Order Without Design

Information Production and Policy Making

Häftad, Engelska, 1989

379 kr

Beställningsvara. Skickas inom 5-8 vardagar. Fri frakt för medlemmar vid köp för minst 249 kr.

In this lively and, ultimately, disturbing study of policy analysts who are employed in bureaucracies, the author finds a startling paradox. The analysts know that the papers they so painstakingly prepare will not be used; as one analyst remarked, "Either it won't get done in time, or it won't be good enough, or the person who wanted it done will have left and no one will know what to do with it, or the issue will no longer exist." Yet the analysts continue to work at producing these papers.The means of producing information is at the heart of the paradox. The process systematically produces information that is difficult to use directly in decision-making. Yet analysts can do little to alter the constraints of the process. They continue to produce papers because it is their job, they value doing it, and it is their major means of influencing policy. In so doing they make a unique, though indirect, contribution to policy making.Drawing on eighteen months of observation and participation in the work of the policy office of the U.S. Department of Energy, the author fully investigates the conditions that create the paradox and the positive as well as the negative implications of the process of information production in organizations.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum1989-07-01
Mått140 x 216 x 5 mm
Vikt272 g
FormatHäftad
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor216
FörlagStanford University Press
ISBN9780804717267

Tillhör följande kategorier

Centralt styre och förvaltning inom Samhälle och politik

Part I. Introduction: 1. The paradox of producing information 2. Interpretation in decision making and policy making 3. Method and data Part II. What Bureaucratic Analysts Do: 4. Report writing 5. tasks that contribute to report writing 6. The work of bureaucratic analysts Part III. Contribution to Policy Making: 7. Rationality, interpretation, and inventories 8. Properties of the inventory 9. Problem sovling versus interpretation: from the bureaucratic analysts' perspective Part VI. Implications: 10. Bureaucratic analysts and their work 11. Organizing analysts 12. The production of information Appendices Bibliography Index.

"It's a gem-clear, well-written, and sharply focused. It addresses important issues that cross disciplines, outlines its arguments well, and provides useful examples drawn from observations and interviews. It presents a persuasive conception of decision making in an organizational context." -Peter K. Manning ,Michigan State University "A splendid book... What I find most attractive is Feldman's uncanny ability to boil down a most uncertain matter to a swiftly moving interpretive tale that gets past disciplinary interests to wrestle with policy formulation in the warrens of a government bureaucracy. It is a book that anyone seriously attempting to account for the making of policy will have to address." -John Van Maanen ,Massachusetts Institute of Technology