As a management consultant to a public agency you have been requested to make recommendations on how to improve its operations. After reviewing the agency’s activities for a full week, you have discovered the following:

• The number of constituent complaints concerning the delivery of public services have steadily increased over the past year.

• First-line supervisors and department heads have continually overspent their budgeted appropriations for operating expenditures.

• Employee morale in the agency is quite low and is based on attitudes toward their supervisors and the lack of information about personnel actions affecting them.

• Capital project completions have consistently fallen behind scheduled dates and have delayed service provision plans by several months.

Assignment

What do you recommend to improve operation and management of this agency? This can be thought of in terms of further analyzing these problems, anticipating problems, and devising methods for addressing the problems.

Support your mini-paper with evidence from the required readings and your independent research. Submit via Blackboard.

Evaluation Guidelines (from syllabus)

1. Research, research, research – follow the instructions provided by Professor and use only quality sources (e.g., literature, journal reports/articles).

2. Be thorough – support your opinion. Be specific – do not make general statements and

do not make a statement without any support/back-up.

3. Prepare a quality paper – organize your thoughts/paper – present your Case Analysis

in a logical sequence

4. Be creative/analytical – do not just summarize what you read. I want to hear from

you.

5. Writing Skills – quality, quality, quality – exercise quality control – use good

grammar, do spell check, and watch out for typos – proofread, proofread, proofread.

Work with the Writing Center.

6. Organization of your paper – papers should be fluid and well organized. Use

headings/sub-heading to delineate your points, as appropriate. And use Page #s.

7. Perform in-text citations of your sources and prepare a separate Bibliography on last

page.

8. Paper Format – 12 point font (Times New Roman or Arial), double spaced, 1 inch

margins.

9. Safe Assign – paper must be submitted via Blackboard/Safe Assign, which will check for

plagiarism (be under 20% matching).