The Future Of Merit

Download or read book The Future of Merit written by James P. Pfiffner and published by Woodrow Wilson Center Press. This book was released on 2000-09-12 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Passage of the Civil Service Reform Act was controversial, and there is still controversy over its effectiveness. A book of this sort will be well received and anxiously read by specialists in public administration, public policy, and public personnel administration."-H. George Frederickson, University of Kansas The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 was the most far reaching reform of the federal government personnel system since the merit system was created in 1883. The Future of Merit reviews the aims and rates the accomplishments of the 1978 law and assesses the status of the civil service. How has it held up in the light of the National Performance Review? What will become of it in a globalizing international system or in a government that regards people as customers rather than citizens? Contributors examine the Senior Executive Service, whose members serve between presidential appointees and the rest of the civil service. These crucial executives must transform legislative and administrative goals into administrative reality, but are often caught between opposing pressures for change and continuity. In the concluding chapter Hugh Heclo, many of whose ideas informed the 1978 reform act, argues that the system today is often more responsive to the ambitions of political appointees and the presidents they serve than to the longer term needs of the polity. On the other hand, the ambition of creating a government-wide cadre of career general managers with highly developed leadership skills has not been fulfilled. Other contributors helped to frame the 1978 act, helped to implement it, or study it as scholars of public administration: Dwight Ink, Carolyn Ban, Joel D. Aberbach, Bert A. Rockman, Patricia W. Ingraham, Donald P. Moynihan, Hal G. Rainey, Ed Kellough, Barbara S. Romzek, Mark W. Huddleston, Chester A. Newland, and Hugh Heclo. Six former directors of the Office of Personnel Management commented on early versions of these chapters at a 1998 conference.

Download or read book The Tyranny of Merit written by Michael J. Sandel and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Times Literary Supplement’s Book of the Year 2020 A New Statesman's Best Book of 2020 A Bloomberg's Best Book of 2020 A Guardian Best Book About Ideas of 2020 The world-renowned philosopher and author of the bestselling Justice explores the central question of our time: What has become of the common good? These are dangerous times for democracy. We live in an age of winners and losers, where the odds are stacked in favor of the already fortunate. Stalled social mobility and entrenched inequality give the lie to the American credo that "you can make it if you try". The consequence is a brew of anger and frustration that has fueled populist protest and extreme polarization, and led to deep distrust of both government and our fellow citizens--leaving us morally unprepared to face the profound challenges of our time. World-renowned philosopher Michael J. Sandel argues that to overcome the crises that are upending our world, we must rethink the attitudes toward success and failure that have accompanied globalization and rising inequality. Sandel shows the hubris a meritocracy generates among the winners and the harsh judgement it imposes on those left behind, and traces the dire consequences across a wide swath of American life. He offers an alternative way of thinking about success--more attentive to the role of luck in human affairs, more conducive to an ethic of humility and solidarity, and more affirming of the dignity of work. The Tyranny of Merit points us toward a hopeful vision of a new politics of the common good.

Download or read book The Merit Myth written by Anthony P. Carnevale and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2020-05-26 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An eye-opening and timely look at how colleges drive the very inequalities they are meant to remedy, complete with a call—and a vision—for change Colleges fiercely defend America's deeply stratified higher education system, arguing that the most exclusive schools reward the brightest kids who have worked hard to get there. But it doesn't actually work this way. As the recent college-admissions bribery scandal demonstrates, social inequalities and colleges' pursuit of wealth and prestige stack the deck in favor of the children of privilege. For education scholar and critic Anthony P. Carnevale, it's clear that colleges are not the places of aspiration and equal opportunity they claim to be. The Merit Myth calls out our elite colleges for what they are: institutions that pay lip service to social mobility and meritocracy, while offering little of either. Through policies that exacerbate inequality, including generously funding so-called merit-based aid for already-wealthy students rather than expanding opportunity for those who need it most, U.S. universities—the presumed pathway to a better financial future—are woefully complicit in reproducing the racial and class privilege across generations that they pretend to abhor. This timely and incisive book argues for unrigging the game by dramatically reducing the weight of the SAT/ACT; measuring colleges by their outcomes, not their inputs; designing affirmative action plans that take into consideration both race and class; and making 14 the new 12—guaranteeing every American a public K–14 education. The Merit Myth shows the way for higher education to become the beacon of opportunity it was intended to be.

Download or read book Judging Merit written by Warren Thorngate and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2010-10-18 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 1. Introduction -- 2. Merit and bias -- 3. Lessons from clinical research -- 4. Standards and double standards -- 5. Rules of the game -- 6. Organizing adjudication committees -- 7. Committee deliberations -- 8. Competitions small and large -- 9. The evolution and future of competitions.

Download or read book American Public Service written by James S. Bowman and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2006-10-04 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Understanding the effects of radical change on public personnel systems is critically important both now and in the future to all those interested in the quality of American democracy. Civil service reform is occurring at all levels of government both in the United States and abroad. American Public Service: Radical Reform and the Merit System is a collection of papers that examine the innovations, strategies, and issues found in the contemporary civil service reform debate. Offering diverse perspectives from expert contributors, this book presents matters concerning radical reform and the merit system at the federal, state, and local levels of government. This volume offers fresh insight into the effects of merit system changes on employees. Divided into four sections, this book... · Examines a portrait of contemporary reforms from across the country and concepts to interpret those data · Addresses whether the relaxation of civil service protections against partisan intrusion will result in corruption · Provides examples of ongoing changes and analyzes survey data from state managers · Discusses a variety of key issues, such as the impact on racial inequality of moving from a protected class employment status to an unprotected at-will relationship The book provides a baseline of data on reforms as well as an account of their current promises and pitfalls. Covering topics ripped from the headlines, this text also identifies pressing issues and makes suggestions for the future. Offering a variety of methodological approaches, it is ideal for all those interested in effective governance.

Download or read book Relational Matching written by George Vosselman and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 1992-09-10 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an introduction to recursive functions intended for graduate students. It presupposes some mathematical maturity and a slight aquaintancewith some important topics, such as group theory and topology. Some acquaintance with logic is desirable but not essential. It introduces the main topics of recusion theory, such as hierarchy theory, RE sets, and undecidable theories, without going very deeply into any of them.

Download or read book Enos written by George Forss and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2007-08-31 with total page 731 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Enos is a biblical character. Enos is the grandson of Adam. In different bibles this name is spelled Enos, Enoch, and Enosh. It is said that Enos was the first human being to reach up to the heavens to pray to God for guidance. Enos, as far as science is concerned, would be the first early-on human being that paused one day suddenly to speak to God in the sky. This is so because somewhere in our past there would have to be a first person to do something like this. My book ENOS is my own prayerful quest to know the whole truth about humanity at long last. I do have it here. I believe I do because I asked for some guidance from God as did Enos. I started writing my book in 1983 and it is based on a stark experience I had when I encountered some amazing wisdom in 1969. This experience made me want to know more about God in life. My quest is based on a book I read that a young woman named Buffy put together in 1969, which had the wisest words I have ever encountered. Buffy had what she called a report. She had a report that claimed to contain the real truth about humanity in the universe. My book Enos is a similar phenomenal report about humanity and much more. My book is much the same as Buffys report because it is a recreation of what I saw in her report ... that, indeed, some Aliens did come to the earth in 1969 to create a new bible for our world ! There is a conversation that goes on for about 400 pages of my writing. In this way a new body of wisdom is born. My writing is about 700 pages in total. My book is not about my view of the universe revealing Gods might to us. My book is more like a prayerful quest because I am asking God in the universe for answers. I know that I have the same basic wisdom contained in Buffys book. My writing contains hundreds of new finding sentences. We know these as long standing wise sayings ... like ... He Who Lives by the Sword Will Die by the Sword. A few years after I met Buffy, from the day when she told me that some wise Aliens had abducted her and her friends, I ran into Buffy again. When I questioned her she said her report from those days was junk. She said ... You know how we were in those days, George. Her report wasnt junk to me and I had to have it back. Buffy didnt even know where her original report book was ! On this very occasion I made a vow to God and I started getting finding sentences immediately. These are transcribed all throughout my writing. God always wins. In ENOS we learn that humanity is a part of God and part of some advanced Alien life form intelligence that came to the earth about 200,000 years ago. I am talking about the giants we read about in our basic Christian Bible in Genesis. This situation of a foreign intelligence cannot last long and when it is over only a Godly being will remain that suits this earth perfectly for a very long time. This foreign intelligence is humanity. Enos is about God in the universe. Enos teaches us how to live freely for a million years. Enos is a new American style mindset [American lingo] about the wisdom that all natural creatures have known through the eons. The Aliens themselves in Enos are an amazing perfectly natural life form that has survived a long time in evolution to become who they are now ... who they want to be. My book has to be known as a religion. This bold statement goes along with the process by which I have been able to write this book out at all. Enos is also an overly long diatribe of rhetorical writing that many will not like ... and some will be completely enthralled by. It can also be looked upon as being a book of poetry. Enos has about 50 poems in it, a few long poems and many short ones ... and many passages that are poetic like. The Aliens in my report say that this entire writing is a prolonged po