Theories and Research Methods for Public Administrations

The program consists of two Teaching Units (a-b), each of twenty hours.

Teaching Program - Unit (a)
The first Unit, with an introductory character, is devoted to the introduction of the toolkit for the analysis of Public Administration as a complex organization in the Western society seen as a functionally differentiated system. After a description of the study object, that is the Public Administration as a central organization of the public sector, which uses technologies and human resources for the production of public policies, the evolution of the Italian administration will be framed starting from a brief historical excursus. Subsequently, the main paradigms of organizational analysis useful for understanding public bureaucracies as complex organizations will be illustrated. Finally, we will examine the new paradigms of administrative organization that have informed and are still influencing the main changes taking place in the Public Administration, with particular reference to the Italian one. *** These issues will be analyzed in a theoretical framework focused on the relationship between the structures of the modern society and the characteristics of the bureaucratic organizations (general theory of society: from methodological individualism and rational choice theory up to limited rationality and cognitivist and behaviourist individualism/functionalist and systemic structural theories and systems theory from Parsons to Luhmann).

Unit (a) - Topics
1- Organizational analysis of Public Administration: concepts and methods. Public administration as both complex organization and social order. The Weberian bureaucratic idealtype and the public administration as a rational organization. Theories of social order: individualistic order and rational choice theory. Evolutions of the bureaucratic idealtype, from Weber to Merton, Goulder, Mintzberg and Simon. From Olympic rationality to bounded rationality.
2- Variants of individualistic approach: Coleman and Boudon (neoweberian approaches to the social order). Public administration as an institution: the function of social norms. Stability and change, power and heterogenesis of ends. The bureaucratic organizational model: decision and planning; evaluation and monitoring.
3- Public administration, organizational power and negotiated order (Crozier). The relationship between politics and administration and its organizational contractualization. The organization between sources of uncertainty and organizational power: the formal and informal structure of organizations. Economic analysis of organization: transaction costs, agency theory, strategic behavior and opportunism of actors. Organizational design in the light of the economic contract theory.
4- The cultural model: administrative culture and change in public administration. Knowledge and learning. Information models. The community of practice and bureaucratic communication. Models of bureaucratic change. The new paradigms of public administration and changes in public management. From New Public Management to Public Governance. Manage public administration in terms of multilevel governance and stakeholder approach.
5- The ecological model: public administration as a systemic environment (system/environment distinction: first and second order cybernetics). The Luhmannian model of organization. Administrative governance and vertical/horizontal governance. Outsourcing and privatization. Regulation versus governance.

Teaching Program - Unit (b)
The second teaching unit is devoted to study the main research strategies and analysis techniques aimed at understanding functioning, structures and processes of public administration. Firstly, principles inherent choice, design and implementation of a research will be illustrated, in the light of the theoretical approaches or mixed methods (qualitative and/or quantitative) it would be better used for its realization. Secondly, we will proceed with the examination of the main quantitative research techniques (for monovariate, bivariate and multivariate analysis), showing their peculiarities and characteristics with respect to the specific objectives of the investigation to be carried out. Finally, we will examine the different strategies available for an effective presentation of research results to a specialist or non-expert audience.


Unit (b) - Topics
1- Research design: conception, design and implementation of a research on public administration. Definition of research aims; description of research hypotheses; selection of methodologies and investigation techniques: qualitative vs quantitative research or feasible mix; research actions: data collection and collection units.
2- Quantitative research: the five phases of quantitative research: from concepts to the properties of objects; the operational definition and variable types. Nominal, ordinal, cardinal, or metric variables. Demoscopic surveys and other types of surveys. Formulation and administration of a questionnaire. Demoscopic surveys with sampling.
3- Data analysis: monovariate, bivariate and multivariate techniques. Monovariate analysis: the description of variables. Bivariate analysis: contingency and correlation tables. The analysis of variance and the simple regression model. The multivariate analysis, the multiple regression model and the logistic regression model.
4- Presenting the results: how to write a research Report. The recipients, language, illustration and comment of data. "So what": suggestions and solutions inspired by research. Dealing with stakehoders on the research topic and key issues impact.

As a corollary to Unit (b), a comparative research carried out using both qualitative and quantitative methods on de-regulation, administrative simplification and functioning of the SUAP (Desk for Productive Activities) will be presented and discussed.