Today’s public managers face a public far more
complex than their predecessors encountered.
This public is more complex in its numbers,
with more organizations and more people, and more
complex in the interests those
organizations and individuals
represent, ranging from the concerns
of traditional business and
labor groups to those of citizen
and public interest groups. And
it is more complex in the roles those organizations and
interests play in public management, with the most
prominent of those roles being as citizens, customers,
and partners.
Working with this public can be as simple as providing
specifi c services for individual members of the
public when they come as customers seeking discrete
services, such as a garbage pickup when a collection
is missed. At other times, public managers need
the public’s help in producing services or pursuing
public goals. Here, individuals may work as partners
with government, for example, by sorting recyclables
from other waste prior to collection by government.
On still other occasions, managers deliberate with
the public to answer larger questions about what
services to provide or how to exercise governmental
authority. Members of the public then assume what
is arguably their most important role, as citizens,
deliberating with public managers over the direction
of government, as when discussing whether to adopt a
new recycling program. Finally, in probably the most
common scenario, public managers must work with
members of the public in more than one of these roles
at a time, as when people expect to be treated courteously
and helpfully, like customers, as they also voice
opinions, as citizens, on the nature of public programs
in which they might assist, as partners.
Th ese realities pose a dual challenge for public administrators.
First, they need to understand the nature of
these publics, including what people expect as citizens,
customers, and partners. Because government is not
about simply providing for people, that understanding
should also encompass what agencies need or want to
ask of the public.
As the second and more diffi cult
part of the challenge, public
administrators need to know
how to interact with the public
in each and all of the three roles.
Most generally, as Terry Cooper
recognized, in the spirit of Mary Parker Follett (1924),
administrators need to be able to work as “professional
citizens” who “seek ‘power with’ rather than ‘power
over’ the citizenry” (1984, 143).
Th e purpose of this article is to assist public managers
in addressing this challenge. Toward that end,
after fi rst placing the three roles in the contemporary
history of public administration, the article will
draw from recent research to propose guidelines for
how public managers can work eff ectively with the
public in the several roles (for more extensive discussion
of the roles and guidelines, see Thomas 2012).
Th e guidelines are addressed principally to current
or aspiring middle- to higher-level managers in both
the public and nonprofi t sectors and secondarily to
street-level bureaucrats. In any of these capacities, the
manager who knows how to work with the public in
the three roles should be well equipped to work effectively
with the public.