This paper presents a framework for understanding and improving public sector environmental decision making. Within the framework, four interrelated components are discussed: (1) the environmental and cultural context–understanding this context includes understanding what people consider to be environmental problems, the goals and values that they bring to environmental problems and decision processes, specialized and common knowledge about environmental problems, and the institutional settings within which problems are addressed; (2) planning and appraisal activities — these activities include forecasting and monitoring exercises, evaluations of past decisions, and decisions that processes ought to be launched to solve specific environmental problems; (3) decision-making modes — these include six typical ways of conducting an environmental problem-solving process, modes which, in the framework, are called emergency action, routine procedures, analysis-centred, elite corps, conflict management and collaborative learning; (4) decision actions—these include five generic steps that are undertaken, formally or intuitively, in virtually any decision-making situation: issue familiarization; criteria setting; option construction; option assessment; and reaching a decision. In the course of describing the framework, we show a decision-making process can be adapted to incorporate sustainability concerns, including fostering sustainable environmental and social systems, meeting obligations to future generations, and searching for robust and reasonable (rather than rigidly optimal) decisions. The framework also helps to illuminate intriguing questions regarding institutional responsibility, decision process complexity and paradigms for environmental decision making.

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This study of innovation in five Vermont high schools creates new cross case operational computer models of the leadership and policy issues involved in systemic change, using STELLA, a systems thinking software. Complexity theory and systems dynamics modeling concepts such as causal loop diagramming, boundary conditions, selfreinforcing processes, nonlinear dynamical equations, state space, dissipation, and types of temporal organization are used to discuss the behavior of the models using illustrations and data from real world case studies. The study provides grounded examples of complexity theory analysis facilitated by visual models mapped to nonlinear dynamical equations. As a result, the study offers a new explanation of innovations in high schools that involves dynamical maps of five sectors of systemic change: state policy, district initiatives, school adaptations, teacher learning, and the student experience. The maps provide new visual and mathematical generalizations of some of the key variables of innovation presented in time-based relationships with each other. The models, which reinterpret and quantify traditional

The acute threat of internationally driven and homeland-directed terrorism has changed the rules and expectations for governmental action, interaction, and willpower. Unprecedented coordination of resources, information, and expertise is required in the face of new hazards emanating from an elusive and a yet active and well-organized network of hostile terrorist cells (Danzig, 2003). While the period since 9/11 has witnessed a spate of governmental reorganization and restructuring—the most visible in the speedy formation of the Department of Homeland Security and the 9/11 Commission recommended revamping of intelligence agencies 1 (National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, 2004)—the hoped for change in behavior and impact has lagged far behind shifts in organizational form and mandate 2 (Mintz, 2005). This reluctance to change is alarming given the enormity of the immediate terrorist danger and the consequences of less-than-optimal prevention, emergency preparedness, and response. How can this resistance to change be understood, and what can be done strategically to accelerate realization of full national preparedness potential? WORKING PAPERS CENTER FOR PUBLIC LEADERSHIP The vast literature and experience on the difficulties of accomplishing any sort of quick organizational change need not be recounted here (Kotter, 1996). Suffice it to say that the silo effect of distinct cultures,

The responsibility of public managers includes designing processes that effectively operationalize policy mandates and contextual goals. The field of public administration has a long tradition of research and commentary on how to fulfill this responsibility. The classical administrative theorists fashioned a doctrine of organizational design that set forth such principles as unity of command and scalar chain. This doctrinal approach was roundly criticized by Herbert Simon (1946) nearly 60 years ago. Simon instead proposed that public managers engage in administrative analysis. This cognitive procedure included describing the functioning of particular organizations in terms of information processing and decision-making. It also included diagnosis, or identifying factors limiting organizational performance, analogous to specifying the binding constraints on the output of a physical system. He encouraged learning from experience by experimenting with structures and procedures intended to relax the constraints. He later admitted that administrative experimentation, in the literal sense, was rarely feasible (Simon 1976). Other scholars, such as James March (1999), have vigorously

Previous research on conflict has focused primarily on large-scale, high-profile episodes of violence and framed them in terms of ethnic/religious tensions, separatist discontent, thwarted economic opportunities, or weak institutions. Such research, often derived from secondary sources and/or from observations at a single point in time, tends to offer cultural or structuralist explanations, and technocratic solutions. The authors first examine some of the ways in which conflict is conceptualized and researched within the literature, and discuss some of the limitations of previous approaches. They group the literature on conflict and violence into four broad camps, which for convenience they refer to as cultural sociology,

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ACE would like to thank the W. K. Kellogg Foundation for its steadfast support of this project and for its commitment to strengthening higher education. ACE would also like to recognize the 26 institutions that participated in the ACE Project on Leadership and Institutional Transformation. Their efforts and participation provide the Copyright © 1999 American Council on Education Readers are encouraged to reproduce and widely disseminate this document. For permission to do so, please send a request stating how many copies will be made and the audience to whom the document will be distributed:

COPSSE research is focused on the preparation of special education professionals and its impact on beginning teacher quality and student outcomes. Our research is intended to inform scholars and policymakers about advantages and disadvantages of preparation alternatives and the effective use of public funds in addressing personnel shortages. In addition to our authors and reviewers, many individuals and organizations have contributed substantially to our efforts, including Drs. Erling Boe of the University of Pennsylvania and Elaine Carlson of WESTAT. We also have benefited greatly from collaboration with the National

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