MPA-ESP professor co-authors a winning article featured in the American Review of Public Administration (ARPA)

Columbia professors Dr. Tanya Heikkila, Assistant Professor of International and Public Affairs at the School of International and Public Affairs’ Environmental Science and Policy Program, and her colleague Kimberley Isett, Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Mailman School of Health, collaborated to write Modeling Operational Decision Making in Public Organizations: An Integration of Two Institutional Theories. This article has been chosen as the best article in the American Review of Public Administration (ARPA) for 2004.

ARPA is a “peer-reviewed journal which features articles that address rapidly-emerging issues in the study of public affairs and public administration.” The article attempts to bridge institutional theories coming from the political science and organization theory disciplines. Heikkila and Isett present a model of operational decision making in public organizations that integrates concepts from the two intuitional schools of thought.

Furthermore, they apply the model in two case studies- one in the field of mental health provision and the other in the field of water resource management- to demonstrate the usefulness of this integrated approach to institutional analysis. Their award will be presented September 2nd at the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting in Washington.

Heikkila, Tanya and Kimberley Roussin Isett. Modeling Operational Decision Making in Public Organizations: An Integration of Two Institutional Theories. American Review of Public Administration, Vol. XX No. X, March 2004 1-17.