Model essay 1: analysis of strengthening the experimental research of public management
As a mature research method, experimental research can be introduced into the discipline of public administration. As a method of knowledge creation, experimental research itself needs to be researched and developed in combination with the characteristics of applied disciplines. Based on these two considerations, with the help of two experimental research reports on public management in this issue, several problems related to experimental research are briefly discussed here in order to attract the deep attention of public management scholars.
First of all, we should strengthen the experimental research of public management discipline.
The basic task of academic research is to describe, explain and apply natural, social, humanistic and scientific phenomena. Among them, the key and difficult link is the analysis of the internal mechanism of the studied object, which is reflected in the analysis and verification of its causal relationship and its mechanism in the sense of modern scientific research paradigm. Due to the complexity of nature, especially social phenomena, observation under natural conditions is passive and superficial. Therefore, how to actively, deeply and operationally study the mechanism of causality has become the pursuit goal of effective methodology of modern scientific research. Based on the tradition of rational school in western religious belief, the experimental research method, which germinated in the late Renaissance, took shape in the early stage of modern capitalism and perfected in the mid-20th century, has now become an important research method in natural science and social science, and its influence is so great that a highly abstract discipline such as philosophy also has the research method of "experimental philosophy" (Knobe, 20 108). The experimental research on political science and public management lags behind. Some people evaluated the research methods of the papers published in the American Political Science Review (APSR), and found that the experimental research papers actually published in this journal appeared after 1992. 1950。 Mdash 1992 The three mainstream journals of American political science, American Political Science Review (APSR), American Journal of Political Science (AJPS) and Journal of Political Science (JOP)*** published 58 papers on experimental methods, but the following1993 & mdash; During the five years from 65438 to 0997, 28 experimental articles were published, accounting for1950&; 33% of the experimental papers published in mdash 1992. During 265438+the first five years of the 20th century, political science experimental papers developed rapidly, and 47 papers were published in three major journals, excluding 14 investigation experimental papers. The experimental research of political science has developed from accidental research into a generally accepted and influential research paradigm. Experimental research has many applications in the study of international relations (Hyde, 20 15). Political scientist Eleanor &; Bull; ElinorLinOstrom won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2009, which is not unrelated to his skillful use of experimental methods (Morton &; Williams, 20 10). As for the subject of public management, the experimental research lags behind, and it was not consciously promoted until recently (Jilke, etal ., 20 14). It can be seen that the experimental research of public management is a research method and field worthy of vigorous promotion and great academic potential. Based on the advantages of experimental research, this issue of Public Administration Review launched a column with China as the research object and experimental methods as the means. The reason why the column with the theme of experimental research methods is launched is to highlight the academic intention of this journal &; Mdash& ampmdash& ampmdash; Promote the application of experimental research methods in public management research, especially the public management experimental research with China academic flavor.
Second, the basic logic and problems of experimental research methods
Nowadays, experimental research method has become a mature subject, and this introduction is not competent to introduce its situation and theory comprehensively. However, it is necessary to introduce the core ideas in an outline way to promote this research. There are many definitions of experimental research methods. Generally speaking, it refers to the theory-driven research method (that is, taking theoretical judgment and verification as the research goal), which uses scientific instruments and equipment to actively intervene and control the research object, obtains the scientific facts of causality, and verifies the theoretical hypothesis under typical or artificial specific conditions (Webster &: Sell, 2007). The basic logic of the experimental method is: ① to determine the research problem and construct the theoretical framework; (2) Theoretical manipulation, including the indexation of theoretical propositional variables, the manipulation of independent and dependent variables of causal laws, the digitization of indicators and the adaptive selection of statistical methods; ③ Experimental operation and monitoring; ④ Analyze and explain the experimental results to form a theoretical conclusion. This is a multi-stage process from theoretical intention to variable operation, causal relationship explanation and theoretical formation. The specific methods and modes in different stages (such as theoretical construction, experimental design and data analysis) constitute the methodological knowledge system of experimental research. With the development of experimental research in natural science and social science, it has become a huge and complex subject system including many experimental methods and statistical methods. The reason why experimental method is regarded as a classic way of scientific research lies in its characteristics of artificiality, randomness and randomness. Artificiality means that experimental research often constructs a "pure" ideal event environment by artificially setting the environment or conditions, and observes and measures the behavior variables of the subjects in this environment; Manipulation refers to presenting, controlling and strengthening the theoretical variable relationship, so that the causal relationship studied can be repeatedly displayed to discover its internal causal mechanism; Randomness is to control subjects and conditions according to the principle of randomness, to ensure that causality is not caused by accidental, endogenous or external system errors, and to ensure the universality of causal variables. It is through the comprehensive application of these methods that the causal relationship that scientific research is most concerned about can be divorced from the complex social and cultural background and verified through manipulation, thus giving a definite explanation to the internal mechanism of the uncertain world (Palfrey, 2009). The most criticized problem in experimental research is external validity. External validity refers to the effectiveness of analogizing the experimental results in scientific research to other matrices or environments in real social situations (Webster &; Sell, 2007). In more popular terms, it is the failure phenomenon caused by inferring research findings under artificial experimental conditions to real situations. There are many arguments or explanations about the external validity of experimental research in academic circles (Webster &; Sell, 2007).
The author thinks it should be understood as follows: First, the advantage of experimental research is internal validity rather than external validity. It should be acknowledged that there is indeed a dilemma of external effectiveness in experimental research, especially in social sciences, but the value of experimental research cannot be completely denied. The fundamental characteristic of experimental research is to present and verify the causal relationship of the theoretical problems studied by means of techniques, so as to explain the laws of things theoretically. Solomon and the bull; Solomon's integration experiment. Asch hardly happens in real life, but it is the conformity research in the laboratory that gives such a shocking conformity phenomenon (Asch, 1955). Second, the conclusions of the experimental research have specific logical boundaries. The conclusion of each research method has its logical basis of reasoning. If the results of questionnaire survey are applicable to distributed inference, the conclusions of case study method are applicable to structural inference, and the theoretical findings of experimental research method are only applicable to causal inference. Therefore, the conclusions drawn by experimental methods should not be distribution inference or structure inference. At this point, don't say that scholars who have just engaged in experimental research, even experienced scholars, may unconsciously turn causal reasoning logic into distributed reasoning logic, which will bring serious errors in external validity. In addition, there is a problem that experimental research is often criticized, that is, the findings of research are often "just so" common sense verification. In this regard, people may say: "I feel this way. Do you still need to do experiments? " This phenomenon does exist in experimental research, that is, through meticulous, rigorous and massive experiments to prove common sense. For this seemingly time-consuming and unnecessary phenomenon, the academic understanding should be as follows: First, the confirmation of common sense of life is part of scientific activities. Man is a clever animal. Even a person with average qualifications may be right to analyze and explain a phenomenon through profound reflection on his own life experience, but it is unreliable in the view of scientific causality test standards. It is an academic task for human beings to know themselves. Second, for the judgment of common sense in life, academic research can often give a new understanding beyond common sense. Most people in daily life know that people are obedient. That's right. But Stanley &; Bull; StanleyMilgram's classic obedience experiment not only confirmed this life experience judgment, but also gave a shocking new discovery. Before the experiment, milgram had investigated his psychologist colleagues about the proportion of subjects' obedience. His colleagues judged that only a few people, even only 65,438+0% of the subjects would completely obey the experimental instructions until the maximum volt power was used for punishment. But the result is that in the first experiment, 65% of the subjects (more than 27 out of 40) completely obeyed the punishment instructions until the maximum punishment was 450 volts. Although the subjects felt uncomfortable in the process of obeying the order, and even indicated that they would return the reward of the experiment, no subjects refused to obey the order before they arrived at the 300 volt electric shock (Milgram, 1963). Meta-analysis of such experiments showed that the proportion of subjects willing to apply lethal voltage was between 6 1% and 66% (Blass, 1999). It can be seen that experimental research can deeply supplement common sense judgment.
Third, the experimental research of public management should have its own disciplinary characteristics.
Nowadays, experimental research has become a mature research method, and even many disciplines have formed their own experimental method system. Such as psychology, economics, sociology and political science. Although we have the task of absorbing and catching up with these subjects in the experimental research of public management science, we should also pay attention to forming our own experimental research characteristics: First, we should use experimental methods according to the characteristics of public management disciplines. Although experimental research involves a lot of technical and even technical problems, it is fundamentally driven by theoretical construction, and the logical basis of theoretical construction in different disciplines is different. As far as public management is concerned, even from the most direct and simple definition, the characteristics of public management are political & mdash culture and mdash socialization. Obviously, this is different from individual psychological research, and it is also different from economic research that maximizes utility. Therefore, simply borrowing experimental theories or methods from psychology or economics may lead to low-level incompatibility. So, how to construct a theory with the characteristics of public administration? Different scholars will have different choices. If we want to give specific suggestions here, the author's suggestion is to adopt the research strategy of "taking the problem as the center and thinking mode of public management", that is, from the real social situation of public management, based on its overall state and internal logic, to find research problems and build a theoretical framework with the thinking mode of public management discipline. There are differences and boundaries between modern disciplines, but "problems" have always existed, and "problems" do not distinguish between disciplines. Therefore, if only a certain discipline or a certain theory is used as an explanatory framework, it may dismember the "problem" and distort the study of the "problem". But after all, modern disciplines have their own disciplinary positions, which are prominently reflected in the way of thinking of disciplines. For example, the reduction analysis method is used to study the factors and mechanisms of psychological activities, which highlights the psychological way of thinking. Although there are different understandings of the thinking mode of public management discipline, it can probably be understood as examining the appropriateness of public management activities and policies in terms of legitimacy and effectiveness, which constitutes the "problem framework" of public management research. As for the specific construction methods, factors &; This strategy of mdash structure mdash function can be used for reference (Jing Huaibin, 20 1 1), that is, from the perspective of public management, what are the constituent elements of the research object? What is the structure between elements? What kind of function does the structure have? What is the performance of its functions in terms of legitimacy and effectiveness? Wait a minute. In addition, the theoretical judgment has been verified by experimental methods. Secondly, public management should also pay attention to the formation of its own discipline-specific experimental methods. Many social sciences have developed their own experimental methods. For example, the maturity of psychological experimental methods is closely related to the early experimental research process of psychophysics. Moreover, psychology constantly absorbs new technical methods to expand experimental methods. For example, psychology absorbs brain nerve research methods and forms experimental techniques for brain cognitive research. Similarly, can public management form its own experimental methods in combination with its own discipline characteristics? Theoretically, it is entirely possible. Of course, this requires hard academic efforts to achieve. Third, like any method, experimental research has its own scope of application. Although experimental research needs to be vigorously promoted, it is not the only magic weapon to win the world. It should be adopted according to the research tasks and problems, rather than applied indiscriminately to show its superiority. The two experimental reports in this issue are an attempt in this regard. Among them, the influence and mechanism of ideological activation on public decision-making embodies the research strategy of "problem-centered, public management thinking mode"
The so-called "problem center" takes the ideological debate in China society as the research object &; Mdash& ampmdash& ampmdash attempts to answer the theoretical mechanism of "why do people perceive social phenomena with a sense of mastering the truth", thus forming a research topic on how ideology distorts public affairs decision-making. "Public affairs management thinking mode" is to design specific research problems by putting this problem into the investigation of legitimacy and effectiveness, rather than borrowing existing psychological theories to study. In this way of thinking, we adopt 3 ("Left", "Middle" and "Right" ideologies)&; Times; 2. The experimental design between the subjects (active and inactive), through the control of ideological activation, verified the distortion of public decision-making after ideological activation, and then analyzed its mechanism to provide some suggestions for public decision-making. Another experimental paper, How to Effectively Tax: Enlightenment from Tax Compliance Experiment, examines the influence of tax rate on people's tax compliance and national tax revenue from the perspective of experimental economics. Experimental analysis shows that the higher the statutory tax rate, the more taxpayers evade taxes, but the higher the tax amount. The author is aiming at the A-S model or morality & the explanation of the mdash contract model is limited. The discovery is explained by "prospect theory", and the tax decision-making process is considered to be the result of taxpayers' double influence by "tax evasion interests" and "psychological mechanism". Taxpayers will take "legal tax burden" as their decision-making reference point, and tax evasion can bring extra psychological benefits, and taxpayers show a decreasing trend of sensitivity to this part of benefits. This explains why, at a higher tax rate, even if there are more tax evasion, there are more voluntary taxes, thus providing an experimental theoretical basis for how to effectively collect taxes. In a word, the experimental research of public management has become a trend and needs to be followed up. But how to form its own methodological characteristics in this trend is one of the tasks of the discipline. In this sense, the experimental research of public management is facing the dual challenges of introduction and innovation, and needs more attention and investment.
Model essay 2: Analysis of the influence of innovative culture on public management.
1 the relationship between culture and public administration
In terms of content, culture will inevitably bring some effects to the management activities of public * * *, such as establishing a code of conduct for members of society, limiting their ideas to a certain range or direction, and building a social and cultural environment, that is to say, it can match the thoughts and actions of the public * * * management system with the cultural environment and achieve a balanced state, otherwise it will be unbalanced. Taking administrative activities as an example, the final effect of such activities is greatly influenced by the comprehensive ability of administrative personnel, such as their knowledge and skills, ideas and attitudes. In other words, in the field of public management activities, the cultural environment is inseparable from the administrative system. The influence of the former on the latter is not limited to the management subject, but also has an effect on its object. Considering that all the activities of the management subject are carried out in the cultural environment, it is necessary to ensure the quality and efficiency of the management work carried out by the subject, and to ensure that the subject itself has a certain cultural accumulation. In other words, subject and culture should be able to change each other, so that culture can promote the change of subject. The power of culture on the object is transmitted to the object through society. In the social environment, cultural tendency is one of the reasons that determine the relationship between material transformation. The dominant culture in society will make other cultures tilt and develop towards themselves. For example, fairness and competition are the most important concepts in a market economy. Therefore, with the improvement of economic marketization, public management activities are increasingly advocating democracy, justice and service. It can be seen that cultural concepts will indeed have a huge impact on the public system. Formally, because the most important feature of culture is diversity, the existence of this nature makes public management activities more complicated and diversified. If the cultural environment puts forward positive requirements for the public management system, it will make the thinking and action of the system gradually close to the former. The most effective means for the public management system to achieve comprehensive improvement in performance is to integrate the positive values and requirements of culture. Cultural diversity is closely related to many factors such as history, politics and nationality. For example, many domestic government agencies and departments participate in economic construction as an entity, and government officials hold some positions in them. Or government departments legally use their public power to obtain some economic income, such as selling public services. These phenomena are concrete manifestations of cultural characteristics. Therefore, in order to improve the efficiency of the government management department system and make it more creative and active, we must focus on shaping the cultural environment under the guidance of the concept that culture determines the spirit of public management. Throughout the history of political changes of the Chinese nation, some people of insight in history put forward some reform ideas, such as "making foreign things serve China" and "reforming the past", the essence of which is to change the administrative structure with the innovation of cultural environment as the starting point. In addition, in the process of reform, different cultures will inevitably appear, and they will constantly collide with each other. As a result, they will either continue to exclude or merge together, which will have a diversified impact on the public management system. Nowadays, China is further deepening reform and opening up, and various reform measures in line with the characteristics of the times have been implemented. In this social background, various new ideas are constantly emerging, which inevitably conflicts with the old ideas and concepts left over from history. For example, the existence of these phenomena is the strongest evidence of cultural diversity in China, which reveals the inseparable relationship between culture and society, and also conveys to the people the understanding that the characteristics of government management are influenced by culture. The role of culture in public management activities will always exist, so the use and research of culture must also be paid attention to and cannot be interrupted.
2 the impact of innovative culture on public management
The most striking feature of public management is the integration of public culture and market culture.
2. 1 public management theory The core of administrative culture innovation is the integration of market concepts and public concepts;
According to the theory of public management, in essence, the integration of market culture and public culture is the requirement of the government's public management efficiency and the important basis of the government's view of market efficiency in public management. In the previous public administration concept, the government paid too much attention to fairness and justice, aiming to control the cost within the budget, ignoring the efficiency of its own policy implementation in the market and the market value of funds. Public management theory does not deny the role of fairness, justice and budget, but shifts part of the government's attention to the efficiency of the capital market, that is, under the premise of meeting the public's demand for public goods and services, the cost is controlled to the lowest level. Therefore, the government will pay more attention to service quality when carrying out public management innovation.
2.2 Public management theory of administrative values innovation:
The process of public administration examining the internal relations of public administration is actually a process of constructing and updating its own understanding of the relations between the state and society, government and market, government and people, and a further extension of the values advocated by previous public administration theories. Public administration believes that public administration should pursue public value and market value, and strive to make these two values belong to the same direction. The theory of public management consists of "public management theory" and "management theory". The former highlights the publicity of public management organizations and thinks that public administration needs to bear the responsibility for politics and citizens. The latter theory comes from modern economics and enterprise management theory, and applies the management experience of enterprises as economic entities to the public sector. In the past, the theory of public administration always chose between "public * * *" and "management", and this problem has been effectively solved in the theory of public * * * management. Introduce the theory of public administration into the administrative field, and effectively bring "public administration" and "management" into the administrative field at the same time. The value pursued by public administration is to enhance the political responsibility of administrative democracy. It takes the relationship between parliament and administration, political parties and administration as the starting point, and comprehensively studies the adaptability and sensitivity of administration under the established political background. In the past, administration was looking for ways to separate administration from politics, and how to ensure that administration was not influenced by politics; However, public management theory advocates that administration should actively adapt to politics, and reveals the interactive relationship between them. Public management theory attaches great importance to the formal ecological environment factors outside the government, which have a complex impact on public management. The theory of "public * *" starts with the public ecological environment faced by managers, emphasizing that public managers must constantly improve their sensitivity to the environment, especially in the case of pluralistic democracy, and they must be aware of the changes in the environment and adjust their strategic direction accordingly. The "public theory" has been trying to find a way to realize administrative bureaucracy and democracy. As far as the democratic system implemented in Europe and America is concerned, the selection of civil servants does not adopt the election system or the appointment system, but is given administrative and political power by law, which is the necessary basis for them to implement social value distribution. In practice, it is difficult to grasp the degree of power, which has always been the focus of attention. There are many contradictions in people's expectations of the government. They hope that the government will do something in social and economic construction, and at the same time, they hope that the government will make efforts to eliminate the ills. So many programs will be built to restrain the government. Under the background of democratic political system, bureaucratic administrative organizations can control democracy in two ways: one is to give the legislature the right to supervise the administrative department; The second is government-led, that is, to build the superior-subordinate relationship between government officials and permanent civil servants.
2.3 administrative organization culture innovation in public * * * management:
Using the theory of public administration to guide the reform of administrative organization system, the specific measure is to hand over the decision-making power and execution power to different organs. Establish an administrative executive Committee that can manage itself in personnel and finance, and implement administrative management by signing contracts. The executive organization system or executive committee is an administrative executive system, whose main feature is decentralized decision-making and implementation. Specifically, it is to separate the middle and lower organizations located in the current bureaucratic system, let them operate independently, and hand over the authority of establishment, personnel and finance to the managers who control the business power. In other words, the relationship between different departments has changed from superior to subordinate to contractual relationship. The establishment of the Executive Board is guaranteed by law. Its main function is to implement government policies and provide services to the public. It has its own characteristics in technology, specialty and supervision, and its business relevance is small. It no longer has the nature and attributes of government functional departments, but must be managed by government departments. Administrative agencies cannot make policies. The formal establishment of the executive body shows that the government organization has turned to the form of the executive body wrapped in the core policy department, in which the main role of the core policy department is to formulate policies, and the responsibility of the executive structure is to ensure that policies can be implemented and provide services, which is completely different from the previous subordinate units directly obeying the superior departments and leaders. From an administrative point of view, the executive agency and the Policy Core Division are not affiliated with the former. The latter's leadership over the former is realized through contract. The idea of separating decision-making power from execution power is actually the result of the integration of public culture and market culture in public management. In the process of this administrative system reform, the existing administrative organizational culture within the organization will also change slowly, with the main feature of making administrative organizations pay more attention to performance, service quality and business value. Performance means that under the premise of assuming administrative responsibility, administrative management must pursue higher performance, and by implementing various measures, such as contract management and simplifying organizational structure, the rationality and flexibility of administrative organizations are comprehensively improved, and finally the organizational efficiency is greatly improved; Service means that administrative organizations should change their views on citizens and provide services to citizens as customers. Only when the quality of service is improved, the satisfaction of citizens will be improved accordingly; Business refers to treating public services as a commodity and then putting them on the market. Let more government departments and even the private sector participate in the construction of public services to achieve the purpose of market competition.
2.4 public * * * management of administrative governance concept innovation:
Public administration effectively integrates public culture and market culture, and introduces it into the field of administrative reform and construction to carry out reforms inside and outside the government. Internal reform is the establishment and implementation of the executive board, while external reform is to call on citizens to participate and make full use of the role of citizens and society. The latter embodies the subversive understanding of public administration on administrative governance. In the field of public management, there are two viewpoints that strongly advocate this point, namely, "the theory of reshaping government" and "the theory of governance and good governance". The most representative theory of public administration is "remolding government theory". According to this theory, the leaders of government reform must have entrepreneurial spirit and give full play to the role and strength of non-governmental organizations in the process of reform. Specifically: first of all, in the process of reform, the government should reposition itself. The government should not be the executor of the reform, but should grasp the direction of the reform. In fact, the process of transferring the reform task to other organizations through purchase is the process of generating and providing public services. Secondly, for the resources in the reform, what the government should do is to fully mobilize all kinds of scarce resources and complete the reform. The government uses democratic procedures to set goals for social needs. At the same time, give full play to the advantages of the private sector, continuously manufacture goods and services, introduce non-governmental organizations, and provide more comprehensive public services. The non-governmental organizations mentioned here refer to the third sector, that is, voluntary or non-profit organizations (excluding the public and private sectors in the past). The owners or controllers of these organizations are often individuals. They can provide services or products that can meet the needs of the public, but their purpose is not to earn economic profits. Finally, government services can be presented in three ways: traditional forms, such as laws and regulations formulated and implemented, tax collection, economic subsidies, etc. Innovative forms, such as establishing cooperative relations with non-governmental organizations; Avant-garde form: set up funds, reorganize the market, and call on volunteers to serve the public welfare. In the process of continuous development, public management theory has made many concrete theoretical achievements. In 1990s, the theory of governance and good governance began to appear. Under this theoretical framework, the measures of public affairs management include: cooperation, consultation, goal integration and so on. In essence, it is to build a cooperative relationship that conforms to market rules and public interests. The management mechanism it established replaced the authority of the government with the authority of the cooperation network. The viewpoints advocated by this theory are as follows: First, besides the government, other public and private institutions also play the role of public management subjects. It denies the view that the center of state power is the government. If the use of legal power by public organizations and non-governmental organizations is affirmed by the people, they will also become power centers, and the only difference lies in their respective levels. Second, with the improvement of social modernization, the state begins to share responsibilities with citizens and society, which will lead to the gradual confusion of rights and responsibilities between the state and society, and between the public sector and the private sector. Third, as far as collective behavior is concerned, the relationship between all social sectors involved is getting closer and closer. In order to promote the realization of each other's goals, these institutions and departments often exchange resources, find out the nature of the goals through exchanges, and let all participants establish a cooperative partnership with the government to help the government handle some administrative affairs and assume corresponding responsibilities. Fourth, the good governance model is actually very ideal. Good governance refers to the continuous improvement of public interests in the process of social management. In essence, the government and citizens jointly manage public life. In order to enable citizens to affirm the quality and achievements of public management activities, management institutions and activities must try their best to solve the conflicts of interests among citizens, governments and citizens. To achieve the goal of good governance, both the government and citizens must struggle and cooperate. Citizens exercise the rights of voting, decision-making and supervision according to law, form public authority with the government, and build and maintain public order.