“Boundary-setting as a core activity in complex public systems”
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Title: Boundary-setting as a core activity in complex public systems <br/>Authors: Joanne Murphy & Mary Lee Rhodes <br/> <br/>The definition of the boundary of a system is at the core of any systems approach (Midgley 2000; 2003). By defining boundaries we enable – and delimit – the range of outcomes sought and the actions and resources that can be brought to bear. In complex adaptive systems (CAS) analysis, the conceptualisaion and definition of boundaries is particularly challenging as they are constantly undergoing redefinition through agent action, interaction and entry/exit. (Rhodes et al 2011). The concept of ‘boundaries’ appears regularly in a wide range of literature around public management, administration, geopolitics, regeneration and organisational development. Discussions around boundaries focus on many things from concrete physical manifestations and barriers, to virtual interfaces between one organisational unit and another, or even entirely theoretical demarcations between different schools of thought (Kaboolian, 1998, Levi-Faur, 2004, Agranoff & McGuire, 2004). <br/> <br/>However, managing ‘beyond’ such boundaries is a routinely recurring aspiration that transcends sectors and local concerns. Unsurprisingly then, there is an increasing understanding of the need to acknowledge and manage such boundaries (whether they be physical, social or organisational) within public management as a discipline (Currie et al 2007, Fitzsimmons and White, 1997, Murtagh, 2002). This paper explores the impact of boundaries on public management strategic decision-making in the sectors of urban regeneration and healthcare. In particular, it focuses on demarcations to physical space, communal identity and within professional relationships in these sectors. <br/> <br/>The first section describes the research that gave rise to the paper and the cases examined. Next we briefly define what we mean by boundaries. We explore issues that have emerged from our analysis of urban regeneration and health care singularly, before looking at how the concept of boundaries is a recurrent concern across the sectors. The main contribution of the paper is an exploration of how a CAS lens can bring a new insight into the concept of boundaries and decision-making in the two sets of case studies. This discussion will concentrate on initial conditions, bifurcation and adaptation as key CAS factors in relation to boundaries. We conclude with a brief discussion on the benefits of a CAS lens to an analysis of boundaries in public management decision-making. <br/>References: <br/> <br/>Agranoff, R. and McGuire, M. (2003) Collaborative Public Management: Strategies for Local Government. Washington, DC: Georgetown Univ. Press. <br/> <br/>Currie, G., Lockett, A. (2007) “A critique of transformational leadership: moral, professional & contingent dimensions of leadership within public services organizations”. Human Relations 60: 341-370. <br/> <br/>Fitzsimmons and White, (1997) "Crossing boundaries: communication between professional groups", Journal of Management in Medicine, Vol. 11 Iss: 2, pp.96 – 101 <br/> <br/>Kaboolian, L. (1998) “The New Public Management: Challenging the Boundaries of the Management vs. Administration Debate” Public Administration Review Vol. 58, No. 3 pp.189-193 <br/> <br/>Levi-Faur D. and Vigoda-Gadot Eran (eds) (2004) International Public Policy and Management: Policy Learning Beyond Regional, Cultural and Political Boundaries, Marcel Dekker, <br/>Midgley, G. (ed) (2003) Systems Thinking. London: Sage Publications <br/> <br/>Midgley, G. (2000) Systemic Intervention: Philosophy, Methodology and Practice. New York, NY: Kluwer. <br/> <br/>Murtagh, B. (2002). The Politics of Territory: Policy and Segregation in Northern Ireland. Basingstoke, Palgrave. <br/> <br/>Rhodes, ML, Joanne Murphy, Jenny Muir, John Murray (2011) Public Management & Complexity Theory: Richer Decision Making in Irish Public Services, UK: Routledge <br/> <br/> <br/> <br/>
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.008 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.003 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; both teacher heads agree on what is shown here.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".