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Adult Action-Oriented Learning Models
The Public Sector Consortium uses an adult action-oriented learning model in the design of our programs. The programs incorporate scenarios and examples that are relevant to public sector workplaces by including exercises that are comparable to those leaders would encounter in their work setting. The classroom experience provides the opportunity to practice and learn new behaviors. Participants experience the marriage of current management practices with a strong focus on the challenges and systems that are unique to public leadership. The programs are focused in part on the principles and disciplines of Organizational Learning but also include Facilitation Strategies for Leaders, Strategic Alignment, Performance Skills, and Negotiation Practices, among others.
Sustainable Leadership Practices
Given the leadership role of the United States in the world, our choices as public leaders often have an impact well beyond the American citizens that we serve. In this context we believe that public leaders must have the capacity to serve both their organizational missions as well as the larger mission we all share: sustaining resources (human, natural and economic) for future generations. Sustaining resources to serve the public good requires us to think differently about our role as leaders and to develop tools and competencies that support this new model.
The Public Sector Consortium is committed to reinventing the model of public sector leadership. We have identified several practices that we believe are essential to this new model and have incorporated them into our curriculum. We are currently focused on the need to provide leaders with advanced skills that will redefine high performance as both accomplishing their organizations’ missions and sustaining the resources necessary for future generations.
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PUBLICATIONS AND RESOURCES
CASE STUDIES: USAGE REQUIRES A FEE
Each PDF case study costs $4.50 for individual use. Copies of the case studies can only be distributed once the PDF and “paper” rights have been purchased. Duplication for larger numbers (as either paper copies or as electronic copies) will be $2.10 a copy. Discount pricing offered for use with groups of over one hundred. Please email info@public-sector.org for information on larger group pricing.
Use of the articles on an open access web site is prohibited.
All case studies are copyrighted by the Public Sector Consortium and the individual authors cited.
Please note: The Public Sector Consortium is committed to making its resources available to all interested parties, and as such hardship cases will be considered. Please submit your request in writing to info@public-sector.org. Allow four weeks for consideration of your request.
Case Studies
The Boston Harbor Cleanup: Leading Beyond Regulatory Requirements
In the last half of the 20th century, the Water Division Director of the New England Office (Region I) of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency took risks - with some support - to clean up the Boston Harbor, known to many as “the most polluted harbor in the country”. His experience during the long process of cleaning up the Harbor necessitated direct involvement with myriad local and national government officials as well as with local communities. This case study provides public leaders with the opportunity to understand the importance of Sustainable Leadership Practices in action. The learner will have the opportunity to reflect on the specific Sustainable Leadership Practices that affected the human, natural and economic resources critical to this massive public clean up program. We believe these practices are essential to a reinvented model of public leadership.
Overview of Boston Harbor Case Study and Related Study Questions
In 1972 the Clean Water Act was signed into law creating the first national regulatory program to control discrete sources of pollution from industries and municipalities. The Metropolitan District Commission (MDC), a state funded agency, was responsible for treating wastewater from Boston, Massachusetts as well as forty-two other communities in the metropolitan area.
On June 7, 1983 the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF), a significant environmental advocacy group in New England, filed a lawsuit against the MDC and EPA in federal court. The suit charged that for more than a decade the MDC, with the acquiescence of EPA, had illegally discharged billions of gallons of largely untreated sewage into Boston Harbor. In addition, a lawsuit was filed in the state court by the City of Quincy against the MDC claiming that partially treated sewage was polluting its shoreline and beaches.
Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) officials tried to convince EPA to file a lawsuit against the MDC to enforce a cleanup schedule for Boston Harbor. The EPA Regional Administrator and some of his senior aides were leaning in that direction. However, the EPA Water Management Division Director argued that attention should be paid to the timing of such a suit because there were still two critical decisions to be made: the waiver dealing with the level of treatment and the siting of the treatment facility.
Based on the Division Director’s years of work at EPA and his four years at the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Quality Engineering (DEQE) he understood there was a history of bad feelings and distrust among some high level officials at both agencies. In order to move the process forward quickly they needed to work as partners with the communities and politicians. He also felt strongly that a lawsuit would jeopardize that cooperation. He succeeded in convincing the Regional Administrator to delay an EPA lawsuit action until the sensitive decisions were made.
Over the next several months EPA, DEQE, MDC and the affected communities worked together to investigate possible locations for the treatment facility. Decisions were made for treatment plant location and enforceable timelines for harbor cleanup were set, and the Water Division Director and his staff had to balance national and regional regulatory requirements with public expectation. As pollution sources caused the loss of important recreational resources, budgetary restraints collided with the need to not disappoint the public, who would have a right to feel betrayed if, after spending 2.5 billion dollars, there was still significant pollution on their beaches. Leadership priorities and measures of success collided and leaders had to take political risks to serve the public good.
Sustainable Leadership Practices ……Reflective Questions
Human Resources
Who were the Water Division Director’s key partners throughout the Boston Harbor
cleanup? Were there any surprising partnerships that helped the situation?
What were the political and bureaucratic challenges/barriers faced by the Director in the
decision making process? What were the risks involved in addressing these barriers?
Natural Resources
What decisions were made to assure that all of the natural resources of Boston Harbor were protected and sustained for the public good?
Economic Resources
How did the public leaders translate the benefits of a clean Boston Harbor in such a way that the citizens were satisfied with the expenditure of additional public funds and continued to support a clean harbor?
What actions were taken by the Public leaders to fulfill their fiduciary responsibility to oversee the effective use of public funds?
All articles copyrighted by the Public Sector Consortium © 2003-2008, Public Sector Consortium and individual authors cited. All rights reserved.