Service in the Field

by Carroll, Barbara Wake; Siegel, David; Institute of Public Administration of Canada

• ISBN13: 9780773517967
• ISBN10: 0773517960
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-11-01
• Publisher: McGill Queens Univ Pr

Summary

As governments attempt to focus more on service delivery, it has become apparent that little is known about the people who actually provide the services. Barbara Wake Carroll and David Siegel discuss structural issues and analyse the various administrative reforms developed in the last few years. They highlight field officers' perceptions of the problems in the system and suggest ways to improve field office-head office relations and the operation of field offices generally. The authors' analysis is based on more than two hundred interviews with federal and provincial civil servants in all ten provinces, in the smallest hamlets and largest cities across Canada. Using extensive quotations from these interviews, the authors allow public servants to tell their own stories and, in so doing, provide examples of the application of systematic qualitative research to Canadian political science. With its accessible style and emphasis on personal experience, Service in the Field will be of interest to students and scholars of public administration, political science, organization theory, and related disciplines in addition to people in government in both field and head offices.

Table of Contents

Tables, Figures, and Boxes
Acknowledgments
Introduction	p. 3
Who Are These People and What Do They Do?	p. 10
The Research Described	p. 27
"How We Do Things around Here"	p. 44
Service to the Public	p. 69
The Workplace Environment	p. 98
Two Solitudes or One Big Happy Family? Dealing with Head Office	p. 129
Administrative Reform: How It Plays in the Field	p. 156
Bureaucrats Are People Too	p. 181
Where Do We Go from Here? Implications for Implementation and Management Theory	p. 199
App.: Methodology	p. 215
Notes	p. 231
Bibliography	p. 239
Index	p. 249
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