Faculty Member DeHart-Davis Releases Book on Creating Effective Rules in Public Sector Organizations

Associate Professor Leisha DeHart-Davis draws on a decade of original research and interdisciplinary scholarship in her new book, Creating Effective Rules in Public Sector Organizations. This book provides the first comprehensive portrait of rules in public organizations and seeks to find the balance between rules that create red tape and rules that help public organizations function effectively, what the author calls “green tape.”

The creation of rules that govern processes or behavior is essential to any organization, but these rules are often maligned for creating inefficiencies. DeHart-Davis builds a framework of three perspectives on rules: the organizational perspective, which sees rules as a tool for achieving managerial goals and organizational functions; the individual perspective, which examines how rule design and implementation affect employees; and the behavioral perspective, which explores human responses to the intersection of the first two perspectives. The book is available from Georgetown University Press.

DeHart-Davis joined the School of Government in 2012. She was named Albert and Gladys Hall Coates Distinguished Term Associate Professor for 2015–2017. She directs Human Capital Matters, a line of programming for human resource professionals in NC local government, and co-directs Engaging Women, a program that seeks to equip women to pursue public service leadership positions. DeHart-Davis was named a Top 100 Local Government Influencer by the Emerging Local Government Leaders Network in 2016. She teaches human resource management and the portfolio course in the School’s Master of Public Administration program. DeHart-Davis holds a PhD in public policy from the Georgia Institute of Technology.