DUSP Courses 1998

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11.235 Analyzing Projects and Organizations

First class meets Thursday, Sept. 9, 1999

MIT 11.235, Fall 1999 Professor Judith Tendler

Tues, Thurs 2:30-4:00pm Room 3-405A, tendler@mit.edu

Room 5-232, Credit Units: 3-0-9 Sec'y: Kathy Hoag, Room 3-405, hoag@mit.edu

Analyzing Projects and Organizations (11.235)

Organizations and their programs often seem, at first glance, chaotic and without order. Students embarking on evaluations and similar research, therefore, feel perplexed when faced with a live organization. This is because we have been taught to expect a certain kind of rationality in the way organizations behave that is different than that which actually drives them. As a result of this seeming mismatch between what we expect and the actual reality, students (and professional evaluators) often recoil from the "chaos" of reality, wondering why the organization is not doing what it is "supposed" to be doing. This course teaches students how to understand the rationality behind how organizations and their programs behave, and to be comfortable and analytical with a live organization.

Students taking the class benefit most when they are currently engaged in a project involving interviewing, or desire guidance in interpreting the results of recent or current work involving interviewing and evaluation. Class sessions will focus on interviewing and other evaluation skills, on how the reading assignments (roughly three-four articles a week) relate to doing fieldwork and other aspects of research. Students' individual projects, when discussed, will be looked at with an eye toward identifying the generic issues, problems, and approaches to solving them that usually run across most of these projects.

Requirements: Reading assignments will be handed out in the second class session, to be determined by the nature of the topics on which students are working and their previous evaluation experience. The assignments will be drawn from a required reader on this subject for the course, which will be available at Rotch library or can be purchased. Students will come to class prepared each week to discuss the weekly readings in terms of the themes that stood out for them, and/or how the readings helped them to think about their own project. At the end of the course, students will submit a short final paper on the five most important things they learned about how to do evaluation research--written in the form of advice to someone else. Grades will be based on participation in class, on the progress shown over the semester, on regular class attendance, and on the final paper.

Depending on class size and composition, on how many students are working on their own projects, and on students' past experience and preferences, I will decide after the first class on one of the following options for the days remaining in the class schedule after the readings are completed on October 21 (see reading list and class schedule attached):

1. Reserve each remaining day after October 21 for a discussion of each student's proposed project or project-in-progress, the way it can be elucidated by themes in the readings, and the fieldwork and other research challenges it faces that are generic to the other student projects. In this option, each student will have to hand in a two-page double spaced "fact sheet" about the project two weeks before the date of her or his presentation, for revision after suggestions by me and subsequent handout to the other students. (If some students are ready earlier in the semester, we can intersperse sessions discussing the readings with those discussing student projects, so the readings will be paced throughout the whole semester.)

2. Instead of dedicating one class session to each student project, we will discuss applied matters (interviewing, doing research, writing, etc.) either in the days remaining toward the end of the semester, or dispersed throughout the semester, again spreading the reading sessions throughout the semester. Discussions of the readings and student projects, of course, will contain considerable applied observations.

Office Hours: Office hours will be posted each week outside Room 3-405, usually on Tuesdays or Thursdays after class.

11.235 Analyzing Projects and Organizations

Syllabus and Required Reading

9/9 - Introduction

9/14, 9/16 - Bureaucracy

Wilson, James Q. (1989). Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do and Why They Do It. Basic Books: Harper Collins Publishers. (preface and chapters 4-6 required).

9/16, 9/18 - Driving Organizational Behavior

DiMaggio, Paul J., and Walter W. Powell (1991). "The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organization Fields." In: The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, edited by Walter W. Powell and Paul J. DiMaggio. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Chapter 3, pp. 63-82.

Pfeffer, Jeffrey and Gerald R. Salancik (1978). The External Control of Organizations. New York: Harper and Row. (Chapters 1, 10 required).

Tendler, Judith (1975). Inside Foreign Aid. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press. (Chapter 5 only)

9/21, 9/23 - Organizational Goals, Change, and Reform

March, James G. (1972). "Model Bias in Social Action." Review of Educational Research 42 (Fall):413-429.

Hirschman, Albert O. (1971). "Underdevelopment, Obstacles to the Perception of Change, and Leadership." In: A Bias for Hope: Essays in Development and Latin America. New Haven: Yale University Press. Chapter 15.

Weiss, Carol H. (1995). "Nothing as Practical as Good Theory: Exploring Theory-Based Evaluation for Comprehensive Community Initiatives for Children and Families." In: New Approaches to Evaluating Community Initiative: Concepts, Mehods, and Context. James P. Connell, et al. (eds.). Queenstown, Md: Aspen Institute.

9/28, 9/30 - Coordination, Cooperation, and Duplication

Landau, Martin (1969). "Redundancy, Rationality, and the Problem of Duplication and Overlap." Public Administration Review 29 (July- August):346-358.

Weiss, Janet A. (1987). "Pathways to Cooperation Among Public Agencies." Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 7:94-117.

Chisholm, D.W. (1989). Coordination Without Hierarchy: Informal Structures in Multiorganizational Systems. Berkeley: University of California Press. Pp. 21-263(Intro, Conclusion)

10/5, 10/7 - Reforming government, and public vs. private competencies

Allison, Graham T., Jr. (1980). "Public and Private Management: Are they Fundamentally Alike in All Unimportant Respects?" Paper. Harvard Institute for International Development. February.

Kettl, Donald F. and John J. Dilulio, Jr. (1995). "Learning from Public and Private Reform?" In: Donald F. Kettl and John J. DiIulio, Jr. Cutting Government. A Report of the Brookings Institution's Center for Public Management. Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution. Chapter 2, pp. 27-41. May 22. (especially pp. 27-36, 40-41)

Kelman, Steven (1994). "Deregulating Federal Procurement: Nothing to Fear but Discretion Itself?" In: Deregulating the Public Service, ed. John J. DiIulio. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution. Chapter 6, pp 102-128.

Altshuler, Alan A., and Marc Zegans (1990). "Innovation and Creativity: Comparisons between public management and private enterprise." Cities, February.

10/12, 10/14 - NGOs, Including Their Relations with Government

Smith, Steven Rathgeb and Michael Lipsky (1993). "Contracting for Services in the Welfare State" and "Services and Clients under Contracting." In: Nonprofits for Hire: The welfare State in the Age of Contracting, by Steven R. Smith and Michael Lipsky. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. (Chapters 1 and 6)

Salamon, Lester M. (1987). "Of Market Failure, Voluntary Failure, and Third-Party Government: Toward a Theory of Government-Nonprofit Relations in the Modern Welfare State." In: Shifting the Debate: Public/Private Sector Relations in the Modern Welfare State, edited by Susan A. Ostrander and Stuart Langton, pp. 29-49. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Books.

Shuman, Michael H. (1998). "Why do Progressive Foundations Give Too Little To Too Many?" The Nation. January 12/19. Pp. 11-24.

10/19, 10/21 - Government, NGOs and Civil Society

Skocpol, Theda (1998). "How Americans Became Civic."

Forthcoming in Civic Engagement in American Democracy, edited by Morris Fiorina and Theda Skocpol.

Tendler, Judith (1997), "Decentralization, Participation, and Other Things Local" in "Civil Servants and Civil Society, Governments Central and Local." Good Government in the Tropics. Baltimore: John Hopkins Press. Chapter 6.

Pikholz, Lynn (1997). "Managing Politics and Storytelling: Meeting the Challenge of Upgrading Informal Housing in South Africa." Habitat International 21(4):377-396.

(Remaining class sessions will be determined by the choice of the two options presented in the course description.)

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This syllabus may have been updated. To ensure that you're looking at the most recent version, please hit "Reload."
11.235 Analyzing Projects and Organizations
*First class meets Thursday, Sept. 9, 1999* MIT 11.235, Fall 1999 Professor Judith Tendler Tues, Thurs 2:30-4:00pm Room 3-405A, tendler@mit.edu Room 5-232, Credit Units: 3-0-9 Sec'y: Kathy Hoag, Room 3-405, hoag@mit.edu Analyzing Projects and Organizations (11.235) Organizations and their programs often seem, at first glance, chaotic and without order. Students embarking on evaluations and similar research, therefore, feel perplexed when faced with a live organization. This is because we have been taught to expect a certain kind of rationality in the way organizations behave that is different than that which actually drives them. As a result of this seeming mismatch between what we expect and the actual reality, students (and professional evaluators) often recoil from the "chaos" of reality, wondering why the organization is not doing what it is "supposed" to be doing. This course teaches students how to understand the rationality behind how organizations and their programs behave, and to be comfortable and analytical with a live organization. Students taking the class benefit most when they are currently engaged in a project involving interviewing, or desire guidance in interpreting the results of recent or current work involving interviewing and evaluation. Class sessions will focus on interviewing and other evaluation skills, on how the reading assignments (roughly three-four articles a week) relate to doing fieldwork and other aspects of research. Students' individual projects, when discussed, will be looked at with an eye toward identifying the generic issues, problems, and approaches to solving them that usually run across most of these projects. *Requirements: Reading assignments will be handed out in the second class session, to be determined by the nature of the topics on which students are working and their previous evaluation experience. The assignments will be drawn from a required reader on this subject for the course, which will be available at Rotch library or can be purchased. Students will come to class prepared each week to discuss the weekly readings in terms of the themes that stood out for them, and/or how the readings helped them to think about their own project. At the end of the course, students will submit a short final paper on the five most important things they learned about how to do evaluation research--written in the form of advice to someone else. Grades will be based on participation in class, on the progress shown over the semester, on regular class attendance, and on the final paper. Depending on class size and composition, on how many students are working on their own projects, and on students' past experience and preferences, I will decide after the first class on one of the following options for the days remaining in the class schedule after the readings are completed on October 21 (see reading list and class schedule attached): 1. Reserve each remaining day after October 21 for a discussion of each student's proposed project or project-in-progress, the way it can be elucidated by themes in the readings, and the fieldwork and other research challenges it faces that are generic to the other student projects. In this option, each student will have to hand in a two-page double spaced "fact sheet" about the project two weeks before the date of her or his presentation, for revision after suggestions by me and subsequent handout to the other students. (If some students are ready earlier in the semester, we can intersperse sessions discussing the readings with those discussing student projects, so the readings will be paced throughout the whole semester.) 2. Instead of dedicating one class session to each student project, we will discuss applied matters (interviewing, doing research, writing, etc.) either in the days remaining toward the end of the semester, or dispersed throughout the semester, again spreading the reading sessions throughout the semester. Discussions of the readings and student projects, of course, will contain considerable applied observations. Office Hours:* Office hours will be posted each week outside Room 3-405, usually on Tuesdays or Thursdays after class. 11.235 Analyzing Projects and Organizations Syllabus and Required Reading 9/9 - Introduction 9/14, 9/16 - Bureaucracy Wilson, James Q. (1989). Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do and Why They Do It. Basic Books: Harper Collins Publishers. (preface and chapters 4-6 required). 9/16, 9/18 - Driving Organizational Behavior DiMaggio, Paul J., and Walter W. Powell (1991). "The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organization Fields." In: The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, edited by Walter W. Powell and Paul J. DiMaggio. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Chapter 3, pp. 63-82. Pfeffer, Jeffrey and Gerald R. Salancik (1978). The External Control of Organizations. New York: Harper and Row. (*Chapters 1, 10 required). Tendler, Judith (1975). Inside Foreign Aid. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press. (Chapter 5 only) 9/21, 9/23 - Organizational Goals, Change, and Reform* March, James G. (1972). "Model Bias in Social Action." Review of Educational Research 42 (Fall):413-429. Hirschman, Albert O. (1971). "Underdevelopment, Obstacles to the Perception of Change, and Leadership." In: A Bias for Hope: Essays in Development and Latin America. New Haven: Yale University Press. Chapter 15. Weiss, Carol H. (1995). "Nothing as Practical as Good Theory: Exploring Theory-Based Evaluation for Comprehensive Community Initiatives for Children and Families." In: New Approaches to Evaluating Community Initiative: Concepts, Mehods, and Context. James P. Connell, et al. (eds.). Queenstown, Md: Aspen Institute. 9/28, 9/30 - Coordination, Cooperation, and Duplication Landau, Martin (1969). "Redundancy, Rationality, and the Problem of Duplication and Overlap." Public Administration Review 29 (July- August):346-358. Weiss, Janet A. (1987). "Pathways to Cooperation Among Public Agencies." Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 7:94-117. Chisholm, D.W. (1989). Coordination Without Hierarchy: Informal Structures in Multiorganizational Systems. Berkeley: University of California Press. Pp. 21-263(Intro, Conclusion) 10/5, 10/7 - Reforming government, and public vs. private competencies Allison, Graham T., Jr. (1980). "Public and Private Management: Are they Fundamentally Alike in All Unimportant Respects?" Paper. Harvard Institute for International Development. February. Kettl, Donald F. and John J. Dilulio, Jr. (1995). "Learning from Public and Private Reform?" In: Donald F. Kettl and John J. DiIulio, Jr. Cutting Government. A Report of the Brookings Institution's Center for Public Management. Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution. Chapter 2, pp. 27-41. May 22. (especially pp. 27-36, 40-41) Kelman, Steven (1994). "Deregulating Federal Procurement: Nothing to Fear but Discretion Itself?" In: Deregulating the Public Service, ed. John J. DiIulio. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution. Chapter 6, pp 102-128. Altshuler, Alan A., and Marc Zegans (1990). "Innovation and Creativity: Comparisons between public management and private enterprise." Cities, February. 10/12, 10/14 - NGOs, Including Their Relations with Government Smith, Steven Rathgeb and Michael Lipsky (1993). "Contracting for Services in the Welfare State" and "Services and Clients under Contracting." In: Nonprofits for Hire: The welfare State in the Age of Contracting, by Steven R. Smith and Michael Lipsky. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. (Chapters 1 and 6) Salamon, Lester M. (1987). "Of Market Failure, Voluntary Failure, and Third-Party Government: Toward a Theory of Government-Nonprofit Relations in the Modern Welfare State." In: Shifting the Debate: Public/Private Sector Relations in the Modern Welfare State, edited by Susan A. Ostrander and Stuart Langton, pp. 29-49. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Books. Shuman, Michael H. (1998). "Why do Progressive Foundations Give Too Little To Too Many?" The Nation. January 12/19. Pp. 11-24. 10/19, 10/21 - Government, NGOs and Civil Society Skocpol, Theda (1998). "How Americans Became Civic." Forthcoming in Civic Engagement in American Democracy, edited by Morris Fiorina and Theda Skocpol. Tendler, Judith (1997), "Decentralization, Participation, and Other Things Local" in "Civil Servants and Civil Society, Governments Central and Local." Good Government in the Tropics. Baltimore: John Hopkins Press. Chapter 6. Pikholz, Lynn (1997). "Managing Politics and Storytelling: Meeting the Challenge of Upgrading Informal Housing in South Africa." Habitat International 21(4):377-396. (Remaining class sessions will be determined by the choice of the two options presented in the course description.)