" organization and TELACU is not, but that their goals are radically dif- ferent. All organizations "learn" if they survive very long. What they do with what they learn varies with the goals of the leadership. Some choose, as in the case of TELACU to become "coproducers" of public goods

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556 PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW

and services and learn how to do that quite effectively, but with certain costs to broad based participation. Others, such as UNO choose to remain militant ad- vocacy organizations and learn how to carry out that goal.

The lesson to be learned from Pico-Union, which I treated in the piece cited by Ventriss and Pecorella, is that it is impossible to do both with any degree of effec- tiveness. There is room for both kinds of organizations, and communities need the services of both, but to com- bine these functions is not likely to work well.

Terry L. Cooper University of Southern California

Premature Argument

To the Editor: We are pleased that Terry Cooper has responded to

our article. If we can leave aside Cooper's distinction between the audiences he may or may not have been addressing, we would like to comment on several of his substantive objections to our article. First, Cooper's argument about UNO and TELACU pursuing "radi- cally different" goals misses the crucial point that it is organizational means and not ends which are under dis- cussion. On the surface, as we pointed out, UNO and TELACU may seem to have radically distinct aims; however, each organization tried to influence the dis- tribution of highly divisible local resources in favor of its community. The difference between the organiza- tions lies in their approaches to this common end. TELACU's leadership has, for the most part, tended to devalue resident participation in seeking to achieve its ends, while UNO's leadership has not. UNO's decision is quite important because it questions the emerging consensus among a number of observers, represented so ably by Cooper's work, that bureaucratization and diminished participation are inevitable consequences of group interaction with elements of the larger society.

Second, to argue, as Cooper does, that all organiza- tions "learn" if they survive "long" addresses rather carelessly a crucial issue. Learning in its full meaning is an ongoing critical process; UNO's leadership recog- nizes this point, TELACU does not. UNO is learning and adapting continually while TELACU has learned and has adapted. This is the essential distinction be- tween the groups. Bureaucratization and diminished participation are not inevitable components of modern society, although they are powerful temptations. The salient issue remains one of choice-hence our article.

Cooper sees the value of both types of community organizations working within the community. As we noted in the article, the accomplishments of TELACU have indeed been impressive. However, unlike Cooper, we do not agree that community organizations like TELACU will inevitably be forced to deemphasize citizen participation as they deal with complex urban issues. His argument, we contend, is premature. We are

not as ready as Cooper to close the books, so to speak, on the issues we raised and surrender our future theo- retical pursuits to a kind of "political fatalism" that his logic dictates.

We were stimulated intellectually by Cooper's think- ing. However, we found his article and comments repre- sentative of the theoretical view that modernity and its consequences are historical givens. Without critical examination, such an intellectual posture only rein- forces a view of the acceptability of a liberal managerial perspective which is-to use Geoffrey Hawthrone's phrase-a perspective "built on the ruins of a crumbling and decreasingly legitimate [bureaucratic] patriarchy." Our article was written, in part, to argue that Cooper's conclusions are not yet ready to be codified as the final word on the subject.

Curtis Ventriss Johns Hopkins University

Robert Pecorella New York University

Premature Optimism

To the Editor: In an article published in the May/June, 1984 issue of

PAR, Professors Dometrius and Sigelman argue that state and local governments have made greater progress in the achievement of affirmative action goals than pre- viously has been recognized. The "new benchmark" they present is the performance of private industry, for comparable positions, in the employment of women and minorities. Although the meaningfulness of that par- ticular standard of comparison may be questioned, the authors correctly point out that in overall employment and in employment in technical and professional cate- gories, state and local governments have outdistanced the private sector. Any cause for optimism or even com- placency, however, is quickly dissipated by a look at the figures for managerial and administrative positions. The table on p. 244 reveals that males constitute fully 77 percent of the managers and administrators in state and local government as compared with 75.6 percent in the private sector. Women, in fact, hold somewhat more administrative positions in the private sector (24.4 per- cent than in state and local government (23 percent). Black females alone are marginally better represented in managerial ranks in government than in private indus- try, although the figures remain abysmally low in both sectors-2.1 percent as compared with 1.1 percent.

Despite the growing number of women employed in the state and local government, and despite the growing number of female students enrolled in MPA programs, upper level positions remain disproportionately male. Until women are effectively represented in positions which entail substantial policy and decision-making

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1984

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