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Getting 'how' and 'why' straight: A critical discourse analysis of the National Partnership for Reinventing Government's ideological discourse on information and communication technologies
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Getting 'how' and 'why' straight: A critical discourse analysis of the National Partnership for Reinventing Government's ideological discourse on information and communication technologies
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NOTE TO USERS
This reproduction is the best copy available.
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UMI
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GETTING ‘HOW’ AND ‘WHY’ STRAIGHT:
A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF THE NATIONAL PARTNERSHIP
FOR REINVENTING GOVERNMENT’S IDEOLOGICAL DISCOURSE ON
INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES
by
Karen Jean Wheeless
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE SCHOOL OF POLICY, PLANNING,
AND DEVELOPMENT
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
Doctor of Public Administration
May 2001
Copyright 2001 Karen Jean Wheeless
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UMI Number: 3027800
Copyright 2001 by
W heeless, Karen Jean
All rights reserved.
UMI8
UMI Microform 3027800
Copyright 2002 by Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company.
All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against
unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code.
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UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
SCH O O L O F PO LIC Y , PLANNING, AND D EVELO PM ENT
UNIVERSITY PA R K
LO S ANGELES, CALIFO RNIA 90089
This dissertation, written by
^ & r .e.0 . . . . K & r.!J r ...............
under the direction of h .& .K ... Dissertation
Committee, and approved by all its
members, has been presented to and
accepted by the Faculty of the School of
Policy, Planning, and Development, in
partial fulfillment of requirements for the
degree of
DOCTOR OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
Dean
DISSERTATION COMMITTEE
Chairperson
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Tables and Figures .......... iii
Abstract ......... iv
Chapter 1: Purpose ......... 1
Chapter 2: Literature Review ........ 6
Chapter 3: Research Design .......... 27
Chapter 4: Findings ....... 36
Chapter 5: Conclusions ........ 99
References ......... 108
Appendix 1: Long Waves and Administrative Reform ......... 136
Appendix 2: How Data were Prepared for Analysis ......... 143
Glossary ........ ••••• 151
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LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES
Table 1: Identifying Power Indicators
in a Discourse ........ 21
Table 2: Transformational versus
Transactional Change:
Discourse Indicators ................... 23
Table 3: Research Design ..................... 28
Table 4: Reasons to Include Text .......... 32
Table 5: Content Words Repeated 1000
Times or More in the Analyzed Texts
60
Table 6: Terms Found in Each of the
Four Predominant Discourses of the
Analyzed Texts ...................... 61
Table 7: Metaphors Found Throughout
theNPRTexts ........ 73
Table 8: Responsibility for Action
Found in Analyzed Texts ......... 80
Table 9: Pronoun Frequency in
Analyzed Texts .......... 83
Table 10: Genre Indicators.................. 88
Table 11: Terms Assigned to Genres ... 89
Table 12: Indicators of
Transformational or Transactional
Change .............. 91
Table 13: Indicators of
Transformational Change ................ 92
Table 14: Types of Power Found in
Analyzed Texts ................................. 95
Figure 1 : Simultaneous Factors Needed
For Fundamental Transformation .......23
Figure 2: Four Predominant Discourses
of NPR Texts.................... 56
Figure 3: Percentage of Total
Words at Each Frequency ........ 67
Figure 4: Number of Content Words
Compared to Function Words.............. 68
Figure 5: Change in Topic as More
Text Analyzed ..................... 69
Figure 6: Metaphors Found throughout
Analyzed Texts ................................ 72
Figure 7: Percentage Distribution of
Pronouns in Analyzed Texts ............ 84
Figure 8: Distribution of Genres ........ 89
Figure 9: Distribution of Language
Referencing Transformational or
Transactional Change ......................... 91
Figure 10: Distribution of Types of
Change ........................................... 93
Figure 11: Distribution of Power
Types in NPR Texts ............................ 95
Figure 12: Distribution of Prestige
Groups within Prestige
Power Types ................................ 95
Figure 13: Long-Wave Peaks
and Valleys ............................. 138
Figure 14: Long-Wave Cycles and
Administrative Reform ................. 141
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Abstract
Information and communication technologies lie at the heart of one of today’s
predominant ideological discourses— an idea that information and communication
technologies will transform not only the way people work within organizations, via “the
rise of human networks and the fall of hierarchies,” but also the very way that people
within those organizations “think about who they are” (Garreau, 1999: Al).
The National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR)1 makes extensive use of
this empowerment discourse (Kettl and Dilulio, 1995)2— inferring that federal employees will
benefit from greater freedom, participation, and equality in the workplace as modem
information and communication technologies spread (NPR, 1998,1997a, 1993a). This
research identifies, using critical discourse analysis, whether these intimations of
empowerment are the predominant ideology at the core of NPR’s discourse on
information and communication technologies, or if some other ideology predominates.
1 The National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR) was known as the National Performance
Review from its inception in 1993 until 1998, when the name was changed to reflect a new phase. The new
phase’s purpose is to renew public faith in government by improving customer service in the 32 agencies
that the American public deals with the most. Thus, this second phase focuses on having ‘a conversation’
with the American public so that ‘high-impact’ federal organizations understand and deliver what the
public ‘wants’ (Barr, 1998).
This research analyzes materials from both periods (1993-1998 and 1998-2000) but uses only the current
title to describe both phases of the initiative.
2 Thompson (2000) identifies the elements of this empowerment discourse— decentralizatiffli of authority,
empowerment of front line workers, and cultural change-as the second order objectives of the NPR.
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Chapter 1: Research Purpose
The conception that ideologies3 and their associated discourses4 are present in
organizations has been commonplace since Bendix’s (1956:2,9) classic work, in which he
defined “ideologies of management” as “all ideas which are espoused by or for those who
exercise authority in economic enterprises,5 and which seek to explain and justify that
authority.”
Working from the premise that ideologies and their associated discourses are found in
federal agencies, the foundational postulate of this dissertation is that:
3 This research defines ideology as a systemic, value-based, action-oriented set of ideas about who should
have power and who should not— a perspective about how things should be (Hall, 1996; Berger, 1991;
Thompson, 1990).
4 There are many definitions of discourse. Today's argument over this word, which has been around since
the 14* century, is whether discourse includes only words and their underlying ideas or also encompasses
what Foucault (1972) calls non-discursive formations (such as behaviors or objects). This research uses the
traditional definition of discourse: “formal and orderly and usually extended expression of thought on a
subject; connected speech or writing; a linguistic unit (as a conversation or a story) larger than a sentence”
(WWWebster, 1999).
Elaborating on this definition are numerous scholars who note that discourse reflects a version of reality
that is ideological; that discourses reflect what a society values (Bicket, 1999). Expressed another way,
“We use discourse .. .to form our sense of the social world and to form the relations by which we engage
in it” (Langer, 1997: Section 4, Paragraph 5). Or as Foucault (1972: 216, 224) put it, “in every society the
production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organized, and redistributed according to a certain
number of procedures.” Since discourse is a “social indicator of interests of speakers or writers” (Van Dijk,
1985: 8), “whose discourse prevails makes all the difference” (Tompkins, 1980: xxv).
5 While some might argue that government organizations are not economic enterprises, this research relies
upon the work of numerous scholars (Gates, 1998; Kaboolian, 1998; Gillroy, 1997; M urray, 1997;
Golembiewski, 1995; Ingraham and Romzek, 1994; Moe, 1994; Brazelay, 1992; Ventriss, 1991; Denhardt,
1990; Conant, 1988; Goodin and Wilenski, 1984; Musgrave and Musgrave, 1984; Waldo, 1984; March and
Olsen, 1983; Beard, 1913; and Smith, 1907) who identify economic values and economic assumptions
(economy, efficiency, and effectiveness) as the fundamental core of contemporary government
organizations.
1
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Ideological discourses6 influence the behavior o f employees in
organizations because they “regulate and direct” behavior, reduce
uncertainty, and resolve the paradoxes faced in daily life (McKinley, Mone,
and Barker, 1998: Paragraph 10) by explaining the world “in terms o f cause-
and-effect relations” (Beyer, 1981:166).
Thus, anyone interested in understanding the behavior of federal employees can look to
the ideological "maps" of "territories that are to be" (Hayakawa, 1973:245) contained in the
discourses of the chief executives of the Executive Branch.
One of the predominant ‘maps’ found in federal, and, perhaps, all organizations today
comes from discourses about information and communication technologies.7 One reason
for this lies with what The Washington Post calls “one of the big ideas of the Information
Age . . . .’ ’ — an idea that information and communication technologies will transform not
6 An ideological discourse is the ideas and words that help create, express, and modify a particular
ideology. Norman Fairclough (1995:40) explained one derivation of this concept through his synthesis of
the works ofMichel Pecheux (1982) on discursive formation and Louis Althusser (1971) on ideological
formation. From this synthesis he demonstrated the inseparability of ‘“ways of talking’ and ‘ways of
seeing.’”
7 Michael Albright (1995: 39) notes that “although much has been written about information technology, it
is actually rather difficult to find a current, workable definition of what it is.” This research uses the
definition common to King, Kraemer, and Kling (NRC, 1998) of computer-communication systems or
computing and communication technologies. Rahm (1997: 71) says, “computers and telecommunications
networks are the physical devices most often identified as information technology.”
2
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only the w ay people work within organizations, via “the rise of human networks and the
fall of hierarchies,” but also the very way that people within those organizations “think
about who they are” (Garreau, 1999: Al).8
In circles that are more scholarly, Kling and Iacono (1988:227) identified similar “big ideas”
through their analysis of five ideological discourses surrounding computerization in the
United States.9 The point they made about each of these computerization discourses was
that there was a link between each discourse "and a preferred social order. . . A
common theme found in several of the discourses is the idea that computers and their
associated communication technologies are tools of freedom and empowerment.
While there has been much research on both information and communication
technologies and the National Partnership for Reinventing Government, this research
effort makes a contribution because it:
8 Information and communication technologies provide a valuable research focus for several reasons.
These include: (a) the long running scholarly interest in the role of computers in contemporary American
organizations (Dunlop and Kling, 1991; Zuboff, 1988; Leavitt and Whisler, 1958); (b) the extensive theory
base predicting these technologies’ impact on the workplace (Orlikowski, 1991; Brucker, 1988;
Bravennan, 1974); and (c) the discrepancies, which empirical research is revealing, between the promise
and reality of change brought about by information and communication technologies in the workplace
(Allen and Morton, 1994; Kraemer and Danziger, 1990; Attewell and Rule, 1984).
9 Kling and Iacono (1988: 226) describe five computerization movements: Urban Information Systems,
Artificial Intelligence, Computer-Based Education, Office Automation, and Personal Computing. They
assert that “computerization movements share key ideological beliefs."
3
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■ Links analyzed texts1 0 of the National Partnership for Reinventing Government
with contemporary ideologies of information and communication technologies,
■ Carries out this linkage by uniting new er European approaches to critical
organizational studies w ith traditional American research on organizational power
and change, and
■ Concludes with a brief assessment of why presidential administrations should be
held responsible for “performance of promises” (Damico, Conway, and Damico, 2000;
Johnson and Johnson, 2000; Braithwaite and Levi, 1998; Carter, 1998; Braud, 1997; Inglehart,
1997; Nye, Zelikow, and King, 1997; Pinchot and Pinchot, 1997; Fukuyama, 1995; Harrison,
1992; Schelling, 1985; Ropke, 1971; Hume, 1739-1740: Book 3, Part 2, Section on “The
Obligation of Promises”).
Thus, this dissertation focuses on current topics using contemporary critical methodology
in a way that some may consider more rigorous than the typical critical essay1 1 used by
1 0 The definition o f‘text’ is controversial today. For example, Fairclough (1993) says a ‘text’ can be oral,
written, and even visual. This research does not use ‘text’ in this broad sense. Instead, this research sticks
with the traditional definition o f‘text’ as “(l)the original words and form of a written or printed work-----
(2a) the main body of printed or written matter on a page, (b) the principal part of a book exclusive of front
and back matter ....” (WWWebster, 1999).
1 1 A combined collection of such typical critical essays is Farmer's (1998) The Art of Anti-Administration.
Chapter authors include McSwite (" Stories from the 'Real W orld': Administering Anti-Administratively"),
Stivers ("Deciding the Undecidable: A Few Things Postmodernism Might Have to Offer Public
Administration"), Miller and Fox ("Multiple Perspectives on Some Epiphenomenal Policy Topics"), and
Carr and Zanetti ("Surrealism in Administrative Studies: The Fanatic Used as a Method of Elucidation").
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Public Administration scholars.1 2 Additionally, this dissertation offers several
possibilities for follow-on research. These range from comparison of long-wave
economic theory to American administrative reform, to a look at possible gender
‘privileging’ in the textual materials of the National Partnership for Reinventing
Government, to theory development and testing of what would be required for
transformational change in the federal government.
Finally, this dissertation offers these methodological tools and research ideas as a way to
assess whether presidential administrations are practicing the democratic “habits o f the
heart” (DeTocqueville, 1831: Volume 1, Chapter 17, Paragraph 32) that lead to an ethical discourse
o f hope (Drake, Yuthas, and Dillard, 2000; Bird, 1996; Johannsen, 1996; Habermas, 1992; Bloch, 1986),
or if an adm inistration is engaging in ‘ill speech situations’(Habermas, 1992) that, far from
empowering its employees, institutionalize discourse as domination (Van Dijk, 1998b).
1 2 A convention used throughout this paper is Dwight Waldo’s (1980) proposal to use lower case letters to
signify working practitioners (public administrators) versus upper case letters to indicate academic teachers
and researchers (Public Administration scholars).
5
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Chapter 2: Literature Review
This dissertation rests upon a synthesis of:
■ Organizational and administrative theories on the topics of power and change (Terry,
1998; Hummel, 1994; Alvesson and Willmott, 1992; Cleveland, 1985; Scfaein, 1985; Deal and
Kennedy, 1982; Argyris and Schon, 1974; Davis and Simmons, 1972),
■ Administrative reform literature (Stillman, 1998,1982; Dilulio, 1993; Ingraham and
Rosenbloom, 1992; Mosher, 1983; Moe, 1982),
■ Language and linguistic theories, including works on discourse analysis,
hermeneutics, and deconstruction (Winograd, 1988; Davidson, 1980; Russell, 1973;
Wittgenstein, 1968; Firth, 1957),
■ Critical social theory, including understandings of ideology (Prasad and Caproni, 1997;
Box, 1995; Forester, 1993,1980; Grimes, 1992; Kelly, 1990; Fay, 1987; Benhabib, 1986; Denhardt,
1981), and
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■ Information technology theories (Laudon and M arr, 1995; Feenberg, 1991; Robey and
Orlikowski, 1991; Huber, 1990; Hirschhom, 1984; Robey, 1977; Braverman, 1974; Meyer, 1968;
Burlingame, 1961; Diebold, 1952).
While these theories define ‘the community’ that surrounds this research work-in the
same way a neighborhood surrounds a specific plot of land on which sits an individual
house— this chapter highlights only ‘the lot’ literature on the National Partnership for
Reinventing Government; and, ‘the house’ theories on critical discourse analysis, power,
change, and information technology that are specifically used to carry out this research.
The Lot-National Partnership for Reinventing Government
Less than two months after his first inauguration (March, 1993), President Clinton
announced that Vice President Gore would serve as director of their “comprehensive
reorganization to remedy what was widely perceived as government’s failure to serve its
citizenry” (Arnold, 1995:414). He said:
The America people deserve a government that is both honest and efficient, and
for too long they haven’ t gotten it... democracy can become quickly an empty
phrase, if those who are elected to serve cannot meet the needs o f the people
except with government that costs too much or is too slow or too arrogant or too
unresponsive (Clinton, 1993: Paragraph 16).
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Some might conclude from this statement that, while the problem President Clinton put
forward remained remarkably similar to that which motivated the establishment of a
federal career civil service in 1883 (Cummings and Wise, 1971),1 3 the solutions he proposed
plummeted from their zenith as moral ideals in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s (Stillman,
1998; Shafiritz, 1988; Chandler, 1987; Nation, 1868) to their nadir with the National Partnership
for Reinventing Government’s characterization of government— not as a key societal
facilitator of the collective public good, but as just another market supplier of goods and
services meeting individual wants and desires. Others, including the National Academy
for Public Administration (NAPA, 1993), saw this initiative much more positively— as an
effort to undertake a practical and relevant administrative reform in order to make
government ‘work.’
When the Clinton administration spoke in 1993 of remedying government failures, they
specified four principles as the ‘bedrock’ upon which better government should be built.
They were; (1) shifting to a system where employees were accountable for getting results,
not following rules, (2) achieving customer satisfaction, as measured through surveys and
focus groups, (3) decentralizing authority and empowering front line workers, and
(4) making government work better while costing less (NPR, 1993a).
1 3 Pendleton Act of 1883.
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By the tim e the National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR) celebrated its
fifth anniversary in 1998, these four principles had dwindled as Vice President Gore
announced to all federal employees:
We have recently renamed our effort the National Partnership for
Reinventing Government. We ask your commitment to NPR’ s new vision,
‘ America@OurBest, ’ and its mission: ‘ In time for the 21st Century,
reinvent government to work better, cost less, and get results that
Americans care about’ (Gore, 1998: Paragraph 6).
The literature that reviews the NPR during these first five years ranges from criticisms to
mixed appraisals. Moe (1994) represents those (Barnhart, 1997; Reeder, 1997; Duhnick, 1994;
Niskanen, 1994) who criticize the departure from traditional discourses that they believe the
NPR represents. Moe (1994:116-117) finds NPR in the wrong because: (a) it makes public
administrators accountable to individual customers instead of a central elected official,
and (b) his normative premise that changes in the law (requiring the involvement of
Congress) should precede changes in the behavior of public administrators. He finds
NPR’s approach on both these issues to be a “presidential retreat from management
responsibilities” and treatment of Congress as a “managerial nuisance.” He believes the
problems of the federal government will be exacerbated, over the long term, “as private
parties and their values displace governmental institutions and their values.”
Arnold (1995:414-415) represents those presenting mixed reviews of the NPR (Kettl, 1998;
Laurent, 1998; Abramson, 1997; Sanders, 1996; Wilson, 1994), often damning it with faint praise,
9
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calling the National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR) “a collage of
fashionable approaches to reforming organizations” that “commingle approaches to
administrative reform with a fundamental critique of conventional politics.” Arnold
notes that NPR discovers, “in the end, the cause of bad administration is frequently
pluralist politics. However, having finally recognized politics, the review’s solution. . .
is not to address its role in administration but to abolish it” by subjecting all programs “to
market tests and performance measures.”
There is also a third body of literature. While this literature does not deal directly with
NPR, it broadly suggests that any reform with its primary footing in either the
traditional/rational (Frag, 1984) or contemporary/normative (Enteman, 1993; Barley and Kunda,
1992; Pollitt, 1990) managerial ideologies is bound to have uneven results.1 4 The scholars
who write within this body of literature (Kouzmin and Johnston, 1998; Kouzmin and Korac-
Rakabadse, 1997; Hart, Rosenthal, and Kouzmin, 1993; Jarman and Kouzmin, 1993; Hirschman, 1991;
Kaufmann, 1991; Dror, 1987,1980; Ramos, 1981) posit that current models of public
administration do not account for current social and organizational realities.
1 4 Cawley and Chaloupka (1997: Paragraph 36) summarize the distinction between the traditional/rational
and contemporary/normative managerial discourses this way:
The goal is not simply to increase Schmidt’ s productivity; rather, it is to make Schmidt want
to increase his own productivity (making him glad to do it). This project required first
positing a new identity (high-priced man) that Schmidt could (should) assume and then
showing him the technique (doing what he’ s toldfrom morning to night with no back talk)
for adopting the new identity. In short, the apparent subjects of the exchange— workload
and salary— are displaced with issues that turn on Schmidt’ s self-conception. Obviously,
Schmidt’ s range of possible responses in this situation is considerably reduced
10
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Perhaps this mix of perspectives on the National Partnership for Reinventing Government
(NPR) should be expected based upon one way Vice President Gore fram ed this initiative
to reform the federal government. He did this by relating the story about a taxidermist
and veterinarian who share office space--the sign over the door says, "Either Way— You
Get Your Dog Back" (Gore, 1995). The challenge for a public administrator is to
understand enough of the ideological ‘map’ offered by the NPR to become a sentinel on
the watch-tower of liberty (Webster, 1834) instead of the stuffed head over the door.
The House’s Foimdation-Langiiage Theory
Because language is almost universally recognized as a vital part of human activity, man
has studied its form for millennia. For example, in the 1s t century BC, Dionysius Thrax
(1998) worked out an elaborate system on the form of the ancient Greek language, which
is now called traditional grammar. In addition, Panini (1938)1 5 laid out a complete
grammar for Sanskrit in the 5th century BC.
For almost as long, mankind has also studied language in relation to its function in human
life. From Aristotle (350) up until the 18th century, the predominant perspective on the
function of language was that it publicly expressed thoughts and ideas— “conceived of as
1 5 “Panini should be thought of as the forerunner of the modem formal language theory used to specify
computer languages” (O'Connor and Roberston, 1996: Paragraph 3).
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the self-standing mental elements whereby we think, but which would otherwise remain
private .... Language a mere vehicle for . . . transmission” (Honderich, 1995:459).
Etienne Bonnot de Condillac (1746) was one of the first to define the function of language
as more than just a way to express preformed ideas. Instead, he postulated that language
serves as a means of creating ideas. Thus, the concept emerged of language as something
essential to thought itself--implying humans have a hard time even thinking about things
for which there are not names or descriptive language (Honderich, 1995).
This viewpoint provides the foundation for the modem study of language. The
implication of this viewpoint is that language and thought are “inextricably intertwined”
(Sapir, 1921:217-218); that the very structure of a language directly affects the way a person
understands the world (Whoff 1956; Sapir, 1931). Austin (1962) and Searle (1969) carried the
Whorfian hypothesis— that language plays an important role in human perception— to the
next plane, theorizing that the most important thing to study about language was not its
form, or even its function, but what language actually does. For example, a justice-of-
the-peace saying, "I now pronounce you husband and wife," is more than subject-verb-
object agreement in a simple sentence structure (form); more than calling attention to the
importance of public vows in societal stability (function); instead, the words actually
create or enact the marriage (action).
12
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Combining the form, function, and action-ability of language, one comes to the work of
Michael Halliday (1994). Halliday’s metafunctions of language-textual, interpersonal,
and ideational— synthesize the ways in which a language’s form, function, and action
ability intertwine. Halliday said the study of language could only be justified if language
is treated as both a process and a system of relations. In other words, legitimate study
looks at the indivisible interaction of both what the language is and what people do with
it.
While it is rare to find these language theories explicitly addressed by Public or public
administrators, many organizational scholars (De Cock, 1998; Phillips and Hardy, 1997; Hatch,
1996; Van Maanen, 1996; Barrett, Thomas, and Hocevar, 1995) agree that language plays a major
role in both creating and expressing organizational reality. Other organizational scholars
recognize the importance of language in understanding an organization by using
‘storytelling’ as the metaphor for what goes on inside organizations (Barry and Elmes, 1997;
Czamiawska, 1997; Boyce, 1996; Boje, 1991; Martin, 1990; Deetz, 1987; Weick and Browning, 1986).
Still others use the concept o f ‘narrative’ in their studies of events within organizations
(Faber, 1998; Hart, Willihnganz, and Leichty, 1995; Phillips, 1995; Levitt and Nass, 1994; Clair, 1993;
Witten, 1993; Mumby, 1988; Putnam and Pacanowsky, 1983). Additionally, other scholars (Forman
and Rymer, 1999; Kuhn, 1997; Yates, Orlikowski, and Okamura, 1995; Orlikowski and Yates, 1994;
Kling, 1994; Yates and Orlikowski, 1992) use ‘genre’ as the theoretical center of their research.
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However, even if more Public/public administrators came to recognize the pivotal role
language plays in organizations, how could they respond to the main problem of studying
language, which Mumby (1988:115) identifies as "the question of validity. That is, to
what extent can one claim that a particular interpretation is more ‘accurate,’ ‘correct,’ or
‘appropriate’ than any other interpretation?" As Lewis Carroll (1865: Chapter 3, Paragraph 10)
illustrates, individual words sometimes have multiple meanings:
'Found IT,' the Mouse replied rather crossly: 'of course you know what
"it" means.'
7 know what "it" means well enough, when Ifind a thing,' said a worm.
'The question is, what did the archbishop find?'
Yet, despite the intriguing amusement of Alice’s adventures, words cannot mean
anything at all, because they occur within specific contexts; contexts of language,
location, culture, and— within organizations— shared purposes. To quote Ngwenyama and
Lee (1997: Paragraph 25):
It is because o f contextuality that, first, an actor cannot simply construe
any meaning he would like for his own words or the words o f others, and,
second, an actor cannot simply exercise free will in how she chooses to
use words.... Because o f their shared organizational context, even
different individuals who hold different opinions on the same matter and
who are motivated by conflicting interests can end up with negotiated
meanings.
With nearly three millennia of language study as the mooring for the possibility that
Public and public administrators can study language in a meaningful way, how can a
14
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study of the ideology at the core of the National Partnership for Reinventing
Government’s discourse on information and communication technology be conducted?
Discourse analysis provides a practical answer.
First Wall-Critical Discourse Analysis
Van Dijk (1985: xi) says:
One o f the most conspicuous and interesting developments in the...
social sciences in the past decade has undoubtedly been the widespread,
multidisciplinary attention paid to the study o f discourse. This
development began to take shape in the early 1970’ s .... This shared
interest for various phenomena o f language use, texts, conversational
interaction, or communicative events soon became more integrated, under
the common label o f discourse analysis.
Discourse analysis1 6 is used today in numerous fields of study, including:
■ Linguistics— Tannen (1994, 1984), Chaika (1994), Kates (1980), Labov (1969);
■ Psychology— Willig (1999), Labov and Fanshel (1977), Meyer (1975);
■ Political science— Schaffner (1997), Stark (1992), Diani and Everman (1991);
1 6 Discourse analysts study language as a social act (Fiske, 1996); as an interrelationship of text, producer,
and audience (Langer, 1997). Angenot (1995) talks about discourse analysis being an interaction between
ideas, mentalities, values, social representations; and, words, utterances, and pragmatic rules. Pierre
Bourdieu (1991) integrates discourse with ideology— noting that a study of ideology must include analysis
of the broader political context, and die relation between this context and social processes.
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■ Library/information science— Haak (1995), NaM-Jakobovits and Jakobovits (1992);
and
■ Medicine— Chenail (1991), Harris (1989).
Discourse analysis is of value to these researchers because:
Discourse is an external index of internal activities o f the self.
Discourse is thus an index and a product o f human affairs.... Discourse
is a textual product that can be recorded, utilized, indexed, cross-
referenced, and retrieved, a discourse technology has evolved (James, 1998:
Paragraphs 1,2.3, 3.15).
There are five major types of discourse analysis:
1. Action implicative (Tracy, 1995)— Action implicative discourse analysis looks, over
long periods, at things like word choices, selection of speech acts, and
argumentative strategies in order to assess how certain responses are relevant to a
problem/conflict situation.
2. Conversation analysis (Hopper, Koch, and Mandelbaum, 1986)— This classic form of
discourse analysis came out of the work of sociologists (Sacks, 1992; Schegloff and
Sacks, 1973; Garfinkel, 1967). By studying dinner conversations, phone chats, how
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long people pause between sentences, and inflection or stress placed on certain
w ords, these discourse analysts discover forms o f organization in social practices.
3. Interactional sociolinguistics— This type o f discourse analysis was developed by
Gumperz (1982) and popularized by his students (Yamada, 1992; Tannen, 1984). This
form o f discourse analysis occurs at the intersection o f linguistics and
anthropology and looks at how people from different backgrounds use different
ways o f interacting.
4. Discursive Psychology (Edwards and Potter, 1992; Potter and Wetherell, 1987)— This form
o f discourse analysis is practiced by social psychologists. It is a rhetorical
approach to social interaction concerned with issues o f reality and mind.
5. Critical discourse analysis (Van Dijk, 1998a, 1998b, 1993,1992,1991; Fairclough, 1995,
1993,1992; Wodak, 1997)~This newcomer to discourse analysis looks at the role
discourse plays in issues o f power, dominance, hegemony, and inequality. The
texts typically examined by critical discourse analysts are written public
documents and interviews about politically or socially sensitive topics.
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This branch of discourse analysis is influenced by the critical social theory of
Habermas (1992, 1987a, 1987b, 1986, 1981, 1971, 1966; McCarthy, 1988; Thompson and Held,
1982; Geuss 1981) and the Frankfurt School (Rasmussen, 1996; Bailey, 1994; Bronner,
1994; Morrow and Brown, 1994; Agger, 1992; Benhabib, 1986; Held, 1980; Jay, 1973). Based
upon such philosophical premises, critical discourse analysts generally seek to
meld moral a priori arguments with empirical observation.
Critical discourse analysis (CDA), according to two of its three most prominent
advocates (Fairclough and Wodak, 1997), is a historical, contextual, interpretive way to
explain ideology, power relations, and the role these elements play in social problems.
Teun van Dijk (1998a: Paragraphs 4-6), the third predominant critical discourse analyst, says
CD A is “not so much a direction, school or specialization. . . . Rather, it aims to offer a
different ‘mode’ or ‘perspective’ of theorizing, analysis and application throughout the
whole field.” He defines CDA as rejecting value-free science, being multidisciplinary in
nature, focusing on social and political issues, and centering on “the ways discourse
structures enact, confirm, legitimate, reproduce or challenge relations of power and
dominance in society.”
Since CDA is historical and looks at political and social issues, particularly focusing
on power— as expressed in discourse— it must study both context (macro level) and
text (micro level). Context is typically studied by looking at the setting of the
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discourse, events surrounding the discourse, and participants in the discourse (Duranti
and Goodwin, 1992).1 7 In studying the micro or textual level of discourse, CDA uses the
tools of linguistics, such as identifying word repetition, use of synonyms, metaphors,
substitution, and word choice (Salkie, 1995).
Numerous critical discourse analysts have used these techniques in a variety of
topical areas. These include: gender inequality (Wodak, 1997; Seidel, 1988), racism and
anti-Semitism (Van Dijk, 1991; Wilson and Gutierrez, 1985), news media (Martin-Rojo, 1994),
politics (Chilton and Lakoffi, 1995; Fox and Miller, 1995; ScMffiier and Porsch, 1993; der Dorian
and Shapiro, 1989; Geis, 1987), medicine (Fisher, 1995; Davis, 1988), courtroom behavior
(Bradac, Hemphill and Tardy, 1981,0 ’Barr, Conley and Lind, 1978), bureaucracy (Radtke, 1981;
Burton and Carlen, 1979), education (Coulthard, 1994; Bourdieu, 1989; Giroux, 1981), and
businesses (Ehlich and Wagner, 1995;Mumby, 1988).
Second W al— Power
Having built the house’s foundation and first wall with literature that bridges from
language to discourses focused on power, the author then searched the power
1 7 Van Dijk (1998: Paragraph 29, 36) says, “A CDA-approach specifically focuses on those forms of
context control that are in the best interests of the dominant group” because “controlling discourse is a first
major form of power.”
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literature for a theoretical construct that showed how to identify specific power
indicators in a discourse. Finkelstein’s (1992) research, which postulates four
organizational power dimensions, provides such a mechanism.
As summarized in Table 1 (next page), Finkelstein developed a four-part structure to
measure the power dimensions typically found among top managers. He then tested the
validity ofhis four dimensions of power against indicators found in data gathered from
over 1,700 managers in 102 firms between 1978 and 1982. He concluded (1992:530,531):
“The results of three studies strongly supported the validity and reliability as research
constructs of structural, ownership, and prestige power. Expert power received moderate
support.” One implication he drew from his research was that researchers need to fully
understand the power dimensions) most used by an organization’s managers to assess:
How top managers affect organizational outcomes.... Hence, in both a
theoretical and an empirical sense, consideration o f power in studies of
the association between top managers and organizational outcomes may
represent a significant contribution to this research stream.
Thus Finkelstein’s work raises a second wall for this dissertation by providing a credible
model tying specific power dimensions to certain types of discourses.
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Table 1: Identifying Power Indicators in a Discourse
(Finkelstein, 1992)
Type of Power Evidence in Discourse
Structural power (Brass,
1984; Tushman and
Romanelli, 1983; Hambrick,
1981; Perrow, 1970)
Language having to do with titles,
compensation, hierarchy, and role.
Ownership power (Zald,
1969)
Language having to do with
ownership; agency relationship;
shares; relationships to owner
(family).
Expert power (Mintzberg,
1983; Tushman and
Romanelli, 1983; Hambrick,
1981; Hickson et al., 1971;
Crozier, 1964)
Language having to do with
expertise, professionalism,
degrees, training, experience base,
awards/honors/recognition.
Prestige power (D’Aveni,
1990; Scott and Meyer, 1983;
Useem, 1979; Dalton, Barnes
and Zaleznik, 1968)
Language having to do with being
part of certain types of
organizations, attending certain
universities, meeting with certain
people.
Third Wall-Chanee
The third wall of this work unites the literature on reform or change, central to the National
Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR), with power indicators. The change
literature provides two primary works that construct this third wall. First, Burke and Litwin
(1992) provide indicators, which can be tracked to textual markers in a discourse, of what
happens when an organization (such as a federal agency) undergoes transactional versus
transform ational change.1 8 Romanelli and Tushman (1994) show the strategy, structure, and
1 8 Contemporary organizational change literature speaks in terms of transactional versus transformational
change. Transactional or evolutionary change typically requires only short-term changes in behavior.
These short-term changes are usually o f the 'I’ll scratch your back, you scratch mine' type.
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power changes that are present, and can be measured in a discourse, when an organization
actually undergoes transformational, as opposed to transactional, change.
Beginning with Romanelli and Tushman’s (1994:1144,1147,1153,1158) study of 25
companies, based on a punctuated equilibrium model, many in the field of change research
(Virany, Tushman. and Romanelli, 1992; Miller andFriesen, 1984,1982) now agree that "small changes
in individual domains" do not "accumulate. .. to yield. . . fundamental transformation."
Instead, they observe that transformation, called for in many portions of the NPR (NPR, 1998,
1997a, 1993a; Clinton, 1993; Shoop, 1993), occurs only when there are simultaneous, substantial
changes "in the strategy, structure, and power distribution domains of organizational
activity.”
Burke and Litwin (1992:523) integrate transactional and transformational change studies.
They say;
Transformational change occurs as a response to the external environment
and directly affects organizational mission and strategy, the organization’ s
leadership, and culture.1 9 In turn, the transactional factors are affected—
The idea of transformational change comes from the work of McClelland (1975) and others such as Tichy
and Devanna (1986), Bass (1985), and Bums (1978). Transformational change requires new forms of
behavior. Transformational and revolutionary change seem to describe a similar concept-economists and
organizational theorists tend to use the tom revolutionary; leadership advocates and organizational
behaviorists seem to prefer the term transformational. A similar pattern holds for the correspondence
between the transactional and evolutionary change terminologies.
1 9 For purposes o f this research Romanelli and Tushman’s (1994) strategy changes are considered
equivalent to Burke and Litwin’s (1992) change in mission and strategy; and power changes are considered
equivalent to changes in leadership and culture. Thus, the two theories differ only in that Romanelli and
Tushman view structure change as an element o f transformation and Burke and Litwin consider it part of
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structure, systems, management practices, and climate. These
transformational and transactional factors together affect motivation, which,
in turn affects performance.
Using these two pieces of research as the springboard, the textual markers that the author
looked for to identify the connection between the discourse of the National Partnership
for Reinventing Government and the ideological markers of power and change are
illustrated below:
Table 2: Transformational versus Transactional Change: Discourse Indicators
(Burke and Litwin, 1992)
Transformational Change— look for Transactional Change— look for
Change in organizational mission and
strategy
Change in the organization’s structure1 9
Change in the organization’s leadership Change in the organization’s systems
Change in the organization’s culture Change in the organization’s management practices
Change in the organization’s climate
Simultaneous Factors Needed For Fundamental Transformation
(Romanelli and Tushman, 1994)
Language related to strategy changes— entering/leaving a market.
Language related to structure changes— reorganization, change in
centralization/decentralization.1 9
Language related to power changes— turnover in senior executive, change
in stafFline relationships.
transactional change. This research adopts the position of Romanelli and Tushman that transformation
requires structural change.
23
Figure 1
k
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Fourth WaU— Information Technology
Orlikowski and Gash’s work (1994) on technological frames; relying on the theories of
Porac, Thomas, and Baden-Fuller (1989), Sims and Gioia (1986), and Weick (1969);
provides the fourth wall of this research study. Orlikowski and Gash (1994:178,179) say,
“We use the term technological frame to identify that subset of members’ organizational
frames that concern the assumptions, expectations, and knowledge they use to understand
technology in organizations.” They note that:
Technological frames have powerful effects (Orlikowski, 1992; Bijker, Hughes,
and Pinch, 1987; Noble, 1986) .... For example, views o f how work should be
done, what the division of labor should be, how much autonomy
employees should have, and how integrated or decoupled production units
should be are all assumptions that are consciously or implicitly built into
information technology by systems planners and designers (Orlikowski,
1992; Hirschheim and Klein, 1989; Boland, 1979).20
Accepting organizational frames as a given, within which there are technological
frames,2 1 the question arises as to ideologies that are both part of a technological frame
and splash back and flood the organizational frame.
2 0 This research posits that the effects Orlikowski and Gash (1994) describe as resulting from technological
frames are ideological (value-driven, power-based) effects.
2 1 There appear to be three predominant technological frames in organizations (Shaw, Ang, and Lee-
Partridge, 1996; Crowston and Malone, 1994; Hodas, 1994; Orlikowski and Gash, 1994). They are:
Technologists— this is Schein’s (1999) engineering culture. Organizational members within this frame see
information and communication technologies as ‘breakthroughs’ and always want the ‘latest thing.’
Technologists believe that information and communication technologies will, because they exist, lead to
organizational change; thus, a ‘technological imperative’ predicts the future.
Managers-those in Schein’s (1999) executive culture see information and communication technologies as
a strategic ally, a facilitator. Unlike technologists, information and communication technologies have no
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BirdsaU (1997, 1996), and Schement and Curtis (1995) discuss one such contemporary
ideology of information and communication technologies— which the dissertation author
calls the transactional commodity ideology. Birdsall (1997: Paragraphs 8,15) says the
transactional commodity ideology of information technology has evolved since the
1970’s based on: (a) market economics, (b) technological determinism, and
(c) neo-conservative politics. He notes:
Because the ideology. .. envisions the use of information technology
conjoined with the adoption o f free market values, it does not embody a
public policy role for the nation state in a global economy....
Consequently, knowledge as a public good is reconceptualized into
information as a commodity to be sold on the open competitive market.
Schement and Curtis (1995) agree with this perspective in their assessment that the
transactional commodity ideology values consumers, the private sector, contractors,
courtrooms, and cost/benefit ratios more highly than citizens, the public sector,
government employees, legislatures, and social goals.
However, many in the popular and scholarly press (Garreau, 1999; Dyson, 1997; Negroponte,
1995; Adler, 1988,1986; Diebold, 1952), as well as some parts of the National Partnership for
value in and of themselves; they matter only when they improve efficiency and productivity. Managers
tend to believe that the organization’s requirements determine whether there is change.
Users— members of Schein’s (1999) operator culture ask whether a technology will make their job easier,
more difficult, or eliminate it. Members of this frame often raise social as well as technical concerns— for
example, concerns about privacy invasion and increased workplace monitoring— about information and
communication technologies.
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Reinventing Government (NPR, 1998,1997a, 1993a, 1993c; Kamensky, 1997; Clinton, 1993; Gore,
1993), argue for a transformatory liberation (empowerment) ideology. Kroker and Cook
(1986:247) summarize this thinking (see also pages 2-3), which they call technicisme, by
defining it as “an urgent belief in the historical inevitability of the fully realized
technological society.” In other words, a linking of technology and freedom.
Thus, the author began putting the roof on the house of research with two predominant
contemporary ideologies of information and communication technologies— a transactional
commodity ideology and a transformatory liberation ideology.
These three technological frames provide the first textual categories used in this research (pages 59-61).
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Chapter 3: Research Design
Typically, in conducting organizational research, one of the early methodological
questions is whether the research should focus on individual employees, classes of
employees (such as managers), a specific organization, an industry, or some larger
element in the economy. However, since this is a study of ideology and its associated
discourse, the measurement levels and units must fall within and around the ideological
discourse. This means that the author did not make a macro-micro distinction in
conducting this research. Instead, she studied both the macro level of context and the
micro level of the actual texts of the National Partnership for Reinventing Government in
relation to information and communication technologies.
Specifically, w ithin the critical discourse analysis emphasis on how discourse advances
or constrains power, and borrowing liberally from Hymes (1974) SPEAKING model,2 2 the
study author proposes the research design outlined in Table 3 (next page) to answer the
2 2 Those familiar with Ricoeur’s (1978, 1971) three moments of critical hermeneutics will note a likeness
between that approach and this research design. Ricoeur advocates utilizing all three moments (social-
historical analysis, formal analysis, and interpretation-reinterpretation) when studying a text. The first
moment includes study ofthe text’s structural-symbolic, intentional, and referential aspects (Hymes’
setting, participants, ends, and norms). The second moment involves contextual and conventional aspects
(Hymes’ act sequence, key, instrumentalities, and genre). The third moment combines the two “to produce
an interpretation of the text and its role in the social system of which it is a part” (Phillips and Brown,
1993: Paragraph 22). This integrative third moment of interpretation can be found in Chapter 5.
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research question— What ideology is at the core of the National Partnership for
Reinventing Government’s discourse on the subject of information and communication
technologies?
Table 3: Research Design
Context
Elem ents
R esearch Looks For Text Elem ents R esearch Looks For
Setting
Time, circumstances
surrounding the National
Partnership for
Reinventing Government?
Act sequence—
form and order of
the discourse
(syntactic structure).
■ Responsibility for action.
■ Pronouns indicating
predominance
Participants
Who is included and
excluded in the discourse
of the National
Partnership for
Reinventing Government?
Key— the topic and
spirit ofthe
discourse (semantic
structure).
* Words reflecting the
elements Romanelli and
Tushman (Figure 1) and
Burke and Litwin (Table 2)
indicate are necessary for
fundamental
transformation?
■ Which of Finkelstein’s
(Table I) four types of
power is most frequently
depicted?
End
What is the purpose o f
this particular
administrative reform?
Instrumentalities
— the style o f the
discourse (lexical
structure).
■ Metaphors most commonly
used throughout the
discourse.
■ The frequency o f language
that corresponds with
differing discourses.
Norms
What values are expressed
in the discourse of the
National Partnership for
Reinventing Government?
Genre— what is it
(schematic
structure)?
■ Political genre?
* Bureaucratic genre?
■ Reform genre?
■ Technical genre?
■ Mixed genre?
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In summary, this is a study of eight elements in and around the ideological discourse of
information and communication technologies found in the National Partnership for
Reinventing Government. Four of these elements (setting, participants, end, and norms)
relate to the context (macro-level) of the ideological discourse. The other four (act
sequence, key, instrumentalities, and genre) give information on the textual (micro-level)
aspect of the discourse.
Research Database— Corpora to be Analyzed
While public administrators are likely to be familiar with the legal concepts of habeas
corpus2 3 or corpus delicti,2 4 in this research, corpora refer to two bodies of text.
The first corpus of this research— the Contextual Corpus— comes from a mix of the pre
existing research of others together with insights developed by the author, based upon the
analyzed National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR) texts, in order to
identify the contextual elements of setting, participants, end, and norms surrounding the
ideology at the core of the NPR’s discourse on information and communication
technologies.
2 3 “You have the body” (‘Lectric Law Library, 1999b).
2 4 “The body ofthe offense, the essence ofthe crime” (‘Lectric Law Library, 1999a)
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The texts making up the second corpus— the Textual Corpus— come from two non
proprietary, federal government Internet sites:
1. The World Wide Web site of NPR and its affiliated location, Access
America: Reengineering Through Information Technology, which is
dedicated to “Vice President Gore's 1997 plan for using information
technology to deliver government services and to increase government
productivity” (Access, 1999: Paragraph 1).
2. The Government Information Technology Services (GITS) Board Internet
site. Vice President Gore established GITS in December 1993 with the task
of implementing the information technology initiatives outlined in the
National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR).
Those familiar with the linguistic subfield of corpus linguistics may wonder if a NPR
corpora; similar to the special purpose Air Traffic Control Corpus, the TRAINS Spoken
Dialogue Corpus, or the IBM Corpus; is being proposed? The answer is no. While this
research’s corpora are similar in some instances to a corpus linguistics collection, for
instance its machine-readable form and desire to build a representative corpora (McEnery
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and Wilson, 1996; Edwards and Lamport, 1994; Biber and Finegan, 1991; Aarts and Meijs, 1990), it is
not— nor intended to be— corpus linguistics research. This is because;
■ Corpus linguistics research typically contains no macro level context data
(essential to a study of ideological discourse),
■ Corpus linguistic research is typically synchronic (ahistorical), which
violates the diachronic (historical) nature of critical discourse analysis,
■ Corpus linguistics usually has a quantitative research focus; whereas,
critical discourse analysis is a qualitative, interpretative research
enterprise, and
■ Corpus linguistics research attempts to represent an entire population of
texts on a topic or in a certain genre.
Instead, the author conducted a micro-level textual analysis on only a subset of the total
National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR) corpora. This subset was
chosen to form the Textual Corpus because it met the following conditions;
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Table 4: Reasons to Include Text
Standards for Inclusion
Text was produced by a program/project formally
associated with the NPR.
Materials were non-proprietary, public domain, and
copyright free.
Texts were in electronic format.
Information and communication technologies were a
major topic of the textual materials.
These standards mean that only a subset of materials found on the two Internet sites were
included in the micro or textual level of this research. For example, materials were
excluded if they reflected personal opinions rather than official opinions (as do the
contents of Internet newsgroups); or if the materials were an outgrowth of a non-National
Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR) initiative such as GPRA,2 5 the Clinger-
Cohen Act,2 6 or Executive Order 13011.2 7 To summarize, the contextual-level of this
research, a mix of already existing research and the author's insights on NPR documents,
included materials that did not meet the standards reflected in Table 4 (above). The
textual-level research included only texts that met Table 4 standards.
2 5 GPRA is the Government Performance and Results Act, 1993.
2 6 The Clinger-Cohen Act (Information Technology Management Reform Act, 1996) required the
establishment of Chief Information Officers and identification of cost savings from purchasing and
implementing information technologies in federal organizations.
2 7 EO 13011 (1996) was the Clinton administration’s implementation response to the Clinger-Cohen bill. It
created the Information Technology Review Board (ITRB)-a joint OMB/GSA effort.
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However, on the NPR, Access America, and GITS Internet sites there were over 700
texts that addressed information and communication technologies in some way. For a
corpus linguistics study, this number of documents would not be an insurmountable
barrier. For example, the British National Corpus consists of approximately 100 million
words. But, discourse analysis, which demands a study of macro-level context as well as
micro-level text, typically focuses on only one text at a time. This simultaneously
amplifies the understanding that can be derived from a critical discourse analysis and
limits the applicability of results from any particular analysis (Langer, 1997). Van Dijk
(1998a, 1998b, 1993) is the only one ofthe ‘big-three’ critical discourse analysts who has
attempted to simultaneously analyze multiple texts.
Taking a cue from both corpus linguistics’ spotlight on having representative texts and
critical discourse analysts’ focus on social/political issues, the author narrowed the
number of texts to be analyzed through a process that moved from a broad contextual
perspective to a narrow, keyword focus, specifically:
■ Texts that summarized the intent of the National Partnership for Reinventing
Government (NPR), and
■ Texts that spoke to the role of information and communication technologies in
power and change.
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The indexes and search engines of the NPR, Access America, and GITS sites made it
possible to follow this strategy, resulting in 46 texts— nine providing broad context, five
focusing on arenas in which change and power might be most evident, and 32 located
through individual keyword searches on information technology. These documents were
collected in a single electronic format (HTML) and are available from the author. A
complete list of the documents is available in Appendix 2 (pages .143-150).
Mechanics of Data Analysis
Having just explained the process used for deciding what texts to analyze, those
interested in details on the specific software and methods used to prepare and analyze the
data can find details in Appendix 2 (pages 143-150).
Quality Standards
Because this is a work of interpretive research designed to produce Weber’s (1975,1968,
1958,1949,1947) version ofVerstehen (understanding) and, possibly, emancipatory
knowledge (Habermas, 1992,1987a, 1981), it does not seek to achieve the traditional positive
standards of science— reliability and validity. Indeed, those standards indicate an
ontological belief the author does not share:
That differences in seeing the social world are a result o f measurement
error [lack o f reliability], and when differences exist, there is one
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accurate representation o f what is [validity]. Neither of these
assumptions would be made by most interpretive scholars (Tracey, 1995:
Paragraph 44).
Instead, quality standards more appropriate to interpretive research are used. These are:
1. “Accomplish[ing] what it espouses to be about” (Tracey, 1995: Paragraph 49);
2. Plausibility and persuasiveness: anything else fades quickly (Tannen, 1984);
3. Rigor: such that the reader is able to understand the procedures used (Yin, 1984);
4. Integrity: the research’s results are presented as they were uncovered (Suchman,
1974); and
5. Raising further questions (Potter and Wetherell, 1987).
Thus, the author aspires to Shotter’s (1993:34) quality standard in which interpretive
research provides “instructive statements” that “account” for things that are normally
unnoticed.
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Chapter 4: Findings
Research is often the most interesting when you do not find the expected results. Such is
certainly the case with this study. Instead of finding the hinted-at emancipatory
ideological discourse (NPR, 1998,1997a, 1993a), labeled here as the transformatory
liberation ideology, this contextual and textual research found the transactional
commodity ideology to be predominant. The findings that support this conclusion are the
subject of the remainder of this chapter.
Recall that the purpose of this research is to identify the ideology at the core ofthe
National Partnership for Reinventing Government’s discourse on the subject of
information and communication technologies. Loosely borrowing Hymes’ (1974)
SPEAKING model, this meant looking for eight elements within the defined set of
contextual and textual materials. These were:
1. Setting-~(Contextual research),
2. Participants~(Contextual research),
3. End— (Contextual research),
4. Act Sequence— syntax (Textual research),
5. Key— topic (Textual research),
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6. Instrumentalities— lexicon (Textual research),
7. Norms— (Contextual research), and
8. Genre— scheme (Textual research)
W ithin each o f these elem ents, the research looked for the textual indicators identified in
the research design (Table 3; page 28). These ranged from indicators o f power, to
identification o f types o f change, to what Lye (1997) calls the ‘utopic kernel’ or ‘vision o f
the good’-th e vision o f human possibility that lies at the core o f the text.
Contextual Research Elements28
Setting
Author Garry Wills (1999: Paragraph 14) says we live in a time in which “all you have to do
is just say government, and it just totally freezes the action.” In such a time, even the
most skeptical critic may allow the 1993 introduction of, what was then called, the
National Performance Review (NPR) to be seen as a public-spirited desire on the part of
2 8 The contextual research results come from a mix of: (a) the extensive body o f already existing research
and analysis on administrative reform, and (b) the author’s study o f the actual NPR texts.
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the Clinton Administration to turn the government from a ‘necessary evil’ into a
‘necessary good.’ However, many reviewers allow the NPR only a small measure of
such public spiritedness.
Indeed, most reviewers— while acknowledging that the federal government can be
improved— take the position that the National Partnership for Reinventing Government
(NPR) is either:
■ A rational enterprise— utilitarian, mechanistic, focused on ends regardless of
means, and about technique divorced from politics (Carroll, 1997; Frederickson,
1996; Arnold, 1995; Moe, 1994); or
■ A business-like, organized, predictable, expertise-driven approach that
“unquestionably accelerated the pace of change and provided political cover
for managers trying to break out of hide-bound routines” (Kettl, 1995; DiMIo,
1994; Rosenbloom , 1993; Dilulio, G arvey, and Kettl, 1993).
However, NPR did not promise predictability or cover. Instead, it promised to harness
both the latest technologies and business practices to take a “historic step in reforming the
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Federal Government” by making it “both less expensive and more efficient,” and
changing “the culture o f our national bureaucracy away from com placency and
entitlem ent toward initiative and empowerment” (Clinton, 1993: Paragraph 4). Indeed, the
first National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR) report (NPR, 1993a: Step 6,
Paragraph 11) said, “this system is fundamentally broken. N o one argues for marginal or
incremental change. Everyone wants dramatic change.”
NPR said it would achieve this "dramatic change" by cutting red tape, putting customers
first, empowering employees, and cutting back to basics (NPR, 1993a). Market
mechanisms, decentralized decision making, empowered employees, and information and
communication technologies2 9 would be the tools used to bring about this “vision of a
government that works for people, cleared of useless bureaucracy and waste and freed
from red tape and senseless rules” (Gore, 1993: Paragraph 3).
2 9 John Kamensky (1997: Paragraph 13), one of the people present when NPR originated, told the
Conference on Civil Service Systems in Comparative Perspective that Vice President Gore’s “contributions
to the theory of what the review should include” were largely “ideas driven by changes in technology. He
talked about the need for creating massive parallel processing, distributed intelligence, virtual agencies, and
the importance of shifting from a production-based economy to an information-based economy.”
Vice President Gore’s emphasis cm information and communication technologies continued with his 1993
establishment ofthe Government Information Technology Services (GITS, 1999) Working Group— which
was tasked to implement the NPR’s information technology initiatives; the 1997 initiative, Access America
(NPR, 1997e)— a plan to use information and communication technologies to deliver government services;
and a November 1999 symposium on “Excellence in E-Gov” (NPR, 1999b).
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The National Partnership for Reinventing Government was not alone in its desire to
accomplish this transformation. Evidence of the world-wide attention to reinventing
government (Brudney, Hebert, and Wright, 1999; Gregory, 1999; Maor, 1999)30 could be seen in
the 38 countries who attended Vice President Gore’s first international conference on
reinventing government (NPR, 1999a). McLuhan (1999:46-47) speaks of the efforts in
many Western democracies to accomplish governmental transformations:
For a number of years now, the American government has been engaged
in extensive efforts to reinvent itself for the modem era. In the last
decade, similar efforts were embarked upon independently by most
governments in the Western world. One concern in America, and
elsewhere, was that government was increasingly failing the expectations
o f citizens. Government was costing too much and was regarded by
citizens as extremely inefficient.... Beyond this, although less
understood by government, has been the growing belief on the part of
many citizens that government and the people in it were petty, self-
serving and even stupid.... But what really lay behind the
dissatisfaction and even cynicism o f citizens? .... It is not that
politicians or the nature ofpublic service has changed. If anything, the
political process in America is more open and less corrupt today than
ever before .... A significant part of the problem is simply that many
areas o f government have continued to operate largely as they did 25 or
50 years ago— despite the computers on desks and the Web pages on the
Internet. Processes may have been automated to some extent, but they
are still the same processes and they still embody the same fragmented
approach.... Whatever the truth o f the matter, people increasingly
perceive the way government works administratively as clumsy and
shortsighted. Successes are largely ignored. Failures and
ineffectiveness stand out in sharp relief.... So as we enter this new
3 0 Gregory (1999) says that there are two predominant, world-wide public-sector reform paradigms—
reinventing and public management. The United States has been the most visible advocate of reinvention.
Britain and New Zealand have used public management theories (rooted in institutional economics and
public choice theory) to implement their recent reform movements. Non-English speaking Western
democracies have also implemented their own reforms. Maas and van Nispen (1997: Paragraph 5) report
that The Netherlands used downsizing as its primary tool in improving public sector efficiency. They
equate this to the U.S.5 reform and note that, “In the end, both efforts to improve efficiency in the public
sector suffered from the same weakness: the focus ofthe operation shifted from improvement to reduction
as a result of political dynamics.”
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millennium, government at all levels must begin to think very differently.
. , creating a different view o f government within government that better
fits with citizens ’ new view o f the world.
One difference between McLuhan’s description and that of the National Partnership for
Reinventing Government (NPR) is that citizens are not the models for NPR. Instead, an
entrepreneurial business model, where customers reign, is presented as the new paradigm
for public administrators (NPR, 1997c, 1996,1995, 1994,1993a).
By ‘ customer, ’ we do not mean ‘ citizen. ’A citizen can participate in
democratic decisionmaking; a customer receives benefits from a specific
service. All Americans are citizens. Most are also customers: o f the U.S.
Postal Service, the Social Security Administration, the Department of
Veterans Affairs, the National Park Service, and scores o f other federal
organizations (NPR, 1993a: ‘Putting Customers First,’ Paragraph 2).
At the same time this significant power (ideological) shift from owners and decision
makers (citizens) to consumers (customers) was presented as a fait-accompli, both the
larger world and federal organizations became increasingly immersed in information and
communication technologies. Literally thousands of articles were written during the
1990’s about the explosion in information and communication technologies. It was
difficult to pick up a newspaper, magazine, or journal without reading a headline like—
“IT Spending Up,” “Wise Up, Wire Up,” “IT Spending Outlook Bright,” “IT Spending ..
. Full Speed Ahead,” “IT Spending will Continue to Surge,” or “Feds to Downsize with
IT ”
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Both the United States’ public and private organizations appeared enraptured by a
dedication to using “computerization as the weapon o f choice in economic com petition,”
(Strassmann, 1999:40) in order to reengineer the organization via the use the information
technology (Dugan, 1999; King, 1998; English, 1996; Lurie, 1996; Ehrlich and Springer, 1995; Hammer
and Champy, 1993; Schnitt, 1993).
In the midst of this explosion of reengineering via information and communication
technologies, GAO (1997: Paragraph 2) indicated that:
Information systems are now integral to nearly every aspect o f over $1.5
trillion in annual federal government operations and spending....
During the past 6 years, agencies have obligated over $145 billion
building up and maintaining their information technology infrastructure. ”
They further indicated that agencies had been mandated “to implement a
framework of modem technology management based on practices followed by
leading public-sector and private-sector organizations.”
Thus, the National Partnership for Reinventing Government sprang forth during a time
of: (a) distrust of government, (b) rampant ‘re’-trends in organizational practice
(reinvention, reengineering, and reform), and (c) explosive expansion of the use of
information and communication technologies.
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Participants
Most professional communicators would advise a client that any message that tries to be
something to everyone is likely to be a waste of ink or breath. Whether or not the
National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR) was saved from becoming such
a ‘waste’ depends on whether the NPR was addressed to the mid-level, career, federal
public administrators who would have to implement its changes.
Certainly, NPR gave som e surface indicators o f including m id-level, career, federal
public administrators (Littman, 1999; NPR, 1993a)~as w ell as political audiences o f favored
Democratic constituencies (Barr, 1998; Paige and Maier, 1998), and the 60 percent o f
Am ericans (Gore, 1993-1994) who felt, at one tim e, that government reform was worthy o f
active concern. For exam ple, at least tw ice in the original NPR recommendations there
were calls for the federal government to becom e a “m odel em ployer” (NPR, 1993c: HRM07,
Paragraph 14) by keeping “abreast o f workplace trends” (NPR, 1993c: Chapter 3, Part 3, Step 4,
Paragraph 2).
Yet, despite these positive signals, some mid-level, career, federal public administrators
wondered if they, as a group, were intended to be participants in the discourse of the
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National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR);3 1 because, even though today’s
NPR has the ‘federal workplace’ as one of its fourteen initiatives, the point of the
initiative is to make “our services and workplace so good we’re proud to be working for
and with our fellow citizens”3 2 (NPR, 1998b: Paragraph 7).
So, although “a new, flexible, family-friendly federal workplace” is encouraged, it is not
because it is the proper thing to do for the citizen stewards of a democracy— but so that
those workers will emerge “devoted to creating a government that works better and costs
less and delivers results that Americans care about” (NPR, 1998c: Paragraph 3). Thus, in
Kettl and Dilulio’s (1995) terminology, a family friendly workplace is a ‘how,’ not a
‘why.’ The ‘why’ is the ‘work better-cost less’ cause.
3 1 University of Illinois professor James Thompson (1999: 21) indicates that NPR did not actively involve,
at least some, career public administrators. He says, “One apparent tactical earor-which fixture reformers
may want to consider— was the failure to mobilize middle managers and enlist their support and assistance
in implementing those changes of which they were to be the primary beneficiaries.”
3 2 There is no indication that this use of the word ‘citizen’ should be seen as a departure from the customer
focus of NPR. Given the text that surrounds this use of the word ‘citizen,’ it seems likely that this is simply
an indicator of multiple document writers, some of whom may still be caught in older ideologies. As
Birdsall (1997) notes, the market-based transactional commodity ideology only came into being in the past
two decades. Public administrators who were indoctrinated with a differing ideology prior to the 1980’s
may find themselves inadvertently slipping back into old discourses of citizenship. Reinforcing this
author’s perspective that customers have replaced citizens in the discourse ofNPR is the fact that the word
‘customer’ appears over 2,100 times; whereas, ‘citizen’ is found only 176 times.
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Other indicators that contribute to the skepticism of mid-level, career, federal public
administrators regarding their role in the National Partnership for Reinventing
Government (NPR) include:
■ The ‘For Sale’ signs (Power, 1995) that NPR attached to several government
organizations and operations. From Performance-Based Organizations (NPR,
1998d; Clinton and Gore, 1997),3 3 to outsourcing (NPR, 1997b, 1997c; NPR, 1996; NPR,
1995; NPR, 1993a), to privatization (Clinton and Gore, 1997; NPR, 1997d; NPR 1996;
NPR 1995)— the NPR seemed firmly attached to a philosophy that the public
sector could do ‘if better— whatever ‘if was.
■ A perception that “President Clinton rewarded federal unions for their
political support by giving them a role in the effort to reinvent government”
(Schatz and Paige, 1997: Paragraph 1). This perception was buttressed by the
extraordinary steps federal managers and professional groups had to take in
order to be included in the reinvention effort (Kam, 1995; Kam and Shaw, 1993-
1994).
3 3 Only one Performance-Based Organization, the 1998 conversion of the Department of Education’s
Office of Student Financial Assistance, has folly occurred since NPR began. The Patent and Trademark
Office took on a partial, scaled-back PBO form in FY2000.
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While managers complained that one outcome of this “payoff’ to federal
unions was a near doubling in “the number of federal employees working full
time on union activities” (Schatz and Paige, 1997: Paragraphs 2,4), recently even
the president of one of the largest federal unions, the National Association of
Government Employees, charged the Clinton administration with using the
National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR) to increase political
control of civil servants and said that NPR was destroying the government
(Causey, 1999).
■ Many mid-level, career federal public administrators felt the Clinton
administration’s continual emphasis on reducing positions (Maas and van Nispen,
1997)— at last count, NPR took credit for eliminating 351,000 positions, in 13
of the 14 federal departments (NPR, 1998e)34— indicated a misplaced belief that
getting smaller would solve the government’s problems. Or, more skeptically,
that this focus on downsizing was a deliberate strategy to represent mid-level,
career, federal public administrators as the necessary villains in NPR’s epic
battle against “paper pushing, rule-obsessed stewards of the government’s
arcane rules and regulations” (Shoop, 1994: Paragraphs 6).
3 4 Although the downsizing of federal agencies has eliminated several hundred thousand jobs, it has not
occurred in the way originally envisioned by NPR (Shoop, 1994). Instead of eliminating higher-paid
managers, the number o f employees in the top five pay grades now outnumbers those in the bottom 10 pay
grades— for the first time in recorded history (Barr, 1998).
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Ends
The National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR) stated from the beginning
that its purpose was to create a government that works better and costs less (NPR, 1993a).3 5
This would be accomplished by cutting red tape, putting customers first, empowering
employees, and cutting back to basics.3 6
While some have inferred that the real purposes of the NPR ranged from giving Vice-
President Gore a visible role in the administration (Paige and Maier, 1998; Frisby and
Rosewicz, 1993; Shapiro, 1993; US News and World, 1993), to appearing responsive to public
opinion (Arnold, 1995, Moe, 1994; Germond and Whitcover, 1993; Gore, 1993-1994), to restoring
the American people’s faith in the possibility of self-governance (Kamarck, 1999), and
that the NPR has changed its goals several times (Laurent, 1998), perhaps it is most
equitable to look at how NPR has performed on its stated ends.
■ The first NPR report (NPR, 1993a) contained 1,250 specific actions designed
to achieve its goals of a better performing, less costly government. In 1995,
3 5 Kettl (1994) suggested that NPR was primarily preoccupied with savings and that performance
improvement was, at best, a secondary purpose.
3 6 Peter Drucker (1995: 50) said of the NPR’s announcement, “In any institution other than the federal
government, the changes trumpeted as reinventions would not even be announced except perhaps on the
bulletin board in the hallways. They are the kinds of things that a hospital expects floor nurses to do on
their own; that a bank manager expects branch managers to do on their own; that even a poorly-run
manufacturer expects supervisors to do on their own--without getting much praise, let alone any extra
rewards.”
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the National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR) added 180 new
recommendations, for a total of over 1,400 specific recommendations. The
NPR staff kept track of the implementation of these action items until March
1998. At that time, a decision was made that the majority of the
recommendations had been implemented (66 percent according to Kamensky,
1999)37 and, therefore, the NPR staff stopped tracking implementation
progress (NPR, 1998f).
■ The NPR’s summary of its accomplishments between 1993 and 1998 include
financial savings of $136 billion,3 8 publication of more than 4,000 customer
service standards, eradication of more that 16,000 pages of regulations,
elimination of 351,000 federal positions, presentation of more than 1,200
3 7 In a 1996 review of the implementation ofNPR recommendations, GAO (1996) said that about 25%
percent fewer recommendations had been implemented than the Clinton administration claimed. If this
algorithm was accurate and continued through 1998; then, instead of the 924 recommendations the Clinton
administration claimed had been implemented (66% of 1,400 recommendations), only 693 were folly
implemented-49.5 percent of the original recommendations. Less than claimed by the administration; but,
still, a for greater accomplishment than predicted by some early reviewers (Eggers and O’Leary, 1994;
Goldstein, 1993-1994; Safire, 1993).
While the GAO approach of assessing NPR success based upon the numbers of recommendations
implemented may not be a highly meaningfol indicator of significance, the extremely broad nature of the
recommendations (for example, provide managers with greater flexibility, leverage federal export
promotion, expand the electronic availability of government data, make contracts outcome oriented) makes
objective assessment difficult to carry out. The best assessment of significance may come from the NPR
staff itself who notes their primary accomplishments as the elimination ofjobs, publication of service
standards, eradication of regulations, and increases in electronic delivery of government services.
3 8 The General Accounting Office (GAO, 1999) said that approximately $22 billion of this estimated
savings either cannot be attributed to NPR or results from double-counting cost cuts.
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Hammer Awards, and the passage of 83 laws that enacted the National
Partnership for Reinventing Government’s (NPR) recommendations (NPR, 1998e).
Specific activities that back up these summary figures include having 40 percent
of food stamp recipients receiving their benefits through electronic transfer, a 25
percent increase in the number of people filing their taxes by phone, having the
Social Security Administration ranked as equivalent to Disney and L.L. Bean in
courtesy, responsiveness, and knowledge, and the U.S. Postal Service improving
on-time delivery ofFirst Class mail from 79 percent to 92 percent (NPR, 1998g).
■ Approximately 14,000 federal employees responded to a 1998 survey regarding
their organization’s implementation ofNPR. The results showed that 75 percent
of those responding said their organization had customer service goals, 65 percent
of the respondents said their own supervisor supported employees’ family and
personal life responsibilities, 60 percent said there was cooperation and teamwork
in their personal work unit— but, only 51 percent said their opinions seem to count
in their workplace, only 46 percent were favorably satisfied with their own
involvement in decisions that affect their work, only 43 percent felt that the
productivity of their work unit had improved in the previous two years, only 37
percent felt employees were rewarded for working in teams, only 30 percent
observed employees being rewarded for creativity and innovation, and, only 25
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percent thought management and unions worked cooperatively on mutual
problems (NPR, 1998h).39
■ The Brookings Institution’s Center for Public Management (1998)40 gave the
National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR) an overall ‘B,’ with an
‘A+’ for effort in its review of the first five years of the initiative. Specifically,
this review gave procurement reform the highest marks (‘A’), with customer
service getting a ‘B+,’ and downsizing receiving a ‘B.’ However, other
performance improvements were marked at ‘C’s’ or below. The Heritage
Foundation (Hodge, 1996: Paragraphs 2,4), in a review coinciding with NPR’s third
anniversary, was less laudatory. They said, “Most government agencies remain
both broke and broken.” They noted that, at that point, over 240,000 federal
3 9 The results of the second employee survey released in March 2000 (NPR, 2000) still found that
individual supervisor support for family and personal responsibilities received high ratings from
employees, fa the arenas of empowerment and reinvention-the percentage of employees saying their
opinions seemed to count went down from 51% to 49%, satisfaction with involvement in decisions that
affect work went down from 46% to 44%, and those saying their organizations made reinvention a priority
stayed at 35% .
4 0 This bullet point provides assessments of the NPR by two differing think tanks— both sometimes regarded
as having political connections and publishing research results that conform to those connections. While
the Brookings Institution is typically regarded as moderate to liberal and the Heritage Foundation as
conservative, the point in noting these organization’s findings is not to reach any conclusion about which
assessment is correct but to provide differing points of evidence on the ends achieved by NPR Clearly,
these two think tanks began their assessments with different expected outcomes. Thus, one is satisfied with
transactional changes and the other expected more transformation. Cumulatively these two perspectives
help the author form conclusions on NPR’s primary ideological discourse.
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positions had been eliminated without the termination o f one major department or
agency.4 1 The report’s conclusion was, “Today, Washington is simply spending
more taxpayer money with fewer workers.” 4 2
■ Walter Houser (1999), a public administrator with 20-year’s experience in
information services, joins Brookings (1995) in giving the National Partnership for
Reinventing Government (NPR) high marks for changing the processes for
procurement o f information and communication technologies. However, like
Heritage (Hodge, 1996), Houser (1999: Paragraphs 7,10,11) finds that NPR has “done
little more than ride the wave o f Internet technologies,” and finds many “anemic”
or wrongheaded responses during NPR’s first six years.
4 1 The record shows that since 1993 the federal government has undergone significant transactional change
in the form of eliminating steps, duplication, forms, regulations, practices, positions, offices, layers, jobs,
subsidies, impediments, rules, and reports. While some observers might note that transactional change is
both appropriate for and the most that can be realistically expected from the U.S. government, the point is
made here about the failure to accomplish transformational change (as might be indicated by the
elimination of department or agencies) because NPR said from the beginning that it was about historic
reform (Clinton, 1993) and dramatic change (NPR, 1993a). Thus, the distinction provides the author clues
about whether a transactional or transformational ideology is most prevalent in the NPR discourse on
information and communication technologies.
4 2 This Heritage Foundation claim may be nothing more than ‘playing to the bleachers,’ since it is almost
impossible to assess whether NPR has or should have caused government to ‘cost less.’ Clearly, the total
cost of the federal government is higher than it was in 1993. However, after adjusting for inflation, there is
not sufficient data to assess whether today’s higher cost of government is a reflection of the government
doing more or different things; or a higher per-unit cost for the same things the government was doing in
1993.
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Thus, Worth (1998: Paragraph 4) may be correct that, while the National Partnership for
Reinventing Government (NPR) has improved the customer service and procurement
activities of government, “What Gore doesn’t seem to understand is that these changes ..
. don’t get to the root of America’s shrunken faith in government.” In Golembiewski’s
(1998:178) terms NPR has been akin to “decorating a diseased if not desiccated tree,”
because what it has done is add “adaptations, however, ingenious, to a basic bureaucratic
structure;” thereby, dealing “with symptoms rather than eliminating basic causes.” 4 3
But, NPR is not alone in this, as the research of Appelbaum and Batt (1994), Heckscher
and Donnellon (1994), and Osterman (1992) indicates. Despite lots of talk about
reengineering and reinventing organizations, there has been little fundamental change
during the past decade in either the public or private sectors.
4 3 Drucker (1995) agrees with the point that better customer service is not what government really needs.
He argues that rather than a focus on cost savings, real reinvention begins with rethinking. This rethinking
includes asking whether what die organization does is still worth doing. His conclusion is that what is
really needed is new political theory that focuses on the substance rather than the processes of government.
As noted in Footnotes 40 and 41, the purpose of including the critiques by Worth (1998), Golembiewski
(1998), and Druker (1995), is not to (haw conclusions about whether NPR has been ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ In
feet, there are many evidences, as noted by Brookings (1998), Houser (1998), and Worth (1998), that the
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Norms4 4
Moe (1994), Chandler (1987), Caiden and Siedentopf (1982), and Waldo (1948) are just a
few of the Public Administration scholars who remind that a perspective on the National
Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR), or any administrative reform, is not a
detached, intellectual flirtation with organizational technique. Instead, it is a living,
actionable ideology— a theory of politics, power, and, to some degree, a theory of what is
of value in life itself.
NPR has accomplished many important changes. The question for this research, and the reason for
including criticisms, is to gather evidence as to whether these changes are indicators of a transactional or a
transformational change ideology.
4 4 The concepts used in this section are defined in the following way:
• Beliefs are normative, ontological premises that make assumptions about the nature and purpose of
being. Governments and public administration are rife with beliefs. For instance, Jefferson (1776)
expressed a normative, ontological assumption when he wrote, "We hold these truths to be self-
evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
rights." The normative premises of beliefs precede values.
• Values are defined in two ways in the research and philosophical literature— things we desire (Allen,
1998; Hodgkinson, 1991; Plato, 368) and standards for making choices' (Rokeach, 1979,1973;
Williams, 1951). To modify Burke's (1998) thoughts on a complete definition ofhuman values— the
things we desire are characterized by the standards we share. Or as Allen (1998: paragraph 2) says,
"Values serve as a baseline for actions and decision-making A strong value system . . . turns
beliefs into standards."
• Norms are behavioral implementation of values. As Kilman, Saxton, and Serpa (1985) explain, norms
are specific expectations of behavior consistent with values. Williams (1968: 284) concurs, noting that
values are the source of norms and norms are the rules for behaving. "Values, as standards (criteria) ..
. provide the grounds for accepting or rejecting particular norms." So, norms are consensual standards
about how to act in certain situations.
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Since, by the definitions of this research, norms are behavioral indicators of values, two
questions will be answered in this section: (1) what was the value atmosphere into which
the National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR) was introduced, and
(2) what, if any, new values did NPR seek to introduce?
■ Existing Values—NPR came into being in an atmosphere in which each new
administration introduced a reform effort (Arnold, 1995; Moe, 1994; Niskanen, 1994;
Ingraham and Rosenbloom, 1992; Chandler, 1987). Since the New Deal, these have been
reforms based upon the civic religion of “techniques, experts, organizations,
skills, discipline, leadership, morale, and results” (Isetti, 1996:678). And, since the
1970’s, they have been reforms that were instruments “of presidential public
politics,” largely in the guise of “reorganization against government” (Arnold,
1995:412,416). As Morgan (1998:453) says, “From the Boston Tea Party to the . . .
National Performance Review initiative, bureaucratic institutions and officialdom
have more often been viewed as democratic governance’s enemy than its friend.”
Additionally, as Van Wart and Berman (1999:327) have noted, the:
Purpose o f the public sector is being... defined more
narrowly in the United States and around the world.
Expectations about how the public sector acts and what
standards it meets have been shifting dramatically....
Efficiency outputs and effectiveness criteria are being
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emphasized.... Changes in productivity values (generally
the driving force today) and public sector ethics have resulted
in a major realignment o f values A 5
■ National Partnership for Reinventing Government’s (NPR) Values-as the textual
analysis that follows reveals (pages 56-98), there are four predominant discourses
found in the analyzed texts. Two of those discourses— status quo and economy—
correspond to the values of the transactional commodity ideology (pages 25-26).
The other two discourses— reform and technology— are roughly equivalent to the
transformational liberation ideology (pages 2-3,25-26).
Since the discourses associated with the transactional commodity ideology
comprise 66 percent of the analyzed texts (Figure 2; next page), this seems to
indicate that the productivity and efficiency values noted by Van Wart and
Berman (1999) should continue as the foundation of norms under the NPR. The
one change from this status-quo is NPR’s even-more explicit emphasis on
economic or marketplace behavior. Even when describing internal operations,
NPR uses market terminologies. For example, when identifying one way in
4 5 Other views on the changing values found in public administration include Kemaghan’s (2000) new
values of service, innovation, and quality being added to traditional values of fairness, accountablity, and
honesty; Gawthrop’s (1999) concern that the traditional values of benevolence and justice are being
replaced with values of competition, efficiency, and entrepreneurship; Jacobs’ (1993) writing on the ethical
lapses likely to happen when one tries to put commercial values into the guardian or public administration
sector; and Hood’s (1991) comparison of the values of economy and parsimony versus the ethical values of
honesty and fairness or the organizational values of robustness and resilience. As noted on Page 1,
Footnote 5, this author does not share the view that economic values are new to U. S. public administration.
What may be new is the NPR’s almost total emphasis on economic behaviors.
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which federal organizations could work more cooperatively, the term
‘franchising’4 6 is the preferred language (Clinton and Gore, 1997; NPR, 1997d; 1996;
1995; 1994; 1993a; 1993b).
Figure 2. Four Predominant Discourses of NPR Texts
Status Quo
55%
Another example is the use of the word ‘entrepreneurial.’ This market term is attached to
everything from management to agencies. In one case, the Federal Housing
4 6 The term ‘franchising’ is used throughout NPR in a market or commodity sense--not in the political
sense of the word.
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Administration is explicitly encouraged to use an “entrepreneurial, private enterprise
approach” (NPR, 1997c; 1996; 1995: Recommendation HUD2-03; 1994).
Finally, the use of the word ‘customer’ (and its derivatives) 2,165 times, compared to the
use of the word ‘citizen’ (and its derivatives) only 176 times, is perhaps the clearest
indicator that the National Partnership for Reinventing Government is an explicit attempt
to replace political values with market values (Arnold, 1995; Moe, 1994).4 7
What, then, can be concluded from these contextual markers about who NPR suggests
should have power, and who should not? As the previous findings illustrate;
1. Customers are in— citizens are out (NPR, 1997c, 1996,1995,1994,1993a).
2. Mid-level, career public administrators seem largely irrelevant (Thompson, 1999;
NPR 1998b, 1998c, 1998d, 1998e, 1997b, 1997c, 1997d, 1996, 1995,1993a; Clinton and Gore,
1997; Maas and van Nispen, 1997; Kam, 1995; Power, 1995; Shoop, 1994; Kam and Shaw, 1993-
1994).
3. The ‘marketplace’ outweighs ‘public spaces’ (Van Wart and Berman, 1999; NPR 1998d,
1997b, 1997c, 1997d, 1996, 1995, 1993a; Clinton and Gore, 1997; Arnold, 1995; Kettl, 1995;
Dilulio, 1994; Dilulio, Garvey, and Kettl, 1993; Gore, 1993; Rosenbloom, 1993).
57
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Relating these findings back to the two ideologies (the transactional commodity ideology
and the transformational liberation ideology) that are posited as starting points for this
research, it appears— based upon the contextual research— that the transactional
commodity ideology, with its associated economic and status quo discourses, is the
underlying ideological ‘why’ of the National Partnership for Reinventing Government
(NPR) (Carroll, 1997; Frederickson, 1996; Arnold, 1995; Kettl and Dilulio, 1995; Kettl, 1994; Moe,
1994).
Textual Research Elements4 8
Instrumentalities (Lexicon)
The first step of the textual research was to develop a concordance of the 508,118
total words found in the 46 NPR texts included in this study.4 9
4 7 Recall that NPR explicitly says, “By ‘customer,’ we do not mean ‘citizen.’ A citizen can participate in
democratic decisionmaking; a customer receives benefits from a specific service. All Americans are
citizens. Most are also customers” (NPR, 1993a: ‘Putting Customers First,’ Paragraph 2).
4 8 The textual research comes from direct analysis of 46 documents found on two federal government
Internet sites (NPR/Access America and GITS).
4 9 A text file of the 46 documents, from which the concordance was built, is available from the author as
‘npr.txt’ It is also available in a searchable form for use with the askSam® software as ‘npr.ask.’ Further
files available from the author include a text (‘concord.txt’) file of the compiled concordance, a file
58
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After developing the concordance, the challenge became bringing meaning to over
500.000 words. Thus, the research proceeded, first, by identifying how many distinct
individual words there were within the overall total. This identified 18,448 individual
words, repeated various numbers of times. Over 18,000 individual words to analyze
still remained a daunting task. So, the second step of research was sorting the
concordance into groups of words that appear 1,000 times or more, words that appear
500 times or more, words that appear 250 times or more, and words that appear 100
times or more. Table 5 (next page) lists the twenty-one content5 0 words appearing
1.000 times or more.5 1
The choice of the seven lexical categories— technologist, manager, user, government,
administration, economic, reform— into which the words appearing 1,000 times or
more were sorted arose from the idea of techno logy and organizations. Using the
concept of technological frames (Page 24, Footnote 21), three categories for the words in
designed to be used with the Concordance® software (‘npr.concordance’), and a file with discourse
markers, for use with the Atlasti® software (lnprtexts.hpr).
3 0 In analyzing an English text it is important to distinguish function words (such as: ‘a,’ ‘the,’ ‘is’) from
content words. In conducting a linguistic analysis it is typically the content words that are studied— in this
instance, the repetition of those words— since they tell the reviewer what the text is about. Salkie (1995:4)
explains that word repetition research can be meaningful because an author repeats words “because that is
what she or he wanted to write about.” In other words, “the only evidence we have about the writer’s
intentions come from the words on the page.” Salkie (1995: x-xi) further notes that one of the primary
things that makes a text or discourse coherent is “the use of repetition.” Word repetition is a lexical
cohesion device that acts “like the glue which holds different parts of a text together. Cohesive devices are
only one factor in making a text coherent, but they are a good place to start the study of text and discourse.”
5 1 Excel® spreadsheets containing the results of all four sorts (1,000+, 500+, 250+, 100+) are available from
the author as TOOOcatxls,’ ‘500catxls,’ ‘250cat.xls,’ and ‘100cat.xls.’ A side-by-side spreadsheet
illustrating which words appeared at each sort level is also available as ‘compare.xls.’
59
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the texts— technologists, managers, and users— were initially chosen. However, it
quickly became apparent that the texts contained many content words that did not fall
neatly within these three categories. Thus, the word categories expanded to seven
categories— technologist, manager, user, government, administration, economic,
reform— to folly account for all the textual materials being analyzed. These seven
categories were used in the initial sorts and analyses.
Table 5: Content Words Repeated 1000 Times or More in tie Analyzed Texts
Techno- Manager User Govern- Adminis- Economic Reform
logist ment tration
Agencies 2087
Agency 1454
Can 969
Customer 1104
Department 1228
Employees 1233
Federal 3193
Government 3147
Information 2485
IT 1067
Management 2521
National 1172
New 1218
Office 1120
Performance 1886
Program 1081
Service 1939
Services 1224
Should 1666
Technology 1125
Will 1925
TOTALS 4677 3754 0 13401 4244 1104 7664 34844
At the end, the categories were then collapsed into four discourses— status quo
(including government, manager, and administration categories), reform (including
60
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user and reform categories), technology (including technologist category), and
economy (including economic category). The status quo and economy discourses
correspond to the values and priorities o f the transactional commodity ideology (pages
25-26). The technology and reform discourses equated to the transformational
liberation ideology (pages 2-3,25-26). Table 6 (pages 61-66) illustrates the terms that fall
within each o f the four predominant discourses.
Table 6: Terms Found in Each of the Four Predominant Discourses of the Analyzed Texts
(Based upon content words used 100 times or more in the analyzed texts)
Reform Status Quo Economy Technology
Able 141 Accomplishments 107 Accounting 246 Applications 101
Access 366 Accountability 194 Acquisition 242 Computer 223
Across 188 Achieve 140 Appropriate 245 Computers 106
Addition 243 Act 694 Appropriations 128 Data 528
Additional 173 Action 351 Award 287 Electronic 582
Address 197 Actions 286 Awards 181 Equipment 145
Against 107 Activities 245 Benefit 168 Fact 103
Agreements 132 Administration 768 Benefits 355 HTM 302
Allow 246 Administrative 302 Billion 312 Information 2485
Alternative 104 Affairs 171 Budget 577 Infrastructure 188
Among 239 Agencies 2087 Business 858 Internet 182
Assistance 228 Agency 1454 Businesses 220 IT 2967
Because 307 Agency's 103 Buy 103 Network 164
Become 119 Agriculture 123 Capital 109 Phone 129
Best 404 AID 113 Collection 148 Processing 202
Better 589 Air 175 Commercial 170 Progress 354
Can 969 American 244 Companies 241 Research 235
Cannot 104 Americans 200 Company 155 Science 176
Change 586 Analysis 167 Competition 121 Software 103
Changes 327 Application 141 Competitive 111 Technical 231
Changing 127 Approach 283 Contract 158 Technologies 134
Commitment 131 Approaches 171 Contracting 102 Technology 1125
Common 224 Area 183 Contracts 151 Telecommuni
cations
135
Consolidate 141 Areas 226 Cost 429 Telephone 106
Coordinate 112 Authority 362 Costs 576 Tools 201
Coordination 140 Barriers 119 Credit 111 Web 142
Could 431 Benchmarking 121 Customer 1104 11349
Create 403 Board 216 Customers 864
Created 194 Branch 226 Dollars 133
Creating 197 Building 112 Economic 123
Cut 244 Bureau 149 Effective 320
Cutting 114 Care 208 Effectively 145
61
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Table 6 (continued)
Reform Status Quo Economy
Directly 134 Career 129 Effectiveness 147
Down 142 Center 204 Efficiency 136
Eliminate 285 Centers 193 Efficient 113
Encourage 191 Central 143 FAR 110
Example 419 Citizens 106 Fees 105
Expand 129 City 101 Financial 500
Feedback 129 Civil 144 Fund 187
First 426 Classification 113 Funding 221
Flexibility 192 Clinton 214 Funds 251
Focus 341 Commerce 169 FY 115
Found 141 Commission 114 Grant 140
Full 111 Committee 136 Grants 104
Future 183 Communication 146 Incentives 178
Give 208 Communities 133 Industry 310
Given 126 Community 292 Market 119
Good 252 Compliance 139 Means 164
Help 390 Comprehensive 110 Million 550
Ideas 117 Congress 551 Money 263
Identify 183 Congressional 129 Own 280
Improve 786 Control 473 Pay 256
Improved 167 Controls 161 Procurement 369
Improvement 358 Council 292 Productivity 174
Improvements 151 Criteria 174 Real 135
Improving 271 Culture 186 Resource 303
Include 386 Customs 142 Resources 438
Included 109 Decisions 159 Return 244
Includes 101 Defense 349 Save 154
Including 297 Delivery 234 Savings 643
Increase 301 Department 1228 Spending 143
Increased 170 Departments 188 Tax 178
Individual 205 Design 256 Trade 190
Individuals 124 Designed 129 Value 130
Initiative 161 Develop 492 Ways 169
Initiatives 298 Developed 185 16712
Innovation 185 Developing 166
Innovative 131 Development 642
Instead 115 Direct 130
Integrated 151 Director 197
Interagency 163 Document 667
Internal 336 DOD 138
Involved 115 DOL 119
Issues 227 DOT 122
Members 110 Education 319
Must 587 Effort 217
Necessary 111 Efforts 370
Need 539 Employee 393
Needed 259 Employees 1233
Needs 430 Employment 249
New 1218 Energy 151
NPR 511 Enforcement 205
NPR's 117 Ensure 318
Technology
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Table 6 (continued)
Reform
Old 110
Status Quo
EPA 170
One-Stop 214 Equal 119
Opportunities 167 Establish 333
Partner 120 Established 167
Partners 189 Evaluation 110
Partnership 309 Executive 649
Partnerships 226 Executives 168
Past 121 Expectations 108
People 652 Expected 105
Performance 1886 Facilities 135
Personal 150 Factors 110
Pilot 157 Federal 3193
Possible 151 Field 236
Potential 119 Food 244
Private 529 Force 262
Problem 143 Foreign 110
Problems 319 Form 131
Promote 169 Forms 130
Proposal 115 Functions 219
Proposed 119 GAO 137
Quality 719 General 574
Quickly 104 Goal 171
Rather 175 Goals 396
Recommen 112 Gore 141
dation
Recommen 456 Government 3147
dations
Red 221 Governments 208
Reduce 446 Government's 210
Reduced 141 Government- 191
Reducing 161
wide
Group 253
Reduction 121 Groups 154
Reengineering 208 GSA 188
Reform 301 Headquarters 127
Reinvent 104 Heads 156
Reinventing 257 Health 380
Reinvention 415 HHS 113
Representa 105 House 163
tives
Result 230 Housing 262
Results 708 HRM 174
Review 597 HUD 165
Reviews 100 Human 359
Right 161 Implement 204
Satisfaction 226 Implementation 271
Sense 139 Implementing 131
. Share 112 Intelligence 137
Sharing 114 International 184
Shift 105 IRS 139
Should 1666 Job 352
Technology
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Reform
Step 107
Steps 116
Streamline 189
Streamlining 192
Strengthen 112
Tape 198
Team 471
Teams 189
Through 778
Together 162
Transfer 150
Trust 122
Way 494
Well 344
Will 1925
Works 120
World 163
Would 782
42299
Table 6 (continued)
Status Quo
Jobs 186
Justice 175
Labor 386
Labor- 109
Management
Law 426
Laws 131
Lead 112
Leaders 153
. Leadership 366
Legislation 293
Legislative 135
Level 191
Levels 241
Line 263
Local 491
Made 318
Mail 120
Make 593
Makes 104
Making 218
Manage 126
Management 2521
Managers 592
Measure 149
Measurement 245
Measures 320
Meeting 109
Methods 148
Mission 247
NASA 131
National 1172
Objectives 166
Office 1120
Offices 327
Officials 141
OMB 317
Operating 154
Operational 117
Operations 314
OPM 335
Opportunity 134
Order 324
Organization 646
Organizational 286
Organizations 619
Organization's 196
Oversight 134
Paperwork 119
Personnel 564
Plan 440
Technology
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Status Quo
Planning 292
Plans 288
Policies 132
Policy 404
Political 212
Positions 218
Power 141
Practices 304
President 964
Presidential 137
President's 246
Principles 151
Priorities 115
Privacy 128
Procedures 231
Process 984
Processes 416
Product 153
Products 217
Program 1081
Programs 942
Project 164
Projects 213
Provide 798
Provided 114
Provides 158
Providing 172
Public 917
Regional 124
Regulations 523
Regulatory 299
Report 713
Reporting 225
Reports 305
Require 168
Required 203
Requirements 465
Requires 128
Resolution 102
Response 126
Responsibilities 137
Responsibility 170
Responsible 102
Role 178
Rules 321
Safety 323
Secretary 186
Section 142
Sector 314
Security 551
Senior 202
Table 6 (continued)
Economy Technology
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Reform
Table 6 (continued)
Status Quo Economy Technology
TOTALS
Serve 200
Service 1939
Services 1224
Skills 114
Social 261
Space 151
Staff 409
Standard 113
Standards 448
State 654
States 395
Strategic 354
Strategies 131
Strategy 117
Structure 196
Structures 113
Study 158
Success 170
Successful 139
Supervisors 112
System 939
Systems 900
Task 199
Taxpayers 137
Top 141
Training 709
Transportation 181
Treasury 201
Under 369
United 155
Units 126
Urban 103
VA 169
Veterans 204
Vice 305
Washington 548
Work 982
Workers 370
Workforce 247
Working 393
42299 88568 16712 11349
66
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When determining the frequency level to stop sorting the texts, the level of words
appearing 100 times or more was chosen for several reasons. These included: (1) at
100+ plus words, this lexical sample represented 57% of the total words in the text
(Figure 3; below); (2) the majority of words at the 100+ level were in the content category
(69%) instead of the function category— Figure 4 (next page) illustrates this point; and (3)
the sorts had reached the point where a significant number of the words being added at
each progressively lower sort were variants or synonyms of existing words. For example,
44% of the content words were variants at the 100+ level (administration/administrative,
approach/approaches, award/awards; etc).
Figure 3: Percentage of Total Words at Each Frequency
1000+
1 1%
500+
15%
100+
16%
100+ words comprise 57% of total analyzec
67
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figure 4: Number of Content Words Compared to Function Words
512
251
123
30
70 ' '
U
3 0Q ^
,0 0 |
IC O o
s S
600
z
500 |
400 ®
300 2
200 |
Content Function
U 1000+ words
@500+words
■ 250+ words
■ 100+words
Perhaps the most interesting revelation from these initial sorts was the change in
textual focus between content words repeated 1000 times or more and content words
repeated 100 times or more. Figure 5 (next page) illustrates this change.
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Figure 5: Change in Topic as More Text Analyzed
Technologist Rfenager User Government Atministralion Economic Reform
BISOOvudrIs OBOQwenfc MZSOwonfe ■iQOwoKfo
The conclusion that can be drawn from these lexical frequency data is that a quick
surface reading of the analyzed National Partnership for Reinventing Government texts
could lead to a conclusion that ‘government’ and ‘reform’ are the two prim ary topics of
these texts. However, deeper review finds almost equal weight between the topics of
‘government,’ ‘administration,’ and ‘reform .’ Additionally, the early focus on
‘technology’ is replaced by ‘economic’ and ‘manager’ topics on deeper reading.
One further interesting discovery of this lexical analysis was that the words of hope and
promise-the ‘utopic kernel’ (Lye, 1997)--are almost exclusively reserved for the reform
69
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topic or category. To ‘become,’ the ‘creators,’ the ‘future,’ all that is ‘good,’ ‘ideas,’
‘opportunities,’ ‘possibilities,’ and ‘potential’--all these words are used in conjunction
with the reform topic. Additionally, the ethical and moral commands (‘should,’ ‘right,’
‘must,’ ‘will’) of the analyzed texts are also reserved for the reform topic.
However, perhaps the most intriguing result gained from the lexical analysis came
from looking at the metaphors found in the analyzed National Partnership for
Reinventing Government (NPR) texts. Clearly, the developers of the NPR were
aware of the power of metaphors. The Blair House Papers (Clinton and Gore, 1997: Part
3, Section 1, Paragraph 1) say:
Federal employees have been trapped in an industrial age management
system. They’ ve been burdened by the metaphors o f that age. The idea of
the machine convinced us to organize our efforts as if the individuals who
work together are parts in a mechanism.
Perhaps the NPR borrowed this idea from Morgan (1986) who is probably the most
cited source on organizations and metaphor. His classic work identified six
metaphors commonly found in organizations: (1) organizations as machines— which
he said is the predominant organizational metaphor, (2) organizations as organisms—
which grow, evolve, and adapt as part of larger systems, (3) organizations as brains—
an information processing and self-organizing perspective, (4) organizations as
cultures— a social construction perspective, (5) organizations as political systems— full
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of bargaining, conflict, and power, and (6) organizations as psychic prisons— a
psychological perspective foil of anxiety, repression, and archetypes.
Morgan’s work was based on decades of prior linguistic and cognitive research.
Foremost among those who laid the ground for Morgan were Lakoff and Johnson
(1980), who demonstrated that much of what we do is metaphorical in nature. Devlin
and Rosenberg (1996), focusing specifically on language at work, indicate that
humans actually understand what is going on around them by identifying a similar
metaphor for use in the new situation; comparing the new situation against the
metaphor, including identifying where the existing metaphor works and where it fails;
and, then constructing a new or revised metaphor that better deals with the situation.
This makes it possible for human beings to handle new situations without breaking
down, while simultaneously limiting human horizons.
Thus, metaphors matter because they are one of the most commonly used tools in
human cognition.
Instead o f finding the six metaphors o f Morgan (1986), this analysis identified eight
metaphors in the analyzed texts— military, building, spatial, games, living or organic,
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machine, arts, and religion. Table 7 (pages 73-77) lists these metaphors. Figure 6 (below)
depicts the distribution of these metaphors in the analyzed texts.
Figure 6: Metaphors Found throughout Analyzed Texts*
Arts
M ilitary
30%
L iving
11%
B uilding
23% Spatial
5%
* Because religious metaphors comprise less than 1 % o f the analyzed texts they are not included in this graphic.
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Table 7: Metaphors Found Throughout the NPR Texts
Military
Advances 23
Building
Align 9
Spatial
Bearing 1
Games
Ball 3
Advancing 8 Aligned 16 Boundary 8 Baseline 29
Adversarial 41 Aligning 8
crossing
Boundary 4 Baselines 1
Adversary 1 Alignment 32
spanning
Boundary- 2 Bluff 1
Armor 4 Aligns 6
less
Bounds 4 Cheat 1
Arsenals 1 Architect 1 Boundaries 42 Cheaters 2
Battle 3 Architect 1 Boundaries 2 Cheating 2
Battle 1
Engineer
Architects 1
can
Boundary 2 Cheer 2
ground
Battles 1 Architec 1 Boundary 1 Cheered 1
Champion 9
ture
Bedrock 2 Climb 4 Cheering 1
Champion 4 Blueprint 17 Climbed 1 Dice 2
ed
Champion 2 Blueprints 1 Climbing 2 Double 1
ing
Champions 1 Bridge 7 Directional 1
team
Gambit 1
Clash 2 Corner 1 Direction 59 Game S
Combat 22
stone
Corner 1 Downgrade 2 Games 1
Combated 1
stones
Design 246 Down 1 Kick 1
Combative 1 Door 11
grades
Downhill 1 Kicking 1
Enemy 6 Engineer 43 Down 3 Kicks 1
Feuding 2
ing
Engineers 38
stream
Edge 7 Loser 1
Fight 20 Engineer 5 Edges 1 Losers 4
Living Machine Arts Religion
Arms 6 Amplifies 1 Actors 1 Evangelist 2
Atmo 7 Benchmark 121 Admission 1 Exodus 1
sphere
Atrophy 1 Bench- 15 Admit 2 Evil 2
marked
Backbone 1 Benchmark 12 Admits 1 Heaven 2
Brain 5 Benchmarks 30 Admitted 1 Hell 2
Brain 1 Brakes 1 Admittedly 2 Holier 1
storm than Thou
Brain 1 Breakdown 1 Admitting 1
storming
Body 13 Breakdowns 1 Agent 12
Bodies 11 Calibrated 1 Agents 23
Earmarked 3 Calibration 1 Applause 2
Earmarks 14 Circuit 9 Applaud 3
Embodied 7 Circuits 3 Chorus 15
Embodies 5 Engine 5 Facade 1
Embodi 1 Feedback 129 Harmonize 2
ment
Embody 3 Input 65 Harmony 1
Embrace 5 Inputs 23 Highlight 13
Embraced 5 Output 11 Highlighted 9
Embraces 2 Outputs 18 Highlight 2
ing
Embracing 1 Regulation 523 Highlights 24
Evolve 7 Regulatory 299 Illustrate 11
Military
Fighting 10
Building
Engineers' 1
Spatial
Eroded 1
Flagship 2 Floor 19 Eroding 1
Launch 25 Ground 1 Heading 1
Launching 7
Breaking
Ground- 1 Landmark 4
Launchpad 1
Breaking
Grounded 3 Map 17
Launches 2 Grounds 9 Mapped 1
Legions 2 Ground 1 Mapping 12
Marched 1
work
Ground 1 Maps 14
Marching 5 Ground 1 Orientation 32
Orders 42
Not
Ground 24 Oriented 16
Pilot 157 Hallmark 3 Orienting 2
Pilot Test 2 Hallmarks 2 Parcel 2
Piloted 9 Highway 69 Parceled 1
Piloting 12 Infrastruc 188 Pinnacle 1
Rank 8
ture
Insulated 2 Pioneer 1
Report 713 Insulates 1 Pioneered 5
Reports 305 Ladders 5 Pioneering 3
Reporting 225 Ladder 2 Pioneers 1
Rifle shot 1 Pillars 5 Plot 1
Signal 2 Pipeline 6 Plotting 1
Table 7 (continued)
Games Living Machine Arts
Luck 4 Evolved 9 Illustrated
Luckily 4 Evolving 16 Illustrates
Lucky 2 Evolution 5 Illustrating
Play 31 Evolution 1 Illustration
ary
Play they 1 Eyeful 1 Illustrative
Played 11 Eye 2 Illustrious
Opening
Players 8 Eye 5 Sideshow
Playing 14 Eyeful 1 Spotlight
Plays 8 Eyes 7 Spotlighted
Reshuffl 1 Eyesore 1 Stage
ing
Riddle 1 Eyesores 1 Staged
Risk 49 Face 56
Risk 1 Face to 5
averse face
Risk 2 Faced 15
based
Risk 2 Faceless 3
sharing
Risk 2 Faces 17
taking
Riskier 1 Fallow 1
Risks 46 Fertile 1
Risky 3 Footing 2
Risky 1 Footsteps 2
and
Religion
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Military
Signaled 1
Building
Pipelines 2
Signals 9 Pipes 2
Spearhead 2 Redesign 52
ed
Spearhead 1 Road 26
ing
Spearheads 1 Road 3
Squad 1
blocks
Room 114
Squadron 2 Rung 1
Squadrons 1 Smoke 2
Trigger 3
stack
Smoke 1
Triggers 1
stacks
Stovepipe 3
Triggering 1 Stove- 1
Troops 8
piped
Stovepipes 2
Weapon 8 Stove- 1
Weapons 17
piping
Structures 113
Structure
Super
highway
Threshold
Toolkit
Walls
196
6
6
6
8
Spatial
Table 7 (continued)
Games Living
Score 10 Grow 20
Score 2 Growers 1
card
Score 1 Growing 1
card'
Scored 2 Grown 35
Scores 19 Grown- 1
Scoring 25 Grown 1
when
Spring 1 Grows 6
board
Winners 29 Growth 47
Winning 10 Ham 6
strung
Winner 7 Ham 1
strings
Wins 6 Ham 2
stringing
Hamstring 1
Handful 2
Handi 1
work
Handoffs 1
Handouts 2
Hands 24
Hands off 1
Arts Religion
Hands on 1
Table 7 (continued)
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Spreads
Sprinkled
Starved
Table 7 (continued)
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The observation that m achine m etaphors came in third place in term s of these particular
texts (instead of Morgan’s first place) should not be surprising. After all, if one wishes to
“transform governm ent” (NPR, 1993a: Chapter 3, Step 5, Paragraph 6) what better way to start
than by giving people new mental models in the form of new metaphors. However, some
may question whether the predominant metaphorical military terminology of ‘reporting,’
‘orders,’ and ‘adversaries’ will lead to such a transformation. These military metaphors
may carry such strong perceptual baggage that they are not helpful in an effort to
“transform . . . cultures by decentralizing authority . . . [and] empowering] those who
work on the front lines to make more of their own decisions and solve more of their own
problems” (NPR, 1993a: Introduction, Step 3, Paragraph 1).
Act Sequence (Syntax)
Halliday and Martin (1993) and Huddleston et ah (1968) have demonstrated that indirect
action, third person referrals, and conclusions presented as universal truths are common
grammar5 2 features of technical discourses. Lemke (1995:61,76) says these common
features of technical discourses, “have with the increased power and visibility of science
come to be adopted into managerial and bureaucratic discourse, from which technocratic
discourse itself em erges." He further notes that much of the work produced by recent
5 2 Syntax (the structure and order of communication— Hymes’ act sequence) and lexicology (the study of
word choices— Hymes’ instrumentalities) are part of grammar in contemporary linguistics. Semantics
(study of the meaning of the communication— Hymes’ key) and genre (the classificatory schematic structure
of a discourse) fall outside grammar.
78
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U.S. administrations appropriates and ventriloquizes "the voice of technocratic research .
.. while attempting to maintain the dominance of its own" political stance. "It is caught
along with many of us, in the contradictions between older value-centered political
discourses and the newer, fact-centered technocratic ones." For example, themes like
'renewed trust' have little direct relation to 'research findings' but are typical in much
contemporary administration discourse.
So, identifying whether a discourse contains more technical/technocratic features, such
as ‘distancing’ (third person referrals) and ‘privileging’ (listening to only one type or set
of arguments), or more political features, such as first person value assertions, is one way
to study the syntax of a discourse. Since such features also indicate who the authors of
the discourse believe should have power— ‘us’ or ‘them’— this section asks: (a) who the
analyzed National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR) texts hold responsible
for action, and (b) who the use of pronouns indicates is predominant?
■ Who’s Responsible— The analyzed NPR texts clearly direct public
administrators to put the customer first (Clinton and Gore, 1997; NPR, 1998,1997d,
1996, 1995,1994,1993a). Yet, there is little assigned responsibility in the same
texts for accomplishing the ‘how’s’ (empowering front line workers to get
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results, not live by rules) which are postulated as necessary to carry out this
customer service ‘why’ (Kettl and Dilulio, 1995). To illustrate this point, the first
Table 8: Responsibility for Action Found in Analyzed Texts
Action Taken-based upon
sample of words from
status quo and reform
discourses
Status
Quo
Word
Sample
Neutral
Term
Reform
Word
Sample
Decides/
Decided
Chose
Acted/
Acted
Upon
Direct/
Directed
Demanded
Ordered^
Said
Empowered
Reengineered
Transformed
Created
Changed
Reinvented
Who Performed Action— bold indicates that the
responsibility can be attributed
Agency, Organization, Unit, Examiner, Postal Service,
Commerce, Undersecretary, Some People, Congress, SEC
Chairman, SSA, Doran, We, District Director, FDA, I
Administration, Office, People, Voters, He, We, Browner,
Gordon, Business Travel News, Selection Committee
OPM, Congress, He, Company, Information/Complaints
Washington, Congress, President, OMB
Fawning courtiers, Consumers, Americans, Customers
President, Motorola^feecufee_Offie^ L a ^ HCFA.
Drucker, Roosevelt, Lasswell, Mayor, President, FLRB,
Vice-President, Poll, Hyatt, Report, Secretary, Team,
Americans, Kettl, Greenspan, She, GAO, People, New York
Times, It, He
Broadbanding, Stripping away rules, Changes will, Top
management, Region, GM, Shifting power, Delegation of
authority, Reorganization, Goals, Companies
Corporations, Hartford District, DOD, DOL, Benchmarked
Organizations, NSF, IRS
Those, HUD, SSA, We, Quality Movement, Beard,
Partnership
Group, Regulations, They, Rates, Rules, Government,
Congress, Clinton, Information Technology Leaders,
Organizations, NASA, Automation, Interior, Administration,
OMB, Agencies
Congress, Computers and Telephones, Workforce, Principles,
OPM, Coming, Post Office, World, Employees, FDA,
Partners, CEOs, SSA, Management Information Systems
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two columns of Table 8 (previous page) show a random sample of content words
from the status quo and reform discourses, along with a comparative neutral
term. In its third column, the table shows whom the National Partnership for
Reinventing Government (NPR) texts assigned responsibility for these
actions.
This investigation revealed that it was not easy, in the analyzed texts, to find
who was responsible for reforming the federal government. Given this
finding, since the persons most mentioned in the analyzed texts are the
President and Vice President, it was instructive to conduct a four-word
collocation analysis5 3 to identify what actions these chief executives assigned
to themselves in the included NPR texts.5 4
This examination showed that while the President or Vice-President signed,
announced, called, created, issued, asked, challenged, established, ordered,
strengthened, approved, chartered, directed, expanded, finished, implemented,
listed, merged, presented, remarked, signaled, typed, urged, served, voiced,
5 3 A complete list of collocation words is available from the author in a file named ‘colocate.txt.’
5 4 The purpose of this particular analysis is not to assign sole responsibility for reinventing the federal
government to the President or Vice President. However, since they are mentioned the most in the
analyzed texts (typically the persons most mentioned are either the ones intended to get the most credit
blame), it is instructive to assess whether the actions they are assigned will lead to the NPR’s stated
purpose of creating historic reform (Clinton, 1993) and dramatic change (NPR, 1993a).
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wrote, promised, and released— not once, in the analyzed texts, did either of
the two individuals empower, change, improve, or transform. At least they
encouraged four times.
Such linguistic evidence might cause a public administrator to wonder who Vice
President Gore intended to be responsible for carrying out his ‘how’ value
declaration that:
A government that puts people first, puts its employees first,
too. It empowers them, freeing them from mind-numbing
rules and regulations. It delegates authority and
responsibility. And it provides for them a clear sense of
mission (NPR, 1993a: Chapter 3 , Paragraph 6).
■ Who Predominates— knowing that the National Partnership for Reinventing
Government promises to eradicate the “last vestiges of a ‘nam eless, faceless
bureaucracy”’ (NPR, 1996: Conclusion, Paragraph 6), this analysis looked to see if
the included texts indicated a move from the remote, royal ‘we’ to the
responsible ‘I.’
Table 9 (next page) shows a relatively high preponderance of pronouns for a
technologic discourse; which typically gives action authority to facts, findings and
research— or committees, taskforces, and boards; instead of the individuals
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Table 9: Pronoun Frequency in Analyzed Texts
I/My We/Our/ He/His She/Her They/ It/Its/It's You/ Others
Us Their Yours
274 1555 305 121 1762 1900 576 136
67 660 10 120 99 229 76
40 4 232 235 Nobody
1 5 11
8
36
68
45
214
381 2591 547 241 1861 2129 892 147
TOTAL 8789
referenced by pronouns. In comparison to some of the most frequently used words
in the text, pronouns make up just slightly less than 2 percent of the total words in
the texts. In contrast, the word ‘customer’ and its derivatives make up less than .5
percent of the text, the words ‘workers’ and ‘employees’ (and their derivatives)
comprise only about .4 percent of the text, the cumulative technological words
constitute 2.2 percent of the total texts, and all the reform words in the texts are
8.3 percent ofthe text.
Of the pronouns used, Figure 7 (next page) illustrates that third person pronouns are
used the most. While, typically, such predominant use of third person references
is construed as an effort to distance or elevate (the royal ‘we’ or the avoiding
responsibility ‘we’), a deeper analysis of these particular texts reveals that with
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the use ofthe word ‘we,’ the National Partnership for Reinventing Government
(NPR) is trying to set a deliberate model of teamwork, in addition to the
stereotypical distancing of the royal ‘we.’
Figure 7: Percentage Distribution of Pronouns in Analyzed Texts
However, when all the uses o f‘we’ (30 percent of pronouns used) are combined
with the many uses of ‘they’ (21 percent of pronouns), as a whole the studied
texts appear to make heavy use of the third person and indirect action common to
technologic discourses. This is particularly true since almost every use o f‘they,’
in the analyzed NPR texts, refers to something equally as remote--an
organization, an agency, or a group of managers. The point of this comparison of
personal versus third person pronouns is less about assigning responsibility than
Others/
Nobody-
They/Their
21%
She/Her
3%
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finding textual markers that indicate conformance to transactional or
transformational ideological discourses. The predominant use o f third person
pronouns aligns these texts more closely w ith the technologic (transactional)
discourses o f bureaucrats and engineers than the more traditional reforming
(transformational) discourses o f politicians and evangelizers.
Perhaps the most intriguing thing learned from this analysis o f predominance, as
indicated by pronouns in the National Partnership for Reinventing Government
texts, is the 2:1 advantage that m asculine pronouns have over feminine pronouns.
Critical research on gender (Wodak, 1997; Seidel, 1988) often finds that such
predominance indicates a privileging— even if not done consciously— o f one
gender over the other. It is not the purpose o f this study to conduct such an
analysis, but it does raise an interesting question for future research to accompany
the work Bum ier (1995) has done on “Reinventing Government from a Fem inist
Perspective.”
Genre (Scheme)
Some Public and public administrators may wonder whether a study o f genre can provide
any useful information. After all, genre is a concept from literature and rhetorical
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studies, not social science. But, if traditional Public/public administrators look deeper
they w ill find that genre studies have expanded and developed quite a bit since the days
when ‘the’ genres were poetry, drama, and prose.
Today, genre is defined as “a class o f com m unicative events characterized by some
shared set o f communicative purposes” (Ljungberg, 1997: Paragraph 35). Put another way, a
genre is a rule-bound way that language is used within a related group, occupation, or
denomination. “In contrast to... speech acts, the purpose o f a genre is not rooted in an
individual’s intention and m otive for communication, but is recognized and reinforced
w ithin a community [o f practice]” (Ljungberg, 1997: paragraph 50).
Fairclough (1995) equates genres to ‘ideal types’— m eaning that a genre provides a schema
or order for a fam ily or type o f communication. He says a genre can be identified by its
common voice (active or passive relation between subject and action), field (topic or area
o f interest o f the com m unication), and mode (distinctive features or manner in how
som ething is communicated).
So what genres are the National Partnership for Reinventing Government texts included
in this research part of? Y ates and O rlikowski (1992), who introduced the use o f genre to
organizational research, found four types o f genres in the electronic com m unications o f
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knowledge workers (Orlikowski and Yates, 1994). These were the memo, proposal, dialogue,
and ballot genres. Forman and Rymer (1999) identified the ‘case write-up’ required o f
thousands o f M BA’s as a genre in business schools. Kuhn (1997) suggested that the issue
management discourse o f organizations w ishing to influence public policy is another
genre o f business.
Martin (1989) and Kress (1982) have studied the genres o f power, which they find
throughout technical/technocratic discourses (pages 75-76). Lemke (1995:145) explains:
The genres o f power both empower us and limit us. They are resources that
we can sometimes use for our own purposes, but access to them requires that
we collude to some degree with the dominant cultural systems that have
spawned them. Failure to master these genres provides the gatekeepers with
an excuse to keep us out of places we may wish to go; these genres are
conduits for the power o f the dominant group to control our lives whether we
master them or not.... [But] one must already have power and credibility
to get away with breaking their rules, and that to use their forms successfully
as a resource we do indeed need to participate, critically, in the full activity
in which they function.
With so many choices o f genres, the author began w ith a premise that the National
Partnership for Reinventing Government texts analyzed for this research would fall
within one o f five broad genres— a political genre, a bureaucratic genre, a reform genre, a
technical genre, or a m ixed genre (Fairclough, 1995; Schififin, 1994). Table 10 (next page)
identifies the voice, field, and mode the author looked for in identifying the genres
included in the analyzed texts.
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Table 10: Genre Indicators
Political
Genre
Bureaucratic
Genre
Reform
Genre
Technical
Genre
Voice Active Passive Active Passive5 5
Field Achieving justice Rational
administration
Improvement,
Change
Expertise, Proof
Mode Personal, anecdotal-
Cause/consequence
Impersonal, detailed-
-Situation, Problem,
Solution,
Personal,
inspirational—
Sin/Salvation
Impersonal-
Hypothesis, Data
gathering, Test,
Analysis, Results
Table 11 (next page) shows the frequency o f the terms in each o f the four major genres.
What the analysis o f these genre data showed is that the studied N ational Partnership for
Reinventing Government texts are a m ix o f genres. Figure 8 (page 89) illustrates the mix
o f genres.
While all genres are present, the passive, impersonal genres (technical and bureaucratic)
predominate. This is o f no surprise since such genres are the status quo o f official
documents from the U .S. government (Lemke, 1995).
5 5 Miller (1979) joins Webber (1999), Lemke (1995), Halliday and Martin (1993), Flowerdew (1992),
Halliday (1989), Biber (1988), and Huddleston et al. (1968) in noting that while good technical writing
ought to be in the active voice, what actually characterizes most technical writing is extensive use of the
passive voice.
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Table 11: Terms Assigned to Each Genre
Voice
Field
Mode
TOTALS
Political Bureaucratic Reform Technical
Are 3000 Have 1696 Will 1925 Been 611
Mandate 113 Authorize 579 Change 1108 Proof 43
Equality 145 Control 668 Transform 152 Test 81
Participate 251 Approve 87 Revolution 64 Examine 67
Freedom 120 Command 37 Create 944 Analyze 268
Justice 175 Direct 413 Innovate 402 Theory 18
Power 196 Impose 51 Future 189 Research 260
Political 130 Require 1128 Hope 30 Science 248
Vote 22 Dictate 17 Possible 174 Data 847
Debate 12 Appoint 147 Potential 134 Technology 11349
Agreement 281 Hierarchy 48 Improve 1768 Evaluate 304
Good 253 Standards 608 Formulas 33
Right 211 Requirements 1128
Congress 726 Rules 463
Law 741 Reports 1345
State/Local 1778 Regulations 1014
Citizens 176 Centralize 204
Excite 12 Detail 114 Evangelize 2 Process 1414
Rhetoric 3 Forms 133 Must 587 Steps 223
Personal 169 Organization 1889 Should 1666 Study 212
Story 49 Policy 576 Testament 3 Neutral 13
Anecdote 4 Procedure 270
Purpose 126
8693
Rational
Logical
16
35
12666 9148 15991
Technical
34%
Figure 8: Distribution of Genres
n
Political
19%
Bureaucratic
27%
Reform
2 0 %
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Key (Topic)
A s markers o f ideological discourse, the design o f this research (Table 3, page 27) calls
for review ing the included texts in terms o fth e transformational/transactional change
m odel proposed by Burke and Litwin (1992), the transformational change
requirements suggested by Rom anelli and Tushman (1994), and the power categories
proffered by Finkelstein (1992). Thus, this final section o f textual research reviews
how the included N ational Partnership for Reinventing Government texts deal with
the topics o f transformational/transactional change and power.
■ Transformational or Transactional?5 6
Burke and Litwin (1992) show that an organization undergoing transactional
change concerns itself w ith its structure, system s, practices, and climate;
whereas, an organization in the m idst o f transformational change deals w ith its
m ission, strategy, leadership, and culture. In looking at the analyzed texts for
these types o f change indicators, one finds (Table 12, next page):
5 6 The reason for making these comparisons between transactional and transformational change indicators
in the analyzed texts is to assess whether NPR’s discourse on information and communication technologies
conforms more closely to a transactional or transformational ideology. The author does not intend and did
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Table 12: Indicators of Transformational or Transactional Change
Transactional Change-Structure,
Systems, Practices, Climate changes
Transformational Change— Mission,
Strategy, Leadership, Culture changes
Structure— 341 Mission/Purpose/Vision— 375/126/197
Systems- 1,925 Strategy-611
Practices/Procedures— 368/252 Leadership— 70
Climate— 11 Culture-197
Re-words
(Redesign/Reengineer/Reinvent)— 3,542
Transform/Revolution/Create— 216/887
TOTAL-6,439 TOTAL-2,679
The conclusion drawn from this distribution o f change related activities (Figure
9; below) is that the included National Partnership for Reinventing Government
texts portray a heavily transactional change effort.
Figure 9: Distribution of Language Referencing Transformational or Transactional Change
Trans
actional
Trans-
forma-
not attempt to make any assessment of whether one form of change is better than the other; nor, whether
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Another Take-Transformational or Not?
Romanelli and Tushman (1994) found that transformational change requires
simultaneous changes in: (a) an organization’s strategies— such as entering or
leaving a market,5 7 (b) an organization’s structure— such as m oving from a
centralized hierarchy to decentralized networks, and (c) power relationships in the
organization— such as a change in the CEO or shifts in line-staff relationships.
Given these indicators, this analysis, as indicated in Table 13 (below), initially
found data contradicting the results from the Burke and Litwin (1992) model.
Table 13: Indicators of Transformational Change
Strategy change-enter or leave a
market
End— 137; Remove-84;
Terminate— 55; Abolish— 29;
Cancel— 9; Delete— 6; Eradicate-4
TOTALS
324
Structure change—
decentralization, elimination of
bureaucratic structures and
practices
Decentralization— 61; Virtual-70;
Flexiplace/time-26; Freedom -
109; Eliminate-508; Enable-136
910
Power change-change in
stafftline relationship
Empower-139; Partners— 228;
Participate— 185; Cooperate— 195;
Shared-298
1045
one form of change is more or less successful, appropriate, or possible for federal agencies.
5 7 While Congress must ultimately approve explicit government decisions to enter or leave a market,
federal organizations do have extensive authority to recommend entering or leaving markets. Often,
instead of dealing with such decisions explicitly, Presidents and Cabinet Secretaries make the decision to
enter or leave a market by neglecting or ignoring areas of their assigned market responsibility.
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Since these data show the three types of change occurring simultaneously-
contradicting the earlier results— a second, deeper look is needed to identify why
the discrepancy exists. First, a distribution of the three types of changes
(Figure 10; below) shows that there is significantly less strategy change discussed in
the analyzed texts.
Figure 10: Distribution of Types of Change
Strategy
14%
Then, cycling back to the contextual level of research, this second look is
confirmed by a record that shows that since 1993 the only organizations that
appear to have been completely eliminated (both organization and function) are
the Tea-Tasters Board and the Administrative Conference of the United States.
Other agencies, sometimes noted as having been abolished— such as the Interstate
Commerce Commission, the Bureau of Mines, and the Arms Control and
Disarmament Agency— might more accurately be described as reorganizations
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because the functions and many of the staff of those organizations were
transferred to other agencies. Other efforts at leaving a market, such as abolishing
NOAA’s Uniformed Service, have failed.5 8
Thus, the third element of transformation— substantive strategy change, as
might be illustrated by entering or leaving a market— plays a minor role in the
National Partnership for Reinventing Government discourse. This deeper
look conforms to the findings developed from analysis based on the Burke and
Litwin (1992) model.
■ Types of Power
Finkelstein (1992) observes that there are four types of power typically found in
organizations: (1) structural power— indicated by titles, compensation, and
hierarchy, (2) ownership power-indicated by relationships to owners, (3) expert
power-evidenced in language about training, awards, professionalism, and
(4) prestige power— seen in language about being part of certain ‘privileged’
5 8 Pointing out the government's lack of movement in entering or leaving markets— in this case by noting
that there are few instances of organizations having been completely abolished— is included in this analysis
because the failure to accomplish such transformational changes provides the author with clues about
whether a transactional or transformational ideology is most prevalent in the NPR discourse on information
and communication technologies. This is not meant as an assessment of whether such transformational
change is desirable or appropriate for the U.S. government.
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groups. The logic of bureaucracy predicts that structural power is likely to be the
predominant power type found in the analyzed National Partnership for
Reinventing Government (NPR) texts:
Using Finkelstein’s model, the following types of power are found in the analyzed
NPR texts:
Table 14 : Types of Power Found in Analyzed Texts
Structural power— titles,
compensation, hierarchy
Centralized— 61; President/'Vice-
President— 1,372; Secretary-250;
Pay— 256; Compensation— 66;
Hierarchy-48
TOTALS
2035
Ownership power— relationship,
shares
Owner— 133; Partner— 228;
Share/Stakeholder— 80; Principals— 3;
Agents— 5; Citizens— 176
625
Expert power— training, awards,
professionalism
Expert— 152; Professional— 99;
Training— 775; Awards— 498 1524
Prestige power— being part of
certain groups
Political— 103; State/Local— 1,225;
Business— 1,131; Congress— 726;
Executives— 825; Leaders— 654;
Customers— 2,165
6829
These data reveal that prestige power predominates in the analyzed NPR texts.
Within the prestige power category, the NPR texts show a nearly equal
preference for customers and political audiences. This provides further
support for the analysis found in the section on participants (pages 43-46)— that
political constituencies and customers, represented by poll findings, are the
primary participants in the NPR. Figures 11 and 12 (next page) visually depict
these findings.
95
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Figure 11: Distribution of Power Types in NPR Texts
Ownership
Expert
14% '
Prestige
62%
Structure
18%
Figure 12: Distribution of Prestige Groups within Prestige Power Types
Businesses
In summary, the textual research found that:
■ There are four discourses in the analyzed texts— status quo, economy, technology,
and reform. The status quo and economy discourses (66 percent of the texts)
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equate to the transactional commodity ideology. The technology and reform
discourses (34 percent of the texts) correspond with the transformational
liberation ideology.
■ Military metaphors (‘reporting,’ ‘orders,’ ‘adversaries’) predominate in the
analyzed texts— reinforcing the hierarchical status quo discourse of the analyzed
texts. Additionally, status quo genres (bureaucratic and technical-transactional
genres) make up 59 percent of the included texts.
■ Technocratic discourse— the status quo ofU.S. government documents, with its
characteristics of privileging and distancing— is prevalent in the analyzed texts.
Additionally, it is difficult to identify any specific person responsible for reform
actions in the studied texts— confirming indirect action— a third characteristic of
status-quo technocratic (transactional) discourses.
■ Limited, transactional change is mentioned most often in the texts (71 percent).
Plus, prestige power is predominant (62 percent) in the analyzed texts; rather than
words about changes in ownership power, which you would expect to find in an
empowerment or transformatory discourse (from principals to partners).
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Thus, these findings support the initial conclusion of the contextual research: the primary
ideology of the analyzed National Partnership for Reinventing Government texts is the
transactional commodity ideology (pages 25-26).
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Chapter 5 - Conclusions
The literature upon which this study is based reveals that:
■ Words and ideas play a major role in human action (Davidson, 1980; Hayakawa, 1973;
Russell, 1973; Searle, 1969; Wittgenstein, 1968; Austin, 1962; Firth, 1957) because words and
ideas represent the social values and version of reality foundational to the
communicator of those words and ideas (Wodak, 1997; Coulthard, 1994; Fairclough, 1992;
Van Dijk, 1985).
■ Ideology is a systemic, value-based, action-oriented set of ideas about who should
have power and who should not— a perspective about how things should be (Hall, 1996;
Berger, 1991; Thompson, 1990).
■ The words and ideas that create, express, and m odify an ideology are ideological
discourses. Ideological discourses are particularly to be found in “public speeches and
written works, popular stories, television show s, and magazine articles” (Bailey, 1994;
Kling and Iacano, 1988: 228; Alvesson, 1987; Thompson, 1984; Pecheux, 1982; Kress and Hodge,
1979; Gouldner, 1976; Apel, 1971).
■ One of the most visible contemporary discourses in American public administration is
the National Partnership for Reinventing Government (Gore, 1998; Kettl, 1998; Laurent,
1998; Abramson, 1997; Sanders, 1996; Arnold, 1995; Dilulio, 1994; Moe, 1994; Niskanen, 1994; Barr,
1993; Clinton, 1993; NAPA, 1993; NPR, 1993; Shoop, 1993).
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■ Because of the characteristics attributed to information and communication
technologies in the popular, professional, and scholarly literature, one of the National
Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR) subjects worth studying is its
discourse on information and communication technologies (Allen and Morton, 1994;
Dunlop and Kling, 1991; Qrlikowski, 1991; Kraemer and Danziger, 1990; Drucker, 1988; Zuboff,
1988; Attewell and Rule, 1984; Braverman, 1974; Leavitt and Whlsler, 1958).
Working from this literature base, the author asked what ideology is at the core of the
NPR's discourse on information and communication technologies. The findings of
this research indicated that a transactional commodity ideology (page 24-25) is at the
core of the NPR’s discourse on information and communication technologies.
So, what is a Public or public administrator to do with this information? He or she could
say they now better understand the ideology underlying the NPR’s discourse on
information and communication technologies and note that this research has provided
some understanding or interpretive knowledge (Outhewaite, 1975; Weber, 1975,1968, 1949). If
this is the Public/public administrator’s final conclusion, then this research will be like
Zanetti’s (1996) review of some postmodern Public Administration scholarship— it is
diagnostic but lacks a set of therapeutic recommendations.
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Additionally, if a Public/public administrator wanted to conduct their own diagnosis, they
could apply the methodology used here--or other similar efforts, such as those put
forward by Sementelli and Herzog (2000)--to conduct their own assessment of the
ideological norms expressed through discourse in their own organizations. For example,
an interesting application of this methodology might be to look at whether there is
continuity or conflict between the ideological discourse of an agency’s strategic plan and
the Government Performance and Results Act, which requires those plans. If there is
conflict between the two, an assessment could then be made about the likelihood of full
implementation of the actions called for in the strategic plan.
Further additional research that a Public or public administrator might do includes
studying:
■ Whether there are government reforms, other than the National Partnership for
Reinventing Government, that have more folly integrated information technology
driven change with the transformatory liberation ideology.
■ Whether, and to what extent, the private sector makes use of the transformatory
liberation and transactional commodity ideologies in their information technology
driven reforms.
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■ Whether any organization has successfully integrated information technology
driven change with the transformatory liberation ideology, and
■ I f not, w hy executives and managers put forward such utopian visions and how
workers respond to such utopian visions.
But, ultim ately, the m ost important thing a Public/public administrator can do with the
knowledge that the National Partnership for Reinventing Government’s ideological
discourse o f information and com munication technologies adheres to the fundamental
transactional orthodoxy o f public administration (Fox and Miller, 1995) rather than
conforming to a transformatory liberation or empowerment discourse (NPR, 1998,1997a,
1993a), may be to start demanding that presidential administration’s be held responsible
for honesty, truthtelling, and honoring commitments.
Public/public administrator’s must com e to understand that our continuing casual
acceptance o f ritual deception and disinform ation as the normal condition o f political
office holders (Beahrs, 1996; Barnes, 1994), may very w ell be at the root o f many o f the
problems that the federal government faces today. Whether a Public/public administrator
turns to psychology (Johnson and Johnson, 2000), history (De Tocqueville, 1831), philosophy
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(Carter, 1998; Hume, 1739-1740), economics (Harrison, 1992; Ropke, 1971), game theory
(Schelling, 1985), poiitical/public administration theory (Damico, Conway, and Damico, 2000;
Braithwaite and Levi, 1998; Braud, 1997; Nye, Zelikow, and King, 1997), organizational theory
(Pinchot and Pinchot, 1997), or discourse theory (Drake, Yuthas, and Dillard, 2000; Van Dijk, 1998b;
Bird, 1996; Johannsen, 1996; Habermas, 1992), there is ample evidence that the public distrust,
ignorance, and apathy toward government that has been the majority view since the
1970’s5 9 exists in large part because of an expectations gap (Waterman, Jenkins Smith, and
Silva, 1999; Kimball and Patterson, 1997) regarding the behavior of elected officials.
As Hume (1739-1740: Book 3, Part 2, Section on “The Obligation of Promises”) told us a long time
ago, a promise is a conscious act or resolution of the mind that carries:
The sanction of the interested commerce o f mankind. When a man says he
promises any thing, he in effect expresses a resolution o f performing it;
and along with that, by making use o f this form o f words, subjects himself
to the penalty o f never being trusted again in case offailure.
Over a century later, De Tocqueville (1831: Volume 1, Chapter 17, Paragraph 32) found that the
promise-keeping inherent in honesty and trust was so fundamental to the success of
American democracy that this characteristic went beyond Hume’s ‘act of the mind’ to
being a “habit of the heart.”
5 9 The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found in February 2000 that 59 percent of the U.S.
population never or only sometimes trusts their government.
103
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More recently business writers (Baker, 2000) have shown that failing to honor
commitments— such as the empowerment commitments made in the National Partnership
for Reinventing Government— harms relationships and results. This is because, as
Fukuyama (1995) and Inglehart (1997) have shown, results depend on relationships and
relationships depend on trust. Without trust people are more legalistic and fearful; leading
to greater litigation, hedging against uncertainty, and generally lower levels of
satisfaction with both formal institutions and personal relationships.
But, beyond holding presidential administrations responsible for honoring the
commitm ents they make in reform proposals such as the National Partnership for
Reinventing Government (NPR), is there anything else a public administrator can directly
do to bring greater truthfulness and honesty to their organizations? To, in essence,
empower themselves and their organizations, since NPR has not honored its commitment
to empowerment.
The answer is yes. While many therapies have been suggested as ways to bring about
this transformation— the Constitutionalist/Blacksburg Manifesto approach (Wamsley et al.,
1990; Rohr, 1985, 1978), communitarianism (Etzioni, 1998; Bellah etal., 1986), discourse theory
(McSwite, 2000; Fox and Miller, 1995; Inkeles, 1969), C-Authority (McMahon, 1994), Workplace
democracy (Golembiewski, 1981)— this author believes that public administrators need to
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begin transformation with— what some aspects of the change literature (Rosenstock,
Streecher and Becker, 1994; Prochaska, DiClemente and Norcross, 1992; Fishbein, Mddlestadt and Hitchcock,
1991; Homick, 1990; Ajzen, 1985; Janz and Becker, 1984; Ajzen and Fishbein, 1980; Fishbein and Ajzen,
1975) and the Father of Quality Management, W. Edwards Deming (1986), say is
required— getting a new philosophy. Senge (1990) calls this a ‘shift of mind.’
Peter Drucker (1989) indicates this ‘shift of mind’ begins with a conscious recognition
that, in the United States, government is a moral and ethical, rather than economic, entity-
-that government activity is symbolic and sacred rather than just a means to an end.
Business guru Henry Mintzberg (1996: Paragraph 17) advises that this mind shift involves
government moving from its dominant ‘government as machine model’ to a model of
government that is “not about systems but about soul. Here it is attitudes that count, not
numbers. Control is . . . rooted in values and beliefs.”
A viable, visible manifestation of this ‘shift of mind’ might be what Organ (1988) terms
organizational citizenship behavior (Graham, 1991; Schnake, 1991; Inkeles, 1969). After all,
does it not seem at least possible that good organizational citizens— helpful,
conscientious, and courteous— might be the most likely to transform the broken
government (NPR, 1993a: Introduction, Paragraph 4) the National Partnership for Reinventing
Government (NPR) claims to be concerned with? Yet, while NPR holds out a utopian fig
leaf-suggesting that it can both give into the despair of the business world’s move from
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relational to transactional contracts (Flynn, 1999; Stiles etal., 1997; Byron, 1995)— while,
simultaneously, inspiring employees to greater service— the organizational citizenship
model suggests no such fantasy. Instead it advocates the balanced, committed, hard work
of an active citizenship syndrome based on covenanted relationships.
Since covenant relationships (Graham and Organ, 1993; Graham, 1991; Bromley and Busching,
1988; Grover, 1982; Elazar, 1980) are open-ended, ongoing commitments that demand trust,
mutuality, and shared values (McLean-Parks, 1992), the author makes no suggestion that
achieving covenant relationships6 0 can be made quick or easy. Nor, that there is even any
guarantee that such relationships will solve public administration’s many problems.
But the author does suggest that by starting from a transformational, liberating
philosophy or 'why,' instead of the National Partnership for Reinventing Government’s
(NPR) transactional ‘why’ (Kettl and Dilulio, 1995:53), both those inside and outside the
federal government might find themselves closer to the liberating, empowered
6 0 McMahon (1994) suggests something similar to covenant relationships with his work on C-Authority
(coordination authority), which he believes is the appropriate model for managers in today’s organizations.
He argues that C-Authority is based on democracy and provides a better way to preserve the commons of
an organization than either the authoritarian or contract (P-Authority; police/coercive/promissory) models
of authority more frequently found in today’s organizations. McMahon says the concept of E-Authority
(expert authority)~which some might argue is what merit systems, such as the federal government, are
modeled on— is not enough to justify the exercise of power inherent in a supervisor-supervised role. This is
because, while managers may have professional expertise, they rarely have moral expertise in the eyes of
their employees. McMahon justifies managerial democracy neither on ‘balancing of interests’ or
‘democratic participation’ arguments. Instead he looks at moral requirements for justifying authority. He
argues that if managers cannot justify their authority on the basis of something other than coercive powers
(P-Authority), they have no right to expect proper behavior anytime the boss’ back is turned.
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community that occasionally brings light and hope to the discourse of the National
Partnership for Reinventing Government.
As Mintzberg (1996: Paragraph 17) suggests, “Couldn’t the current malaise about
government really stem from its being too much like business rather than not enough?”
And, for those who fear that public administrators rooted in a transformational, liberating
philosophy would be unaccountable to their citizenry, liberty is not license (Milton, 1945);
but, instead, “the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others”
(White, 1940).
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Appendix 1 - Long Waves and Administrative Reform
W hile the m ain body of this dissertation discusses the National Partnership for Reinventing
Government (NPR) from the perspective of critical discourse analysis, one other way to
study NPR— as w ell as the century of administrative reforms that preceded it— is to
compare it to Neo-Schumpterian long-wave analysis or Kondratieff cycles.
Schumpeter (1935) theorized that waves of economic boom and bust occur every 54 years.
He postulated that innovations cluster near the bottom (or trough) of each of these long-
waves or economic cycles. When critical masses of innovations bunch together in the long
wave trough, they push the economy ‘up-the-hilF toward the next economic boom
6 1 An important point to remember when studying long-wave theory is that Schumpeterian innovation is not
the same thing as inventing a new mousetrap. Schumpeter (1961, 1939), and all long-wave advocates,
define innovation much more broadly than just new inventions, which might be measured through patent
activity. Instead, inventions are just one part of innovation.
Innovation is the new combinations of organization, commerce, and marketing that move inventions out
into the world. For example, innovation came not from the invention of the personal computer but from the
development of new ways of selling computers; new manufacturing approaches for silicon chips; and the
creation of new kinds ofbusiness organizations to sell, service, transport, manufacture, and recycle
computers.
Thus, innovation is a type o f conduct. Innovation is not just exploiting inventions but rather the activities
and actions that engender other conduct such as constructing or modernizing new plants, or founding new
firms (Dassbach, 1999).
6 2 Named after Russian economist Nikolai Kondrat’ev (1935) who is credited with a pioneering regression
analysis of time-series data in his study of Russian commodity prices, wages, and other economic statistics
from the late 1780’s through the early 1900’s.
136
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Although this theory went out of style from the 1940's through 1970's, researchers such as
Ayres (1990a, 1990b); K leinknecht (1987); Rosenberg and Frischtak (1985); VanDuijn (1983);
Haustein and Neuwirth (1982); Clark, Freeman, and Soete (1981); and Mensch (1979) have
revived long-wave theory with their empirical studies using modem statistical techniques,
chaos theory, and spectral analysis. Their research confirmed that, while inventions occur
randomly throughout a long wave, innovations cluster shortly before the long-wave
downswing bottoms out. They explained this bunching of innovations by showing that
during the upswing of a long-wave organizations tend to focus their research and
development dollars on refining existing products and services. Only as the economy gets
worse, with further improvement of existing products/services producing no additional
marginal profit, do organizations turn to risky, often revolutionary or transformational
innovations. These revolutionary, transformational innovations create new economic
opportunities, which start the econom y on an upswing, and the cycle repeats itself. The
approximate timing of the long-waves identified by these Neo-Schumpeterians is shown on
the next page (Figure 13).
Public administrators who extrapolate from this theory might conclude that both
revolutionary transformation and evolutionary or transactional change are possible in their
organizations. But, they would occur at different times, depending on where the economy is
within a 50-60 year long-wave cycle.
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So, if the American economy began the fifth wave economic upswing in the 1980's, the next
downswing would begin around 2020. Thus, the period in which it is most likely that
Figure 13: Long-Wave Peaks and Valleys6 3
1974 1920 1864
epression
Recovery
Innovation! Innovation! Innovatioi
1932 «1982 1843 1897
1789
federal organizations would be open to risking transform ational/revolutionary change in
organizational structures, strategies, and power (leadership and culture) (Romanelli and
Tushman, 1994; Burke andLitwin, 1992) would be approximately 2025.
6 3 The peak and valley dates of long-waves are not exact measurements. Scholars agree that the cycles
occur but sometimes assign differing dates. For example, Van Duijn (1983) sets the dates for the valley
bottoms of the cycles shown above at 1782,1845,1892, and 1948. Wallerstein (1979) posits that the
fourth wave peaked in either 1967 or 1973 (instead o f 1974, as shown on the graph). The primary use to
public administrators of such graphs lies not in the exact dates cycles begin and end but in an understanding
that there are cycles, and that innovations tend to cluster near the bottom of each wave in the recovery
periods.
138
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However, even if this theoretical prediction is eventually proven correct, combining Rogers'
(1983) premise that organizations start and finish change constrained by their history and
value system, with a presumption that federal organizations tend to fall into either Miles and
Snow’s (1978) defender or reactor categories,6 4 a public administrator may wish to keep their
hopes of revolutionary, transformational organizational change damped down.
Gill and Whittle (1993), Barley and Kunda (1992), and DeGreene (1988) also give public
administrators another reason to be cautious about the possibility of revolutionary or
transformational changes— particularly for the next quarter century. The research of these
individuals has tied managerial ideological discourses to economic long-waves. They found
that rational/transactional managerial ideologies take hold about seven to ten years after the
6 4 Miles and Snow (1978) provide a much-cited typology o f organizations, based upon the organization’s
strategic approach to both existing and potential opportunities. Their typology identifies four types of
organizations:
1) Prospectors— look for new opportunities and aggressively pursue expansion; they emphasize investment,
leadership, and value creativity,
2) Defenders-hold on to their current position by maintaining what they already have; their primary value
is stability,
3) Analyzers— plan and assess new opportunities, investing only after careful consideration; these
organizations value rationality, logic, and risk-minimization, and
4) Reactors-have no specific strategy, but typically respond to threats or opportunities in a defensive way,
undertaking no new initiatives unless under severe threat. The primary value for these organizations is
conflict avoidance-at almost any cost.
139
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start of an upswing in the American economy. Conversely, normative/transformational
ideologies come into vogue three to seven years after the economic cycle begins its
downswing.
Kiel and Elliott (1999: Paragraph 63) applied this theory directly to public administration
reforms by comparing four broad periods of reforms— Jacksonian populism, the
Progressive Era, the New Deal, and the Hollow State— to long-wave theory. Their results
indicated that U.S. economic downwaves corresponded with the emergence of normative,
transformatory reform periods. They said, “Each of these reform eras is thus an effort by
government to align itself with a new techo-economic model.”
Applying this concept of alternating trends in transactional/rational and transformational/
normative discourses to specific reforms (not periods) of public administration, the long
wave graph (Figure 14; next page) shows that all but 1883 ’s Pendleton Act (establishment of a
civil service) and President Carter’s 1977-1978 reforms (civil service reforms and
reorganization) occurred on transactional/rational upswings.
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Interesting questions, for future research, might include:
■ Looking at whether specific reforms (as opposed to Kiel and Elliott’s periods or eras
of reform) have empirically conformed to the theoretical prediction of alternating
rational/transactional and normative/transformational discourses?
Figurel4: Long-Wave Cycles and Administrative Reform6 5
* Represents a fdstohcalpoblk administration reform
1974 1864 1920 1814
1932 1843
1789
6 5 The administrative reforms depicted by the red stars in Figure 12 are: 1883 - Pendleton Act; 1909 - Keep
Commission; 1913 - Taft Commission (President’s Commission on Economy and Efficiency); 1937 -
Brownlow Commission; 1949 - First Hoover Commission (Commission on the Organization of the
Executive Branch of Government); 1953 - Second Hoover Commission; 1955 - Kestnbaum Report; 1964 -
Price Report (Task Force on Government Reorganization); 1967 - Heineman Commission (Task Force on
Government Organization); 1971 - Ash Council (Advisory Council on Government Organization); 1978 -
Carter reforms (Reorganization Act of 1977 and Civil Service Reform Act of 1978); 1984 — Grace
Commission (President’s Private Sector Survey on Cost Control); 1989 - Volcker Commission (National
Commission on the Public Service); 1993 - National Partnership for Reinventing Government.
141
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■ Analyzing whether individual, rational reforms found on upswings accumulate to
create pressure for transformatory, normative changes on the long-wave downswings?
■ Projecting the timing and likely focus ofU.S. administrative reform if a
transformatory, normative period were to take place near the beginning of the tw enty-
first century?
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Appendix 2 - How Data were Prepared for Analysis
Data Gathered
While Chapter 3 describes the process the author went through to decide which texts to
include in this research, the following is the list of the documents actually selected. All
of the documents retrieved through a keyword search scored 500 (a 50% match) or better.
Documents scoring less than a 50% match with the keywords were not included. A
complete copy of the texts can be obtained from the author or downloaded from the
National Partnership for Reinventing Government’s (NPR) Internet web site
(http://www.npr.gov).
Texts included in the NPR research corpora— 46 untagged documents contained in 297 HTML files and 471
graphic files (4.24 MB of text and 3.33 MB of graphics)
■ 1997 Annual Report: Businesslike Government
■ 1996 Annual Report: The Best Kept Secrets in Government
■ 1995 Annual Report: Common Sense Government
■ 1994 Annual Report: Creating a Government That Works Better and Costs Less
■ 1993 Annual Report: From Red Tape to Results
■ The Blair House Papers (January 1997)
■ Reinvention Principles
■ NPR’s Vision for the Future
■ Frequently Asked Questions and Answers
■ 1993 NPR System Reports - 5 reports
1. Creating quality leadership and management
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2. Reengineering through Information Technology
3. Reinventing Human Resource Management
4. Streamlining management control
5. Transforming organizational structures
■ Keyword search documents-32 texts (listed below)
Enter keyword(s): information and communication technologies
1 : 8/11/98: President Clinton Welcomes Plan to Strengthen U.S. Leadership in Information
Technology
Score: 1000, Size: 7 kbytes, Type: HTML file
2: 10/12/98: Vice President Gore Announces Five Challenges to Build a Global Information
Infrastructure
Score: 1000, Size: 5 kbytes, Type: HTML file
3: U.S. Agency for International Developmental
Score: 1000, Size: 8 kbytes, Type: HTML file
4: United States Information Agencyy
Score: 1000, Size: 1 1 kbytes, Type: HTML file
5: Serving the American Public: Best Practices in One-Stop Customer Service
Score: 1000, Size: 94 kbytes, Type: HTML file
6: Serving the American Public: Best Practices in Performance Measurement
Score: 1000, Size: 109 kbytes, Type: HTML file
7: STATE-Chapter 7
Score: 1000, Size: 9 kbytes, Type: HTML file
8: NetResults
Score: 1000, Size: 38 kbytes, Type: HTML file
9: Reengineering Through Information Technology
Score: 1000, Size: 18 kbytes, Type: HTML file
Enter keyword(s): employee empowerment and information technology
10: Executive Order
Score: 1000, Size: 16 kbytes, Type: HTML file
11: Reinvention Roundtable Vol. 1, No. 3
Score: 1000, Size: 39 kbytes, Type: HTML file
Enter keyword(s): partnership and information technology
12: Reengineering Through Information Technology
Score: 1000, Size: 17 kbytes, Type: HTML file
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13: Reengineering Through Information Technology
Score: 1000, Size: 23 kbytes, Type: HTML file
14 Reengineering Through Information Technology
Score: 1000, Size: 17 kbytes, Type: HTML file
15: Reengineering Through Information Technology
Score: 800, Size: 27 kbytes, Type: HTML file
16: Reengineering Through Information Technology
Score: 800, Size: 24 kbytes, Type: HTML file
17: Reengineering Through Information Technology
Score: 800, Size: 5 kbytes, Type: HTML file
18: 10/22/98: Navy's Technology Transfer Program Wins $100,000 Innovations in
American Government Award
Score: 600, Size: 9 kbytes, Type: HTML file
19: 10/1/98: Vice President Gore Announces $229 Million to Help Police Buy New
Technology Equipment, Hire Staff
Score: 600, Size: 5 kbytes, Type: HTML file
20: National Science Foundation/Office of Science and Technology Policy
Score: 600, Size: 3 kbytes, Type: HTML file
21: National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Score: 600, Size: 15 kbytes, Type: HTML file
Enter keyword(s): participation and information technology
22.Reengineering Through Information Technology
Score: 1000, Size: 6 kbytes, Type: HTML file
23: Reengineering Through Information Technology
Score: 1000, Size: 8 kbytes, Type: HTML file
24: Reengineering Through Information Technology
Score: 1000, Size: 27 kbytes, Type: HTML file
25: Reengineering Through Information Technology
Score: 1000, Size: 24 kbytes, Type: HTML file
26: 1/12/99: Executive Memorandum on Using Technology To Improve Training
Opportunities for Federal Government Employees
Score: 750, Size: 18 kbytes, Type: HTML file
27: National Science Foundation/Office o f Science and Technology Policy
Score: 750, Size: 15 kbytes, Type: HTML file
Enter keyword(s); freedom and information technology
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28: Reengineering Through Information Technology
Score: 1000, Size: 18 kbytes, Type: HTML file
29: Information Technology
Score: 800, Size: 13 kbytes, Type: HTML file
Enter keyword(s): equality and information technology
30: President's Quality Award Application - 19977
Score: 1000, Size: 217 kbytes, Type: HTML file
31: 1/29/99: Clinton/Gore Agenda for Communities: 21st Century Policing Initiative
Score: 1000, Size: 35 kbytes, Type: HTML file
32: VP Speech
Score: 1000, Size: 25 kbytes, Type: HTML file
Data Preparation
A fter the identified texts were downloaded and saved to the author’s computer hard drive,
preparing the data for analysis proceeded through the following steps.
1. Imported all HTML files into askSam®.
2. Saved this database as NPR.ask (5.67 mb).
3. Exported the NPR.ask file and saved as a text document— NPR.txt (3.71 mb)
4. Using the Concordance® software, made a full concordance from the NPR.txt file, which resulted
in 508,118 total words, or 18,448 distinct individual words.
5. Saved this file as NPRxoncordance (52 mb).
6. Used the Concordance® software to sort the headwords by frequency (number of times an
individual word appeared).
7. After identifying— for purposes of the first sorts only— the primary function words6 6 (‘the,’ ‘and,’
‘to,’ ‘of,’ ‘in,’ ‘a,’ ‘for,’ ‘that,’ ‘is,’ ‘with,’ ‘are,’ ‘on,’ ‘as,’ ‘be,’ ‘by,’ ‘or,’ ‘this,’ ‘from,’ ‘they,’
‘an,’ ‘ have,’ ‘ more,’ ‘its,’ ‘has,’ ‘not,’ ‘at,’ ‘all,’ ‘these,’ ‘use’), there were 21 content words which
appeared 1000 times or more. Some words which typically might be considered function words
6 6 In analyzing an English text it is important to distinguish function words (such as: ‘a,’ ‘the,’ ‘is’) from
content words. In conducting a linguistic analysis it is typically the content words that are studied— in this
instance, the repetition of those words-since they tell the reviewer what the text is about.
146
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(‘can,’ ‘should,’ and ‘will’) were retained as part of the 21 content words because they reflect a
reform imperative.
8. Conducted a similar sorting for words appearing between 500-999 times, 250-499 times, and 100-
249 times. Ceased the frequency sort at this point because: (1) at 100+ plus words, this lexical
sample represented 57% of the total words in the text, (2) the majority of words at the 100+ level
were in the content category (69%) instead of the function category, and (3) the sorts had reached
the point where a significant number of the words being added at each progressively lower sort
were variants or synonyms o f existing words. For example, 44% of the content words were
variants at the 100+ level (administration/administrative; approach/approaches; award/awards;
etc).
9. Entered the words associated with each frequency category (1000+, 500-999,250-499, 100-249)
in Excel9 spreadsheets.
10. Identified seven original lexical categories— technologist, manager, user, government,
administration, economic, reform— and sorted the words into these categories. Entered the data
into £rce/®spreadsheets. Copies of all Excel9 spreadsheets are available from the author.
11. Collapsed seven original lexical categories into four predominant discourses (reform, status quo,
economy, and technology). Prepared an additional Excel9 spreadsheet to show this new sort in
side-by-side columns (see pages 59-64).
12. Used the summing and charting functions of Excel9to illustrate various insights that the author
noted in the data (Pages 65-66, Figures 3,4, and 5).
13. Similar steps were taken (based upon new sorts of the data) to study collocation, metaphors,
responsibility, predominance, pronouns, synonyms, and genres found in the data.
14. The AtlastTi® software was used (after a hermeneutic unit-NPRtexts hpr— was created from the
NPR.txt file) to amplify and double-check findings identified through the steps above. For
instance, the AtlastTi®software allowed the author to look at words within the overall context of
the texts in order to make decisions on which lexical category specific words should be placed in.
15. The askSam® software also provided a similar depth checking function with its ability to search by
keyword to locate the entire text surrounding a specific word and to give specific citations.
Software Used
While there are many software programs available for the analysis of textual data—
NUD*IST, HyperRESEARCH, TACT, WinMax— the author chose four pieces of
software for use in this research. These choices were based upon several factors
147
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including: the type of data to be analyzed (a large number of written documents), the
need to conduct the research on a non-netw orked, Windows operating system,
affordability, and familiarity with the software.
The four pieces of analysis software used in conducting this research, with descriptions
coming directly from the publicity materials of the software manufacturers, are:
Concordance 1.13@ — http://w w w .ricw .freeserve.co.uk
Software for text analysis gives you better insight into electronic texts. Concordance,
published in 1999, already has registered users in twenty-seven countries. The program
is proving valuable to anyone who needs to study texts closely or analyse them in depth
It is being used in
• Language teaching and learning
® Literary scholarship
• Translation and language engineering
• Corpus linguistics
• Natural language software development
• Lexicography
• Content analysis in many disciplines including accountancy, history,
marketing, musicology, politics, geography, and media studies
We believe this is the most powerful and flexible concordancer available today.
Excel®--http://w w w .m icrosoft.com /office/excel/ExcelTour.htm
Discover better ways to analyze data and find solutions using Microsoft Excel and its
spreadsheet creation tools, analysis tools, and Web integration. Whether you are an
expert or a novice, Excel will help you work more efficiently, turning your data into
answers you can count on.
Excel provides comprehensive tools to help you create, analyze, and share spreadsheets.
Create rich spreadsheets more easily than ever using enhancedformatting features.
Analyze your data with charts and graphs.
148
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AtlastTi 4 . 1 http://w w w .atlasti.de
ATLAS, ti is a powerful workbench for the qualitative analysis o f large bodies of textual,
graphical, audio and video data. It offers a variety of tools for accomplishing the tasks
associated with any systematic approach to ‘ soft’ data, e.g., material which cannot be
analyzed by formal, statistical approaches in meaningful ways.
In the course of such a qualitative analysis ATLAS, ti helps you to uncover the complex
phenomena hidden in your data in an exploratory way. For coping with the inherent
complexity of the tasks and the data, ATLAS.ti offers a powerful and intuitive
environment that keeps you focused on the analyzed materials.
The applicational areas for A TLAS. ti are characterized by a systematic, yet creative
approach to analyzing unstructured, mainly textual data. Traditional application fields
include: anthropology, criminology, economics, educational sciences, ethno-studies,
history, law, linguistics, literature, management studies, psychology, sociology, software
engineering, theology, and political sciences
With the inclusion of graphical, audio and video data existing application areas can
benefit greatly and additional fields of application become apparent:
• Medicine: X-ray images, computer tomograms, microscoped samples.
• Anthropology: video taped gestures, mimics
• Architecture: annotatedfloorplans
• History: research video archives
• Engineering: "exploded" part lists with descriptions
• Psychotherapy: graphical add-ons (Rohrschach patterns?) to reports
• Graphology: micro comments to handwriting features.
• Criminology: letters, finger prints, photographs
• Arts: detailed interpretative descriptions of paintings.
• Publishing: archiving images
• fill in your own ideas....
askSam Professional (3.0)@ — http://w w w .asksam .com
askSam is a different kind o f database— a database for information. In a world where ever-
increasing amounts o f information are easily accessible, you need a tool flexible enough to
manage this information.
The average computer user can now access more information than ever before. On-line
systems, such as the Internet, CompuServe, Lexis/Nexis, Westlaw, and America On-Line are
providing large quantities o f information CD-ROMs contain massive encyclopedias o f text.
Scanners simplify data entry allowing us to quickly collect business cards, newspaper
articles, or complete books. At the same time traditional information such as memos, faxes,
letters and documents are still arriving on our desk and need to be organized
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Most database and text retrieval products were not designed to handle such a wide variety of
information. However, with askSam for Windows we have created a tool simple and flexible
enough to organize just about anything.
The askSam difference....
Traditional databases are designed to handle structured data. They require you to pre-define
a structure and force you to shoe-horn your information into this structure. Traditional
databases were created for programmers and require you to understand data structures,
programming and a query language.
askSam is not a traditional database. It's a whole new way to manage information.
® askSam requires no predefined structure or field lengths.
• askSam is easy to use. You can search without learning a query language. You can
run reports without programming.
• askSam is flexible. You can combine both free-form and fielded information in the
database.
Collecting, information from everywhere
You can type information directly into askSam, or you can import information from a wide
variety of sources. Import filters include ASCII, RTF, WordPerfect, Wordfor Windows,
Eudora, HTML, CompuServe, Lexis/Nexis, dBASE, comma-delimited, tab delimited, and
fixed-position data Documents can also be scanned into askSam using an OCR application.
Lizhtnins Fast Searches
Once your information is in askSam you can immediately search for any word or phrase. No
need to concern yourself with fields, indexes, orfield lengths. Nothing could be simpler.
askSam supports an extremely wide range of searches:
• Full-text searches for any word or phrase
• Wildcard searches with * and ?
• Boolean searches (AND, OR, and NOT)
• Proximity searches
• Numeric searches (>, <, > -, <=, <>)
• Date searches
• Fuzzy searches
• Search through multiple askSam databases
• Case sensitive searches
Creatinz reports
No programming is necessary to create great looking reports. Simply use askSam's built in
Report Writer to drag and drop field names to the desired position on the screen. An askSam
report can be as simple as a sorted list of names and telephone numbers, or it can contain
grouped fields, field totals, and summaries. You can even include memo fields in a report.
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G l o s s a r y
Beliefs— normative, ontological premises that make assumptions about the nature and purpose of being. The
normative premises of beliefs precede values.
Corpora— collections or bodies o f texts. Th is research consists o f two bodies o f text— a Contextual
Corpus and a Textual Corpus.
Critical discourse analysis (CDAV-looks at the role discourse plays in issues o f power, dominance,
hegemony, and inequality. CDA, according to two o f its three most prominent advocates (Fairclough
and Wodak, 1997), is a historical, contextual, interpretive way to explain ideology, power relations,
and the role these elements play in social problems. Teun van Dijk (1998a: Paragraphs 4-6), the third
predominant critical discourse analyst, says CDA is “not so much a direction, school or specialization .
. . . Rather, it aims to offer a different ‘mode’ or ‘perspective’ o f theorizing, analysis and application
throughout the whole field.” He defines CDA as rejecting value-free science, being multidisciplinary
in nature, focusing on social and political issues, and centering on “the ways discourse structures enact,
confirm, legitimate, reproduce or challenge relations of power and dominance in society.”
Discourse— “formal and orderly and usually extended expression of thought on a subject; connected
speech or writing; a linguistic unit (as a conversation or a story) larger than a sentence” (WWWebster,
1999).
Discourse analysis— “a shared interest for various phenomena of language use, texts, conversational
interaction, or communicative events” (Van Dijk, 1985: xi). Discourse analysts study language as a social
act (Fiske, 1996); as an interrelationship of text, producer, and audience (Langer, 1997). Angenot (1995)
talks about discourse analysis being an interaction between ideas, mentalities, values, social
representations; and, words, utterances, and pragmatic rules. Pierre Bourdieu (1991) integrates discourse
with ideology-noting that a study of ideology must include analysis of the broader political context, and
the relation between this context and social processes.
Ideological discourse-th e ideas andjyords that help create, express, and modify a particular ideology
(Fairclough, 1995).
Ideology- a systemic, value-based, action-oriented set of ideas about who should have power and who
should not— a perspective about how things should be (Hall, 1996; Berger, 1991; Thompson, 1990).
Information technology— computer-communication systems, computing and communication technologies,
or computers and telecommunications networks (NRC, 1998; Rahm, 1997).
Innovation-th e new combinations of organization, commerce, and marketing that move inventions out
into the world Thus, innovation is a type o f conduct. Innovation is not just exploiting inventions but
rather the activities and actions that engender other conduct such as constructing or modernizing new
plants, or founding new firms (Dassbach, 1999).
National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPRT-known as the National Performance Review
from its inception in 1993 until 1998, it is an initiative headed by Vice President Gore and designed to
reinvent the processes of the federal government in order to improve customer service. Additionally, it
often hints that one of its purposes is changing the culture and power structure of the federal government
through information and communication technologies. This research looks at whether these intimations of
empowerment are the predominant ideology at the core of NPR’s discourse on information and
151
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communication technologies, or if some other ideology predominates.
Norms— behavioral indicators of values.
Public/public administrators— lower case letters signify working practitioners (public administrators);
upper case letters indicate academic teachers and researchers (Public Administration scholars) (Waldo,
1980).
Technological frames--“that subset of members’ organizational frames that concern the assumptions,
expectations, and knowledge they use to understand technology in organizations” (Orlikowski and Gash,
1994: 178, 179). The author of this research posits that the effects Orlikowski and Gash describe as
resulting from technological frames are ideological (value-driven, power-based) effects.
Text--“(f) the original words and form of a written or printed work.... (2a) the main body of printed or
written matter on a page, (b) the principal part o f a book exclusive of front and back matter...."
(WWWebster, 1999).
Transactional/Transformational Change-transactional or evolutionary change typically requires only
short-term changes in behavior. These short-term changes are usually o f the 'I’ll scratch your back, you
scratch mine' type.
Transformational change requires new forms of behavior. Transformational and revolutionary change
seem to describe a similar concept— economists and organizational theorists tend to use the tom
revolutionary; leadership advocates and organizational behaviorists seem to prefer the term
transformational. A similar pattern holds for the correspondence between the transactional and
evolutionary change terminologies.
Transactional Commodity Ideology— Birdsali (1997: Paragraphs 8, 15) says the transactional commodity
ideology o f information technology has evolved since the 1970’s based on: (a) market economics, (b)
technological determinism, and (c) neo-conservative politics.
Schement and Curtis (1995) note that the transactional commodity ideology values consumers, the private
sector, contractors, courtrooms, and cost/benefit ratios more highly than citizens, the public sector,
government employees, legislatures, and social goals.
Transformational Liberation Ideology— Kroker and Cook (1986: 247) summarize this ideology by
defining it as “an urgent belief in the historical inevitability of the fully realized technological society.” In
other words, an ideological linking of technology and freedom.
Utopic Kernel— the ‘vision of the good;’ the vision of human possibility that lies at the core of the text. Lye
(1997) postulates that it is possible to identify an ideology in a text by uncovering its utopic kernel.
Values— things we desire (Allen, 1998; Hodgkinson, 1991; Plato, 368) and standards for making
choices (Rokeach, 1979, 1973; Williams, 1951). To modify Burke (1998), the 'things we desire' are
characterized by the 'standards we share.'
152
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Asset Metadata
Creator
Wheeless, Karen Jean
(author)
Core Title
Getting 'how' and 'why' straight: A critical discourse analysis of the National Partnership for Reinventing Government's ideological discourse on information and communication technologies
School
School of Policy, Planning and Development
Degree
Doctor of Public Administration
Degree Program
Public Administration
Publisher
University of Southern California
(original),
University of Southern California. Libraries
(digital)
Tag
OAI-PMH Harvest,Political Science, public administration
Language
English
Contributor
Digitized by ProQuest
(provenance)
Advisor
Cooper, Terry L. (
committee chair
), [illegible] (
committee member
), Burke, Catherine (
committee member
)
Permanent Link (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c16-114103
Unique identifier
UC11327928
Identifier
3027800.pdf (filename),usctheses-c16-114103 (legacy record id)
Legacy Identifier
3027800.pdf
Dmrecord
114103
Document Type
Dissertation
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Wheeless, Karen Jean
Type
texts
Source
University of Southern California
(contributing entity),
University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
(collection)
Access Conditions
The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...
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