Confessions of a Wayward Academic

by Tom Corbett

  Below I argue that the academy (scholars, researchers, evaluators and the like) can do more to help policy entrepreneurs develop cutting-edge models of human services. Academics might be able to do more if we can tweak the ways they are trained to do their craft and to carry out their professional responsibilities. Perhaps we can even shift the basis for allocating rewards and honors within the academy. In this regard, I fear, I may be sinking into a quagmire of delusional thinking. Let me be as clear as I can at this point. I am not talking about any revolution or any ‘storm the barricades’ moment. I am talking about some modest tweaking for those members of the academy who focus on public issues and social problems. This would include students of public policy, social workers, sociologists, wayward economists and political scientists, public management types, and the like. Many students self-select into such fields driven by a desire to have an impact on the real world.

  I think we need to broaden the perspective of policy scientists by developing a new academic sub-discipline which I term institutional ethnography, a concept I mentioned earlier, perhaps too often. This focus would embrace the broader dimensions of doing policy to include the cultural, normative, and political dimensions of the policy arena. Policy debates no longer focus on technical matters but larger contextual issues. In the future, we will need to look at people more fully, not just as the stick figures that populate models reducing complex humans to homo-econimicus caricatures. The term institutional ethnography remains useful since, in my mind, it is closely related to the ethnographic skills brought to bear on families and communities and thus enjoys a rough sort of familiarity to a subset of scholars. Even better, it is so ambiguous that we can make it whatever we want.

  Developing a practice oriented sub-discipline that uses a broad brush that might embrace institutional and ideological realities will not be easy. Do we have a theoretical basis for training future academics to be more interested and skilled in working with public officials who run human service systems or the interest groups that frame public discourse? Perhaps poverty research needs to focus as much on how decisionmakers arrive at decisions as opposed to what decisions they make? When the Institute for Research on Poverty was created in the 1960s, academics from the discipline of psychology were part of the original team. They were long gone by the time I became involved in the mid-1970s.

  Even if we do sell the academy on the need to look at how they do their business, would this new set of skills and aptitudes constitute an innovative disciplinary focus or is it covered within existing advanced programs? Would such a new focus gain traction in research universities that prefer the creation of new knowledge over the introduction of extant knowledge to solve problems? Would such a focus appear overly applied to top faculty members ensconced in the traditional disciplines? There are many stories of doctoral students being directed away from applied evaluation topics for their dissertations simply because such topics strike their mentors as being too real world in character. That is what paid-for researchers who work in evaluation firms do, not what scholars do, or so the prevailing prejudice goes.

  Thus, my ideas for a new scholarly focus are introduced cautiously, knowing that they might be bucking-up against the prevailing winds in the academy. And yet, it is true that there are respected members of the academy who do ethnographic work and surely there are those who study organizational theory. Many academics also give much time and energy to public policy issues and making the world a better place. A few even feel comfortable interacting with policymakers and administrators and agenda-shapers, engaging in such tasks with both ease and skill. Yet, most members of the academy generally do not seem comfortable with such vague intellectual tasks or with the people interested in such topics, particularly at top research universities. It is a little like Garrison Keillor’s observation about men and monogamy. Yes, they do go together on occasion, but it is a little like seeing a grizzly bear motor down a forest path on a 10-speed racing bike. You simply are amazed at the sight.

  Thus, I argue that policy is more than incentives and economics. What I propose would be a new blend of the conceptual and the practical arts where theory and practice are fused in complementary ways, where intellect and reason are brought into a more harmonious balance. If people with such blended attributes and perspectives exist out there in the academy, few are included among mainstream poverty researchers and there surely there are not enough of them. Such work, however, has never gained a firm footing and certainly little favor at least in that portion of the academic world that touches upon the topics of interest to us…poverty and welfare policies. In my day, I cannot recall any of my academic colleagues getting up at a conference and saying…that sucks, unless they were referring to a misspecified econometric equation. We need more outrage and emotion today. That is my story and I am sticking to it.

  Why don’t we train policy scholars to better understand deeper institutional settings, unexamined political realities, or the way normative positions are established and reinforced. Such topics are relevant. Policy cannot be separated from some understanding of the rudiments of organizational theory or human behavior where you are exposed to the cultural forces that shape our institutional and community lives. At best, scholars are exposed to the obvious dimensions of reality. They study the structural dimensions of institutions such as span of control, vertical differentiation, the permeability of organizational boundaries, environmental influences and boundary (or horizon) spanning. You can learn about different ways of organizing tasks within organization, by function or by purpose or by geographical area of responsibility. You might even be exposed to more advanced concepts such as matrix-management forms or the easily observable elements of the political economy. The human element is covered if at all, usually by paying a cursory homage to the informal networks that lurk behind the more formal skeletal outlines depicted in the organization charts. Knowing that informal networks exist does not tell you much about how they function, however.

  Organizational theory and practice, it turns out, has changed over the decades. One can trace the evolution of organizational thinking from the early days when rigid conceptual forms were imposed upon bureaucracies as a sign of progress. According to Weberian dogma, good government was carried out by functionaries who performed their duties in a robotic fashion, without bias or favor as the saying goes. This was viewed as an advancement over the cronyism and abusive discretion that ruled earlier forms of public service where merit had little place in the choice of personnel and favoritism played a disproportionate role. As the modern notion of bureaucratic uniformity and impartiality emerged, variation from the prescribed rules and protocols were viewed with increasing disfavor.

  It was not long before theorists realized that the formal attributes of organizations left much to be desired as pathways to any real understanding of what public agencies (or private bureaucracies for that matter) were all about. More attention began to be paid to informal networks within bureaucracies and political spheres, nontraditional communication patterns, the spontaneous emergence of power centers, and the breaking down of formal structures and institutional boundaries. We came to appreciate that formal structure and the eco-skeletons defined by organizational charts captured far less of what mattered in organizations than we originally thought. Rational constructs and organizational forms were replaced with shifting new patterns that dissolved into notions of “garbage can” can theories defying easy categorization. People and relationships, with all the messiness that implies, were increasingly important.

  In the real world, cause and effect are mediated through complex and opaque administrative and all-to-human mechanisms that do not operate in any transparent way. They function outside our casual purview and can only be seen if one has the skills and craft to peer inside to unravel the complex working of modern institutions and the political environments in which they operate. We often talked about the “black box” of policy making, how new rules and programs were implemented. This bla
ck box focuses more on how rules and regulations come into being in the first instance. You craft new rules at the top of an administrative pyramid and hope that what comes out at the bottom resembles original intent. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t.

  My great fear is that the world might well be evolving faster than those ensconced in the academy realize. If that happens, they will be imposing research questions and methods that are not appropriate for the new bureaucratic and political forms, nor the policies that are emerging on the ground. If true, it is easy to ask the wrong questions and arrive at answers that appear irrelevant or wrong to the very audience you are trying (or should be trying) to inform. Remaining in touch with the real world and keeping abreast of evolving realities is not easy. In fact, it is damn hard. But it is damn essential. The first task of any research effort is to get the question right.

  Let us look at your ordinary ethnographer. For a moment, imagine the challenges faced by such a scholar working with poor families. They cannot waltz in and establish an immediate sense of trust and cooperation. No, it takes time to build up a rapport and to establish a relationship. The researcher probably must be tested on an intimate level several times before the subject will feel comfortable revealing information that is considered sensitive and private. The researcher must also work to communicate effectively which undoubtedly demands that they first embrace local vocabulary and rhythms of communication patterns. Nothing can be rushed, and the researcher must be careful not to impose their own understandings onto their subjects. Clearly there are rules for doing this work, but there is also a craft involved. Not everyone can do it or at least do it well.

  Any researcher wanting to understand the institutional and human dimensions through which policies are mediated must make a similar investment. They need to understand their topic from a broader perspective. They must get to know how these systems work on an intimate level, one that goes beyond the surface and into the deeper realms of institutional culture. You must learn a new language and set of listening skills. You must be sensitized to seeing things within the bureaucratic environment that other, less sensitive observers, might well miss. In effect, we need to embrace a new craft.

  As Karen Bogenscheider and I discuss in our book, Evidence-Based Research, the cultural gap between the worlds of knowledge-producers and knowledge-consumers is so vast because, in part at least, neither can speak the language of the other. Neither appreciates each other’s world. Neither fully understands how members on the other side look at things. Appreciation starts with some level of understanding of underlying cultures. If you cannot talk with one another, the prospects of developing a working relationship diminish rapidly. Yet, both groups are so comfortable within their own worlds that they cannot see what separates them.

  I have pounded at the following point many times and in many ways…every profession has its own culture. The academy—where researchers are trained, and future professors are socialized—has a very distinct set of norms and values. Theoretical work is preferred to practical or applied studies. Empirical or observational studies employing high tech estimating techniques are highly valued as are rigorous experimental designs that advance our theoretical understanding of the world. Applied work, program evaluations, management studies are all viewed as marginal activities that seldom rise to levels worthy of attention and reward within the academy. Even confirmatory research of high quality can be ignored in tenure and promotion decisions.

  As implied earlier, members of the academy who study poverty and related topics often operate as if institutions and politics do not matter. Policies are treated as if they function in a deus ex machina manner where a program is launched and somehow works its magic, or does not, irrespective of the structural arrangements through which the policies are actualized. Economic incentives are seen to weave their magic somehow independent of a world where humans can distort or misapply policy signals and program information. Economists were legitimately surprised when the Earned Income Tax Credit and various wage bill subsidies went undersubscribed for so long. They had embraced a notion of economic man as a utility maximizing being that would behave rationally under most, if not all, circumstances. Naivete can exist even among the smartest of us.

  It should not come as a shock that real people are not as rational as the utility-maximizing stick figures used in a good deal of economic analysis. Real people make satisficing decisions based on faulty reasoning, partial information, and misleading input. People in bureaucracies and in the political arenas are no different. You cannot walk in and impose a new way of doing business simply because it is rational or theoretically persuasive or well-meaning. You must account for the cultural idiosyncrasies, embedded values, and sometimes irrational emotions that real people carry with them. You must account for all those critical cultural nuances that play havoc with rational intent. Hell, Freud became a household name for revealing the existence of the irrational id in contrast to the more rational super ego. We all talk easily about market failures that impeded efficient economic performance and study these shortcomings well. Administrative and management failures are also critical but less well appreciated and studied. Managerial pronouncements made absent a full understanding of the environmental milieu within which a program operates can well be an exercise in futility.

  I still recall a classic case study from my early days as a doctoral student. Management gurus introduced performance-based incentives into a public jobs placement agency. Workers were to be rewarded by improving their success rate in placing job seekers in actual jobs. Agency effectiveness had to improve, the incentives were clear as was the theory supporting the new policies. In the real world, however, job placements plummeted. A little digging revealed why. Informal cooperative arrangements among workers disappeared as they hoarded hot employer prospects for their own clients. A collaborative working environment became a narcissistic, hypercompetitive one. So much for good ideas. But unless you had the skills to get inside and figure things out, what happened might have remained a mystery.

  The subtleties of organizational life can be messy and even inscrutable for those fully trained and socialized within the traditional academic culture. Scholars often prefer a world where noise can be assumed away and the causal paths between independent and dependent measures operate as if by magic. I can recall many talks where the academic starts by saying something like the following: “Imagine the following highly simplified or stylized world so that my math can work.” The scenario he or she then paints is replete with pictures of this idealized world populated by our stylized stick figures and dominated by very simple interpersonal interactions. I am glad that the math can work for them but that does not help real policymakers who do not have the luxury of operating in clean and rational and highly stylized environments.

  I have argued at some length that some academics ought to be prepared specifically for careers that focus on the more nuanced dimensions of institutional and political life. My bottom line is this. We hope that future researchers will be more prepared than we were when working with agencies and bureaucracies and, critically, people from cultures other than their own. If we want scholars with the flexibility and courage to cross-walk between cultures, we need to train them differently. Perhaps then they won’t be in the position of sitting in a room full of expectant officials who ask them, someone they considered an expert, how to turn a welfare agency into a work program. Making it up on the fly is not necessarily the best way to go. I can tell you that from personal experience. Okay, I managed to fool people, but I was born with an excess supply of blarney…an Irish gift.

  Perhaps this chapter can be summed up in one suggestion…we need more inquisitive generalists.

  CHAPTER 10

  VALUES AND OTHER INCONVENIENCES

  You must become the change you want to see.

  —Mahatma Gandhi

  In this chapter, I continue my rant for bringing more balance to the policy arts. We who spend our lives in the a
cademy, or in any intellectual pursuit, fancy that we live our lives grounded in reason and cognition. In the end, that may simply be an illusion. We also are creatures of the beliefs and feelings that reside deep within us. We simply hide our inner moral and emotional compasses behind more elegant and seemingly logical verbal or quantitative edifices. Even the most elevated jurists are not bound by an abstract set of laws, at least not when it counts. They make controversial rulings based on personal norms and prior experiences and then, only then, weave elaborate cognitive constructs in support of their fundamental sentiments. It is called “post-decisionism.” If the law were something solid, existing out there, we would not have so many 5-4 decisions.

  My phone rang one day in early 2009. Nancy Simuel was on the other end of the call. l had seen Nancy only once since 1969, when a group of young men and women packed up to return to the U.S. after two years as Peace Corps volunteers in India. That one prior meeting occurred during a talk I gave in Milwaukee, the purpose and audience now long forgotten. After finishing, a Black woman walked up to me. She looked vaguely familiar, but I could not quite place the face. This was a weakness of mine as someone in the policy arena. I could never remember names and even faces. Good thing I never ran for public office. She asked if I was the same Tom Corbett who had served in the Peace Corps in India in the 1960s. “Nancy!” I shouted. We hugged and spent few minutes catching up.

  Now she was calling to tell me about a reunion of our Peace Corps group that was being planned for later in the year on the west coast. I had never attended any reunion before, but this one was not to be missed. As I said in the preface, that gathering of the India-44 volunteers triggered emotions and memories that prompted many of us to search for who we were, what we were thinking back when we were so young and foolish, and what we had become in the subsequent years.