Stories Citizens Tell and How Administrators Use Types of Knowledge

Abstract

Public administrators receive stories from variety of sources: other public administrators, elected officials, subordinates in their organizations and in other organizations, and citizens. By listening to stories, administrators can improve services, interactions with citizens, and the operation of their agencies. Public administrators can even become more responsive as they classify, react, and take action according to the stories that they hear. Hummel defines story as a report about an event, situation, little world, as seen through the of the story-teller who reports about his relations with an object or objects in that (1991, 37). Stories are form of knowledge through which public administrators can expand their worlds and modify their definitions of reality. This research examines public administrators' responses to stories told by citizens and addresses the following questions. What are the categories of knowledge public administrators can find in stories? Are certain types of knowledge more useful than others? How do public administrators react to stories? Are some reactions more appropriate than others? How does knowledge from stories get put into action? What, if any, are the links among the types of knowledge, reactions, and actions? The Stories Citizens' stories were collected in surveys and interviews as described in the methodology box. Two city managers and two assistant city managers (hereafter referred to as managers) received statistical reports about survey results and the texts of two types of stories. The first type was stories from the telephone survey. These usually consisted of brief responses to open-ended questions. The conciseness of the stories does not make them insignificant. In examining stories told by public managers about working with elected officials, Maynard-Moody and Kelly (1993, 72) say: Although they are often brief, they provide glimpse into the complex and cloudy world of public management. In total, these stories filled 239 pages. The second type of story came from the personal interviews. These stories were more complete, more thoughtful, and often filled with detailed experiences that the respondents had had with the cities. These stories filled 62 pages. Both types of citizen stories were received as credible sources of knowledge by the managers. Three of the four managers found the stories they received more informative than the statistical reports. One manager commented, It was all very helpful, but I used more of the open-ended comments, than I the percentage information. I used [the percentage information] in general, in the generalization of issues. Another manager commented: our overall perception from the statistics is that most of the citizens are happy with the services that we provide....[The statistical information] was tool to be used for policy, denoting the areas where the citizens were not satisfied. The comments [stories] allowed us to pinpoint exactly what it was the people were unhappy about. Categories of Knowledge from Citizen Information Few scholars devoted attention to categories of knowledge, and those who (e.g., Schmidt, 1993) have been largely ignored by scientists and positivist philosophers of science (White and Adams, 1995, 10). Lack of attention does not mean lack of importance. Our study documents that categories of knowledge exist, and different categories of knowledge lead to different administrative actions and reactions. Taken together, recognition of the categories of knowledge allows managers to learn through the eyes of the citizens. Our analysis of the stories and discussions with the managers revealed seven categories of knowledge, each of which will be discussed in the following sections. Crowd Knowledge Crowd knowledge parallels Schmidt's (1993) feel for the whole. …