Instructor: Craig Curtis (Bradley Hall 486, 677-2492), e-mail: rcc@bradley.edu home page: http://hilltop.bradley.edu/~rcc/
Texts: Patton, Witt, Lovrich, and Fredericksen, (2002) Human Resource Management: The Public Service Perspective. Houghton Mifflin. (ISBN: 0395918146)
Class Meeting Information: MWF, 10:00 to 10:50 am, Bradley 370
Instructor's Office Hours: MW from 1:30 to 2:45 pm, T TH from 9 to 11 am.
Description: This course is designed to familiarize you with the basic issues and techniques of public management. We will focus on the distinctive setting in which public personnelists function and on the basic philosophy which guides human resource managers in the public sector. We will spend considerable time linking organization theory and organizational behavior. We will also take a hard look at the techniques employed in the completion of the tasks commonly faced by public human resources managers. In short, this will be a course which is partly theoretical and partly applied. After taking this course, you should understand better why organizations function as they do, and be better prepared to assume supervisory responsibilities in the public sector, should you choose to do so.
Grading: The final Grade will be based on the following:
The final letter grade will be assigned according to the
following scale:
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A 90-100% |
D 60-69% |
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B 80-89% |
F below 60% |
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C 70-79% |
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Class policies: All students are expected to come to class prepared to discuss the reading material assigned for that week. Discussion is much more fruitful as a way to explore the kind of material covered in this course than lecture, and makes for more interesting class periods. There is no bad time to ask a question, and there are no stupid questions. If you have any questions about the reading material, or something you read about or heard about in the news or on the job, I would appreciate it if you would ask at the beginning of class. Very frequently, this is a good way to begin to cover the material at hand.
I will use Blackboard to post grades, lecture outlines, and assignments. I will also communicate to you via the e-mail address listed in Blackboard. Please check your e-mail at that address regularly
Mondays and Wednesdays are days on which I normally present material. I will use the digital drop box feature of Blackboard to post lecture outlines in the form of power point slides. Fridays will normally be discussion or role playing day – no lectures. Because class participation is a part of your grade, I will track attendance on Fridays.
During the course of this class, I will likely introduce concepts and use words with which you are not familiar. I will try to anticipate these occasions and provide definitions and explanations; however, it is virtually inevitable that I will assume that you know something that you do not. Stop me when I do this and ask for an explanation! Others are likely in the same situation, and you will help them as well as yourself.
The test dates and the due dates for your paper that are listed in this syllabus are subject to change if the needs of the class so indicate; any changes will be made by the instructor in consultation with the class. I take these due dates seriously. Individual exceptions will be made before the fact on good reason with little hassle. Individual exceptions will be made after the fact with great reluctance and only in well documented emergencies.
Week I (W, 1-23 Housekeeping Chores and Introduction to HRM, text, Ch 1
Week II (M, 1-28) The political environment of personnel management -- text, Ch 2
Week III (M, 2-4) The history and nature of the federal personnel
system -- text, Ch 3
Week IV (M, 2-11) legal constraints -- text, Ch 4
Week V (M, 2-18) Labor unions -- text, Ch 5
Practice Exam essay due on 2-20
Week VI (M, 2-25) Strategic Planning -- text, Ch 6
first exam posted on or before 2-27
Week VII (M, 3-3) Techniques: job design, analysis and
classification -- text Ch 7
first exam due on 3-5, at the beginning of class
Week VIII (M, 3-10) Techniques: recruitment and selection -- text, Ch 8
Spring Break
Week IX (M, 3-24) Pay -- text, Ch 9
Annotated bibliographies due on 3-26
Week X (M, 3-31) Benefits -- text, Ch 10
second exam posted on or before 4-4
Week XI (M, 4-7) Performance management -- text, Ch 11
second exam due on 4-11, at the beginning of class.
Week XII (M, 4-14) HRD -- text, Ch 12
Week XIII (M, 4-21) Employee Discipline -- text, Ch 13.
4-21 Rough drafts of research papers due at the beginning of
class
Week XIV (M, 4-28) The policies and procedures manual -- text, Ch 14
Final exam will be posted on or before 4-30
Week XV (M, 5-5) Review for final -- text, Ch 15
Research papers due
Week XVI (Thursday, 5-8) Final exams due in my office at 4:30 pm -- University
rules do not allow me to accept late exams!
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Take Home Exams |
Research Paper |
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Practice Exam -- 2-20 |
Proposed bibliography, 3-26,
in class |
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1st – 3-5, beginning of class |
Proposed final Drafts, 4-21, in class |
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2nd -- 4-11, beginning of class |
Final Version, 5-5, beginning of class |
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Final -- 5-8, 4:30 pm, in my office (Br 486) |
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All exams will be take home exams. The second and final exams will be cumulative. You will have choices of questions. For example, on the first exam you will likely be given a list of four or more questions from which you will choose two. The second and final exams will follow a similar format.
My test items are a bit unusual at times. Please pay careful attention to the call of the questions. I may ask you to play a role or respond to a hypothetical situation in a test item. It is your task to play the role as realistically as you can. If dialogue is required, write it. If a letter or memo is required, write it. Believe it or not, the best students rather enjoy the opportunity to be creative, and find the test itself to be a learning experience.
Those of you who have not had a class from me are encouraged to take advantage of the opportunity to write a practice exam. The practice exam question is already posted on Blackboard. Students who wish to do so can write an essay in response to that exam. The practice exam is due on Feb. 20. I will grade it and make detailed comments. This will be returned to you before you begin work on the actual first take home exam.
All take home exam essays must be printed on a word processor. Length of the essays is largely irrelevant beyond a certain minimum, and the correlation between length and grades is not very strong. The total length of each essay should not exceed 1000 words, and 500 words is probably about the normal length. Please note that the exams are due at the beginning of class. I will collect exam papers before starting that day's substantive lesson. Once I have finished collecting papers from those who are in the room, those who come in late will be penalized for turning in a late paper. I consider it very rude to come to class solely to turn in a paper and then leaving. Because these exams are to be take home exams, I expect a polished document. While a formal bibliography is not needed when you only cite your notes and the text, I do expect citation of the source of ideas other than the class materials. Of course, you never directly quote language form someone else without full citation. Typographical errors and errors of usage and grammar will result in deductions from the grade. I do this because, in the real world, such errors do reduce the value of your work. Edit your essays carefully.
It is my firm belief that anyone of average intelligence can memorize details. What separates the good students from the ordinary ones, and those who are successful in later life from those who merely survive, is the ability to manipulate knowledge of concepts in creative ways to solve complex problems. Thus, merely listing concepts learned in a section of the course in response to an essay question may get you a few points, but will not earn a passing grade. In order to earn a passing grade, you must use the concepts to solve the problem set out in the test item. You are required to apply concepts to meet the goal of political science, which is to describe, explain and predict human behavior in the political arena.
Your opinion and analysis are not equivalent. Political science is based on rational, dispassionate analysis of qualitative and quantitative data, informed by theory. I want your opinions to be informed by rational political science analysis, but experience has taught me that they are not always so informed. Your opinion is what you feel. It is informed by emotion as well as by rational analysis. Your opinion is important to me as a citizen. It is irrelevant to me when I grade your work. What matters is the quality of your analysis.
If, in my judgment, a poor grade is due to a failure to understand the exam
item itself, I will make an offer to that particular student to rewrite an exam
essay. In all case of revisions, the grade posted in the grade book will
be the average of the first test score and the revised test score. If you
have a documented learning disability that requires alternative testing
arrangements, please let me know well before the first exam.
You are expected to conduct scholarly research and write a 6 to 12 page paper on the topic of leadership in the public sector. In specific, respond to the following:
The “business” of running a
republic like the
Information about leadership can be found in a number of scholarly journals and books. The Special Supplemental Issue to volume 67 of Public Administration Review (available in full text online through our library’s web site) is devoted entirely to an examination of “Administrative Failure in the Wake of Katrina.” This is a good source for you. I would also recommend that you find a good set of sources on the roots of “leadership” as a social science concept. These roots would include Fred Fieldler’s contingency theory, Robert Blake and Jane Mouton’s Managerial Grid, Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard’s Situational Leadership Model, Victor Vroom and Phillip Yetton’s Normative Decision Making Model and Paul House’s Path Goal Theory. Our library has a number of recent books on leadership that you should consider, many of which will contain histories of formal thinking about leadership.
I expect a thorough bibliography. Access to full text online resources in our library has been upgraded to the point where failure to access the scholarly literature cannot be blamed on lack of resources in the library. You are required to use the APSA citation style. A copy of the APSA style manual can be found in the Political Science resource room, Bradley Hall 490.
I expect a full review of the literature on this particular issue. You will need to document the main theoretical perspectives in this area of inquiry and use that knowledge to: 1) define the behaviors that make for a good, or bad, leader; 2) offer commentary on how we can measure the extent to leaders are effective; and 3) make specific recommendations for training and education that future leaders should have.
I would hope that the student grapevine about me is that my papers are hard to do and that consultation is helpful in earning a good grade. To that end, I would like very much to offer some assistance to you. I would suggest that you submit a proposed bibliography, with brief annotations, on or before March 26. I will review these and make suggestions for you within a week. I will also gladly review proposed final drafts (I do not like the term "rough" draft) if they are given to me in a timely fashion (due in class on or before 4-21) and if they are complete enough for me to provide feedback. The early submission of a polished draft and editing the paper in accordance with my suggestions makes a good grade much more likely. You must understand that a proposed final draft is not just a few scribblings to see if you are on the right track. Rather, it is a virtually completed paper (hence the use of the term "proposed final draft" instead of "rough draft"), printed using a word processor program and containing a complete bibliography. No handwritten proposed final drafts will be accepted, nor will any proposed final draft that does not contain a complete bibliography be accepted. Careful review of such papers takes time. Absolutely no drafts will be reviewed if received after the 4-21 due date. The final version of the paper is due at the beginning of class on May 5, 2008. Late submission of the final version of a paper will be penalized at the rate of 10% for each day late.
I am not an English professor; however, multiple, obvious errors of grammar or usage will result in deductions from your grade. Obvious errors include, among others, misspelled words, subject-verb disagreement, sentence fragments or run-on sentences, misuse of homophones (such as "their," "there" and "they're" or "your" and "you're." I include confusion of the words "effect" and "affect" in this category), failure to use the apostrophe to signify the possessive, ending of sentences with a preposition, failure to use proper punctuation (e.g., failure to place a question mark at the end of an interrogatory sentence, or failure to properly use quotation marks), and use of the four letters "A," "L," "O," and "T" taken together as a word. I do this because your work once you leave Bradley will be judged largely by how well you can use the language. The advent of spell and grammar checks in word processing software make the proofreading process much easier than in the past, but come with their own pitfalls. Please take the time to edit your work yourself. The Writing Center will provide you with valuable assistance in learning how to edit your work.
Any instance of academic dishonesty, e.g., cheating on exams or plagiarism of term papers, will be dealt with as severely as university rules allow.
Any attempt to secure the exclusive use of library resources, i.e., hiding or removing from the library any books or journals, or intentional destruction of library materials, i.e., cutting out articles, will be punished severely. Your grade on the review essay will be reduced and the matter will be reported to the library and to the Executive Director of Housing, Residential Life and Student Judicial System. You will be held liable for repair or replacement of the materials.
You are expected to do your own work on your research paper. Plagiarism will be punished as severely as university rules allow, i.e., a zero for the paper will be awarded and the matter will be reported to the Chair of Political Science and the Executive Director of Housing, Residential Life and Student Judicial System. Plagiarism, according to the Random House Dictionary of the English Language (unabridged edition), means "appropriation or imitation of the language, ideas and thoughts of another author, and representation of them as one's own work." Any of the following examples of academic dishonesty constitutes plagiarism:
1. Directly copying a phrase, sentence, passage or paragraph from another author and presenting it as one's own (i.e., without proper quotation marks and full citation. You are assumed to know how to properly use quotation marks and citations).
2. Paraphrasing a sentence, passage or paragraph from another author without so indicating by proper citation to authority. When in doubt, cite!
3. Knowingly presenting, as one's own, a thought, idea, analytical framework, or theory advanced by another author. Turning in a term paper you did not write, e.g., one you bought or copied is plagiarism.
I am well aware that there are
Web sites with papers that you can download and have the ability to check to
see if a paper comes from such a source.
I am also aware that many high school students learn to write papers by
cutting and pasting text from web sites.
Whenever you use language written by someone else, you must fully credit
the author by a complete citation. Try
to limit the use of direct quotes in any event.
I want your words, not a bunch of related quotations.