Coordination Without Hierarchy: Informal Structures in Multiorganizational Systems - Softcover

Chisholm, Donald

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520080378 ISBN 13: 9780520080379

Verlag: University of California Press, 1992

Inhaltsangabe

No detailed description available for "Coordination Without Hierarchy".

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Donald Chisholm is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Coordination Without Hierarchy: Informal Structures in Multiorganizational Systems

By Donald Chisholm

University of California Press

Copyright 1992 Donald Chisholm
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0520080378
1
Multiorganizational Systems

In ancient times alchemists believed implicitly in a philosopher's stone which would provide the key to the universe and, in effect, solve all of the problems of mankind. The quest for coordination is in many respects the twentieth century equivalent of the medieval search for the philosopher's stone. If only we can find the right formula for coordination, we can reconcile the irreconcilable, harmonize competing and wholly divergent interests, overcome irrationalities in our government structures, and make hard policy choices to which no one will dissent.
Harold Seidman, Politics, Position, and Power

I begin with a problem. Not long ago the (then) general manager of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, referring to the public transit system of the Bay Area, declared that "decisionmaking should be centralized, the different properties can't get together on the simplest things."1 Commenting on the same transit system, transportation engineer David Jones observed that project-by-project development has produced an extensive but ill-coordinated network of services and facilities, that the area's transit networks display significant gaps where controversies have stalled development

and where competing interests of independent jurisdictions frustrate coordination and connectivity, and that the rivalry of these jurisdictions has resulted in a diffusion of transportation responsibilities to the point where the Bay Area "is an extreme case of jurisdictional fragmentation."2

In a similar vein, a recent San Francisco Chronicle article commented on the great gap between the promise of Bay Area transit and the reality:

The idea was brilliant: The Bay Area would build the best transit network in America, a system good enough to compete with the private automobile.

Twenty years and more than $3 billion later, public transit is big businessand it is in big trouble.

Instead of the best network in America, the region has 17 separate transit baronies that war with each other over passengers and waste money on a huge scale.3

Put bluntly, the system is uncoordinated and in disarray. The result is inefficient use of resources, lost opportunities, and useless conflict. The cause is faulty organization.

As this was being written, California State Senator Quentin Kopp, a former San Francisco Supervisor, was drafting legislation to force the Bay Area's seventeen transit systems to merge into three or four superagencies, in an effort to eliminate costly duplication and competition. All of the East Bay systems would be consolidated into one organization; Santa Clara and San Mateo would merge with the San Francisco system; a North Bay transport agency would also be created; and the Bay Area Rapid Transit District would remain an independent entity.4

Elsewhere, the California State Assembly was holding hearings on proposals to reorganize and consolidate public transportation for Los Angeles County. Southern California Rapid Transit District (SCRTD) currently operates the major bus system for the county and is building a subway line in downtown Los Angeles, while the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission (LACTC) is building a trolley line from Long Beach to downtown; twelve smaller cities operate bus systems of their own.

The problem is described by the chief administrative officer for Los Angeles County:

The absence of a specific hierarchy or reporting relationship between SCRTD and the LACTC, the similar composition of each agency's governing board and the responsibility of SCRTD for Metro Rail planning and construction and LACTC for light-rail project planning and construction create the impression they are parallel, independent entities. . . . These give the appearance of a lack of accountability to the public and to other officials.5

The statement by State Assemblyman Richard Katz, chairman of the Assembly Transportation Committee, and sponsor of the consolidation bill, is a classic justification for reorganizations of this sort:

Having two competing Los Angeles transportation bodies has resulted in a lack of coordinated planning, duplication of efforts, overlapping jurisdiction, and a lack of accountability.6

The Transportation Committee passed the bill by a 22-to-0 vote to send it to the assembly floor where it passed with little debate and with a 65-to-0 vote.7

Referring to urban politics more generally, Douglas Yates makes a claim with which Henry Bruere would have been more than sympathetic: "Policy making takes place in a political and administrative system that is fragmented to the point of chaos."8 Too often the policies that result are incomplete, contradictory, and ineffective. Problems surpass the ability of any one agency or governmental entity to solve. "Municipal officials in cities like San Clemente, Kingburg, Galt, Delano, and Watsonville say poverty, crime, and community blight are problems that spill over into their communities from developments just beyond their jurisdictions."9

In this view, the components of the organizational system impinge on each other in significant ways that preclude treating them as independent units. They are composed of interdependent parts that must be coordinated on a comprehensive basis. The need for coordination is a function of the interdependence of the parts of an organizational system: existing formal coordinative arrangements are unable to manage interdependencies effectively. In the face of this inadequacy, coordination fails to occur, and irrational, chaotic public policy results. The problem is in no way limited to public transportation or local government; it occurs at all levels of government, in virtually all policy areas, and in all countries and cultures. San Francisco Bay

Area and Los Angeles public transit merely exemplify the problem in its more extreme forms.

In response to the perceived need to do something concrete to improve the organization of the San Francisco Bay Area public transit system, the Urban Mass Transportation Administration (UMTA) commissioned the study Redundancy in Public Transit .10 In this study, of which I was a coauthor, we introduced that transit system in the following way:

It may be the most generously endowed with public transport services of any metropolitan area anywhere. It has cable cars, trolley cars, subway cars, both modern-light and modern-heavy rail. It has traditional local buses, luxury express buses, and specialized subscription buses. Besides all this, there are governmentally sponsored car and van pools; there are taxis and a rare but viable jitney service; there are high-speed ferries, an old-fashioned suburban railroad and soon even a local helicopter. That smorgasbord is offered by some thirty-five organizations, not counting the numerous taxi, jitney and specialized van and bus operators. All but four of those outfits are now governmental agencies, most of them operating autonomously, almost as though they were private firms openly competing with each other in an unregulated market.11

The roles of these organizational...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: University of California Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1992
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0520080378
• ISBN 13: 9780520080379
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 292
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: De Gruyter Saur; orders-books@degruyter.com; ; Genthiner Str. 13; Berlin; 10785; Deutschland