How public organizations help connect people to meaningful work?
How public organizations help connect people to meaningful work?
This project is an exercise in the social scientific study of public administration, Students are expected to perform the following tasks:
(a) Choose a substantive, empirical issue pertaining to the topic of the class. The topic may certainly have normative implications, but it should be fundamentally an empirical issue. The paper should not be an advocacy document.
(b) Examine a substantial portion of the social scientific or scholarly literature analyzing that issue.
(c) Select one or more explanations or perspectives from that literature (or derive a new approach) for the chosen phenomenon.
(d) Meet with the prof (or communicate by phone or e-mail) to discuss the project. This may be done at the start of the student’s research, if desired At some point students who are examining an empirical issue should be able to state, in hypothesis form, what observable implications can be drawn from their explanation(s). Students should also be able to state the assumptions from which their hypothesis is derived. Students dealing primarily with a normative issue need to be able to state a particular thesis and also the premises from which that thesis may be derived. The prof will ask each student what literature he/she has read in researching his/her topic. Each student is required to submit a written version of a paper proposal. The written proposal should contain a stated hypothesis or thesis, the premises upon which the argument(s) is/are based, and a preliminary bibliography.
(e) Submit a brief, written progress report on the research project. The progress report should contain an outline of the paper, an introductory section and literature review, as well as an expanded bibliography.
