Category: Public Administration

Assessment CURRENT ENVIRONMENTAL ANALYSIS
Health care organizations have embraced strategic management and have developed unique processes for their industry. Health care leaders have found that strategic thinking, planning, and managing strategic momentum are essential for coping with the health care industry’s dynamics. Strategic management has become the single clearest demonstration of effective leadership in health care organizations.
Health care organization leaders need to understand the external environment in which they operate. Additionally, they need to anticipate and respond to the significant shifts taking place within that environment. An organization engages in service area competitor analysis to:
Determine the geographic service area.
Analyze the competitors within that service area for strengths and vulnerabilities.
Assess the impact of its strategic actions against specific competitors.
Anticipate potential actions a competitor might make that would endanger the organization’s market position.
Analyzing competitors assists organizations in identifying their competitive advantage, the basis on which they are willing to compete with anyone.
Additionally, evaluating the organization’s internal environment is also critical. This requires evaluating functional areas such as clinical operations, information systems, marketing, clinical support, human resources, financial administration, and others. In an internal environmental analysis, leaders carefully examine each function or organizational subsystem and then develop and analyze a list of strengths and weaknesses for each. This approach has been successful in some cases; however, an internal environmental analysis alone does not adequately address strategic issues.
The assessment will focus on performing an environmental analysis of a health care organization. An environmental analysis enables the organization to identify current challenges and opportunities in preparation for future strategic planning and goal identification. Insightful diagnosis of a company’s external and internal environments is a prerequisite for managers to succeed in crafting a strategy that is an excellent fit within the company’s operations. These evaluations assist the organization in fostering alternative strategies and business models that culminate in leadership choosing a specific strategy.
For this assessment, you will perform an environmental analysis for a health care organization. To accomplish this, you need to select a health care organization. This may be an organization where you currently work, a place where you want to work, or an organization about which you would like to learn more. You may select one from any of these sectors, or you may select a sector not listed here that directly reflects your career plans:
Long-term care.
Mid-sized facility.
Behavioral health hospital.
Large urban hospital.
Small rural hospital.
Freestanding facility.
Telehealth organization.
Government/military.
Integrated delivery network (IDN).
Make your selection carefully. If you choose your own organization, it will be easier to obtain the kind of information you need to complete the assessment. If you do not select your own organization, you might want to consider a larger health care provider (for example, Cigna, Kaiser Permanente, UnitedHealth Group, or Blue Cross Blue Shield) that publishes the organization’s directional strategy. You may also select a type of organization from the provided list, but recognize you will still be expected to gather marketing information, benchmark data, financial summaries, and other relevant information.
You may use any contemporary environmental analysis tool included in the strategic management planning process to conduct your analysis. Examples include PESTLE analysis, Michael Porter’s 5 Forces model, and Levels of Competition model.
Remember, your analysis must address both your selected organization’s external and internal environments. In addition, your analysis must include all of the elements listed below.
ENVIRONMENTAL ANALYSIS REQUIREMENTS
The requirements, outlined below, correspond to the grading criteria in the Current Environmental Analysis Scoring Guide, so be sure to address each point. Read the performance-level descriiptions for each criterion to see how your work will be assessed.
Evaluate the organization’s directional strategy, as reflected in its vision, mission, and values.
Identify key industry structural features determining the forces governing competition.
Write a clear, concise, well-organized, professional, and generally error-free environmental analysis that supports conclusions with relevant evidence.
Follow current APA formatting and style guidelines for citations and references.
Length: 5–7 double-spaced, typed pages. The goal is to focus on applying new concepts and gaining new insights. Keep it brief and substantive.
Note: Feel free to construct images/diagrams, such as PESTL tables, to summarize information where appropriate and to highlight key information.
Formatting: Narrative can be written in a memo or white paper format since these are used in the health care workplace. Format citations according to current APA style and formatting guidelines, including a works cited page.
Number of sources: Use a minimum of six current, scholarly, and authoritative sources to support your analysis.
SCORING GUIDE CRITERIA
Analyzes a health care organization’s external and internal environment, including recommendations for improvement. Analysis includes multiple specific examples and references to current, scholarly and/or authoritative sources.
Evaluates a health care organization’s directional strategy, including improvement recommendations. Evaluation includes multiple specific examples and references to current, scholarly, and/or authoritative sources.
Analyzes key industry structural features determining the forces governing competition. Analysis includes multiple specific examples and references to current, scholarly, and/or authoritative sources.
Writes a clear, concise, well-organized, professional, and error-free environmental analysis that supports conclusions with compelling and relevant evidence.
Follows current APA formatting and style guidelines for citations and references without omissions and/or errors.

Apply concepts related to governance in a specific, researched public administration case study. Whatever source is used for the actual case study must focus on a real-world public administration situation that is being discussed and analyzed in the chosen article.
The article can be qualitative or quantitative in nature, but it must specifically focus on the public administration context.
Remember to synthesize your research and findings with the required readings and presentations for this week and a Biblical/covenantal model of statesmanship, leadership and organizational behavior.
Attached is an example of a discussion the professor had given and two of the readings. I’ve also included comments from the professor on previous discussions

RESEARCH PAPER: FISCAL SOLVENCY ASSIGNMENT INSTRUCTIONS
OVERVIEW
Fiscal Solvency is the ability of a governmental entity to meet its long-term debts and financial
obligations. Solvency can be an important measure of financial health, since its one way of
demonstrating a government’s ability to manage its operations into the foreseeable future. The
quickest way to assess a government’s solvency is by checking fiscal solvency ratios.
Fiscal solvency ratios are a key metric used to measure a government’s ability to meet its debt
obligations and is used often by prospective lenders. The solvency ratio indicates whether a
company’s cash flow is sufficient to meet its short-and long-term liabilities. There is a difference
between solvency and liquidity. Solvency is a long-term measure, while Liquidity is a short-
term measure. Liquidity relates more to short-term cash flow, while solvency relates more to
long-term financial stability. Simply put, liquidity is the value of all its assets. Solvency ratios
are used to examine the ability of a government to meet its long-term obligations. The ratios
are most used by current and prospective lenders. The ratio compares an approximation of cash
flows to liabilities and is derived from the following ratios: (1) Current Ratio, (2) Operating
Ratio, and (3) Net Asset Ratio.
INSTRUCTIONS
To successfully complete this assignment, please refer to the assignment resource: Research
Paper: Fiscal Solvency Assignment Guide.
For this Assignment, you will need to compute and create tables to analyze:
1) Current Ratio
2) Operating Ratio
3) Net Asset Ratio
Then, using the tables and charts, you will write an 8–10-page research paper analyzing:
1) The degree of solvency of Bay City, Texas
2) Solvency methods and techniques and why they are important for governments to use and
their advantages and disadvantages.
3) How Solvency Helps Financial Issues
4) Solvency vs Liquidity
This is a Doctoral-level research assignment designed to test your ability to carefully research,
effectively organize, and concisely communicate a nuanced understanding of the concepts and
issues raised in the assignment. While the minimum page limit is short (as is often the case in
public policy/public administration briefings), you are expected to craft efficient, highly
substantive papers. You are expected to comport with the highest writing, research, and ethical
standards. Additionally, to do well on this assignment, you must conduct high-quality research
and offer rich, well-supported analysis; mere opinion or conjecture will not suffice. There must
be no careless or simple grammatical errors such as misspellings, incomplete sentences, comma
PADM 702
Page 2 of 2
splices, instances of faulty noun/verb agreement, etc. Such errors will result in significant point
deductions.
The text of this research paper must be 8-10 pages (not including title page, reference page, and
any appendices). This paper must be in current APA format with 1-inch margins and 12-pt Times
New Roman font. You must also include a title page and reference page. You must include
citations to a sufficient number of appropriate professional, scholarly, or other appropriate
sources to fully support your assertions and conclusions (which will likely require more than the
minimum number of citations); each paper must include a minimum of 5 sources, not including
the course textbooks, assigned readings, and the Bible.
Plagiarism in any form is strictly prohibited and may result in failure of the assignment, failure
of the course, and/or removal from the program. It is your responsibility to ensure that you fully
understand what constitutes the various forms of plagiarism and to avoid all forms of
plagiarism.
Note: Your assignment will be checked for originality via the Turnitin plagiarism tool.
any calculations or graphs need please advise of additional charge.

Congress Passes Legislation to Protect Fire Fighters from PFAS Exposure

Write a ten-page assessment of the fire science administration aspects of the incident. Essentially, find a topic firefighters/fire chiefs are upset with and discuss how the solution can be found applying sound administrative principles and practices.

“If public administration revolves around the balance of power and accountability, regulation defines how public administrators balance individual freedom and government control” (Kettl 2011, pp. 448–449).
Discuss the balance between power and accountability and individual freedom and government control.
What is your assessment of how well the U.S. government does with this? What sectors are balanced particularly well? Poorly?
What ideas do you have for striking a better balance?

Compare and contrast the following qualitative research approaches:
(1) Basic qualitative inquiry
(2) Qualitative case study
(3) Grounded theory and realism
(4) Phenomenology and heuristic inquiry
(5) Social constructionism and narrative inquiry
(6) Systems theory
(7) Ethnography/autoethnography
(8) Interactive and participatory qualitative applications.
Complete the attached Qualitative Research Approaches Matrix Template for the eight approaches highlighted. Some of the cells have been pre-populated with sample entries or with prompts to help you focus your comparisons.

PLEASED USE THE ATTACHED FILE IN ORDER TO COMPLETE THE DISCUSSION QUESTIONS BELOW
Nishishiba et al. (2013) explain in chapter 7 that “Descriiptive statistics are used to organize and describe the characteristics of the data. In some cases, this is the whole purpose of the research. In other cases, the researcher intends to use inferential statistics to confirm or test hypotheses about the population of interest. In all cases, the data analysis should begin with ‘descriiptive statistics’ “. Why is it important to begin your analysis with descriiptive statistics? (see page 125)

And now for the debate…
“Typically, significant skewness happens when you have extreme values/outliers in your data set. If a small number of values are extremely low, then the data distribution will be negatively skewed; if a small number of values are extremely high, then the data distribution will be positively skewed” (Nishishiba et al.,2013) .
So, regarding skewness, is this a good thing or a bad thing for data analysis? Explain. (see pages 137-143; and 143 specifically)

PLEASE READ THE ANSWERS BELOW TO THE QUESTIONS ON ORDER#398969771 AND PLEASE RESPOND TO THERE VIEWS A BREIF SUMMARY OF WHAT YOU READ AND HOW YOU AGREE OR DO NOT AGREE.
1. Traditional public administration justifies bureaucracy through a rational-legal authority framework, emphasizing its role in ensuring efficiency, accountability, and the rule of law in the public sector, relying on principles articulated by Max Weber. Bureaucratic systems are viewed as essential for maintaining clear hierarchies, standardized procedures, and specialized roles within government organizations to prevent corruption and favoritism. In contrast, Confucian justification differs significantly, prioritizing moral values, ethics, and virtuous leadership over strict bureaucratic rules. In Confucian governance, legitimacy arises from the moral character of leaders, emphasizing personal relationships, loyalty, and duty. This approach contends that virtuous and ethical leadership fosters good governance and societal harmony, offering a more flexible alternative to the rigid rational-legal bureaucracy of traditional public administration.

2. Fry and Raadschelders identify three broad approaches to public administration: the Rational-Structural Approach, the Human Resources Approach, and the Political Approach. Each of these approaches has its own perspective on how public administration should be organized and managed. Rational-Structural Approach has different components. Firstly, this approach emphasizes efficiency, organization, and structure. Secondly, it is based on principles of scientific management and bureaucracy. Furthermore, the primary focus is on designing efficient processes, standardizing procedures, and hierarchically organizing tasks. It also aims to maximize productivity and minimize waste. The Human Resources Approach focuses on the people within the public administration system. It also emphasizes the importance of employee development, motivation, and job satisfaction. Furthermore, it views employees as valuable assets and seeks to enhance their skills and well-being. The most important part of the Human Resources Approach is it recognizes that a motivated and skilled workforce contributes to better organizational performance. The last approach is the Political Approach. This approach acknowledges the inherently political nature of public administration. It also highlights the influence of political factors, interest groups, and public opinion on administrative decisions. To continue, it considers the role of administrators in shaping public policy and responding to political pressures. Lastly, this approach recognizes that public administrators must navigate complex political landscapes to effectively serve the public interest. The Human Resources Approach speaks to me the most because I prioritize the well-being and development of employees which is what this approach focuses the most.

3. The case “Who’s Afraid of The DMV?” highlights the challenges and public perception issues faced by the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). It discusses long wait times, bureaucracy, and dissatisfaction among customers visiting the DMV. If asked to provide consulting services to improve the DMV using the classical/orthodox approach to public administration. The first suggestion I would make is to implement principles of scientific management and bureaucracy, as advocated by Frederick Taylor and Max Weber. This would involve streamlining processes, setting clear standard operating procedures, and optimizing workflow. For example, introducing appointment systems, digital services, and self-service kiosks could reduce wait times and increase efficiency. I would also recommend investing in employee training and specialization. Ensure that DMV staff are adequately trained to perform their tasks efficiently and accurately. This aligns with the principles of specialization, where employees become experts in their specific areas of responsibility. Advantages of these suggestions include improved efficiency by streamlining processes and reducing bureaucratic red tape can lead to shorter wait times and improved service delivery. Also, employee development. Training and specialization can boost employee morale, job satisfaction, and performance. However, there are also disadvantages to consider are strict adherence to hierarchy and standardization may make it difficult to adapt to changing circumstances or customer needs. Also a big one might be a resistance to change. Employees and customers may resist changes that disrupt established routines.
4. In addition to the classical/orthodox approach, various recommendations can be made for DMV offices, drawing inspiration from multiple approaches to public administration. Implement customer-centric reforms inspired by New Public Management (NPM) principles, such as offering online services and self-service options. Adopt performance metrics and benchmarking from NPM to measure service quality. Consider public-private partnerships (NPM and Collaborative Governance) to provide specialized services. Invest in employee training and development (Human Resource Management – HRM) and empower front-line employees. Embrace e-government initiatives for digital transformation. Apply lean and agile practices (Post-NPM and Complexity Theory) for continuous improvement. Foster community engagement (Democratic Governance) and remain adaptable to changing circumstances (Complexity Theory). Base decisions on data and evidence (Evidence-Based Management) and promote ethical leadership (Ethical and Values-Based Leadership) at all levels. These recommendations aim to create an efficient, customer-centric DMV that adheres to ethical principles and adapts to the complexities of modern public administration.

References:
Fry & Raadschelders (2013)
Frederickson (2002)
Governing. (2021, April 21). Who’s afraid of the DMV? Governing. https://www.governing.com/archive/whos-afraid-of-the-dmv.html

Prepare a policy memo. Assume you are working for a Congressperson, who wonders about the attempts of colleagues to use the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) of 1938 against nonprofit interest groups they have policy disagreements with. The question for you is whether FARA should be amended or revoked or be left in place. Use the following resources for structuring your policy memo:
https://educationalequity.org/sites/default/files/documents/best_practices_-_policy_memo.pdf

Consider a research problem and conceptualize a qualitative study you want to conduct to address the problem. Write a plan for the procedures to be used in your qualitative study. Include your role and reflexivity, data collection procedures, data recording procedures, data analysis procedures, interpretation, and validity and reliability. Use the guidelines provided in Creswell & Creswell (2018) for the elements to include in your qualitative study.
The attached documents and textbooks (below) are provided for integration into the paper.
Integrate 3 biblical scriptures throughout the paper that relates to the topic and not at the end of the paper.
Textbooks
Creswell, John W. & Creswell, J. David (2018). Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches (5th ed.) Sage Publishing. ISBN: 9781506386706. Chapter 9
Edlund, J. E., & Nichols, A. L. (2019). Advanced research methods for the social and behavioral sciences. Cambridge University Press. ISBN: 9781108441919.
Note: Assignment will be checked for originality via the Turnitin plagiarism tool.