The MPA Comprehensive Exam consists of two parts; a core course section and an integrative section. On exam day you will be required to answer two core questions and one integrative question. All possible questions are listed below. There are four questions listed for each core course. One question for each core course will be on the exam. On the day of the exam you will select which two course based questions (that are listed) you will answer.
After the core questions below there is a list of five integrative case study questions. For the exam you will be randomly assigned ONE of the integrative questions to answer.
That means you need to prepare for all of them.
Please contact the MPA Coordinator, Jonathan Anderson, with any questions about the process. jfanders@csusb.edu
PA603 Research Methods in Administration
1. Suppose you want to examine why people choose to enter into a public sector career. Describe how you research this question following the traditional model of science.
2. You are hired by the City’s Public Works Department to conduct a survey to investigate citizen’s willingness to pay for renovating the city’s Park and Ride parking lot for Amtrak. The Department Director needs your advice about
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the merits and limitations of surveys,
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the ethical and political issues related to surveys, and
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your recommendations to deal with those issues.
3. Your organization must conduct a program performance assessment which includes a client satisfaction survey. Discuss methodological issues of the survey and its usefulness. Make sure you address a) Sampling, b) Internal validity, c) External validity, d) Researcher impact, and e) Ethical issues.

4. You are exploring the issues of bankruptcy in a community and have decided to use interviews as your research method. Propose a research design to include issues of sampling, data collection and analysis. Include a description of strengths and weaknesses of interviews.
611 Public Administration Theory and Practice
1. The dichotomy between bureaucracy and democracy or politics and administration is one of the fundamental tensions in public administration theory and practice. Discuss in detail the underlying factors involved in this tension. Why, despite its undemocratic character, does bureaucracy remain central to governance?
2. Discuss in detail the manner in which the works of Woodrow Wilson and Frederick
Taylor influenced public administration thought and practice. Focus on common themes and ideas. In particular, delineate the manner in which their writings have contributed to the establishment of a “politics-administration” dichotomy.
3. Public administrators operate under a number of constraints. Discuss the fundamental political, legal and managerial constraints that influence administrators’ daily decision-making. Provide an example of each constraint.
4. Public Administration is, in many ways, a function of its historical context. Identify three historical events that significantly impacted public administration practices.
Discuss the manner in which those historical developments affected public administration thought and practice.
PA 615 Public Financial Management
1. You have been tasked with developing a new risk management program. Respond in detail to the following, ensuring that you explain all risk management terminology used:
(a) identify and explain at least five primary risk management concepts that every organization should consider,
(b) what are three major risk containment program elements that you would recommend and why, and
(c) describe at least six organizational benefits that you will present to “sell” your recommended program.
2. You have been hired to design an internal control system for a newly incorporated city. Explain what comprises internal control in local government and how it supports sound financial management. Identify and explain at least six examples of control activities you would include in your design. Discuss some of the benefits and drawbacks of installing a management information system to support your internal control plan.

3. An important element of financial management in government is the ability of a jurisdiction to accurately assess its financial condition. Explain what assessing financial condition refers to, the tools used to accomplish an accurate assessment and the relevant information necessary to conduct a review of a jurisdiction
’s financial condition.
Finally, discuss the importance of a jurisdiction ’s financial condition from the perspectives of residents and potential residents, businesses, contractors, policy makers and public managers.
4. Explain what capital budgeting is and the differences between a capital budget and an operating budget. In terms of assessing expenditure decisions, discuss the factors that a public manager should consider and how she or he determines whether to purchase a capital item, or not. Finally, discuss methods to finance capital projects while providing an example for each method you identify.
PA650 Managing Information Systems
1. Suppose you are the newly hired director of the Information System (IS) Department in City A. Your department provides system support to all units in the City. In the past the City has not engaged in IS strategic planning. You propose to develop an IS strategy (or IS strategic plan) for the city. Please advise your department why an IS strategy (or strategic plan) is necessary and what components an IS strategy (or strategic plan) should include. Propose at least three managerial or architectural guidelines for developing the IS strategy (or strategic plan).
2. Your city council recently approved your recommendation as city manager to overhaul the city’s official website, which was originally developed and maintained by your staff, and which no longer meets the needs of city residents. The city council needs your advice on whether the city should renovate the website in-house or contract out.
Please advise them on the advantages and disadvantages of developing in-house and outsourcing respectively. With regard to your city’s situation, what factors should be considered in making the decision?
3.
You are the supervisor of your city’s 311(non-emergency) call center. Your group spends its workday answering calls, and sometimes placing calls, to citizens to assist in solving a variety of non-emergency city service issues. The center has a rule that personal phone calls are only allowed during breaks. You are assigned to monitor each representative on the phone for 15 minutes a day, as part of your regular job tasks. The representatives are aware that you will be monitoring them, and citizens are immediately informed when they begin their calls. You begin to monitor representative
A, and find that she is on a personal call regarding her sick child, while she is not on break.
What are five dimensions of ethical issues in an information society? Applying an ethical analysis framework, analyze the ethical dimensions of the case and the conflicting values. Suggest a practical solution to the issue.

4. You are the IT director of City B. The county sheriff is proposing an information sharing system among law enforcement agencies in the county to facilitate crossjurisdictional information sharing in combating crimes and terrorism. Your city manager wants to know more about this issue. Draft a memo telling him what information sharing is about and offering two information sharing models for consideration. Identify at least three challenges as well as three facilitating factors to information sharing, and suggest at least two best practices for information sharing.
PA 662 Human Resource Management in the Public Sector
1. Use Paul Light’s Tides of Reform taxonomy to discuss overarching trends in HR related to compensation and benefits (e.g., pension reforms across the country) and position management changes in places like Georgia, Arizona, and the Department of
Homeland Security.
2. Discuss the use of selection tests (e.g., education and experience documents are
“tests”) using three examples: a frontline administrative assistant in a large organization, a professional with expertise, and a city manager. (This must be presented as an essay, not a simple listing of tests.)
3. Describe three different approaches to appraisal as well as their strengths and weaknesses. Describe a relatively thorough appraisal system with at least five components.
4. Briefly review the general collective bargaining structure. Specifically answer: who supervises unions and what are the provisions under which they may operate. What choices do unions have in representing their members when negotiations are stalled.
Discuss at least one other aspect of collective bargaining in your essay.
PA 663 Public Budgeting and Finance
1. Is cutback budget management science or art? As part of your response, weave in descriptions of the common cutback management strategies and give examples to make your case. What strategies might you use to minimize conflict between organizational departments and agencies?
2. Public budgeting provides the foundation for accounting control and reflects the fund structures that underlie the accounting system. Explai n “fund accounting” in public budgeting including the following terms: account, asset accounts, liquidity, liability accounts, and net assets and fund balance. Using standard pubic budgeting fund structure (Governmental, Proprietary, and Fiduciary Funds), describe at least six funds and provide examples for their use.

3. Over the past two decades, local governments have become increasingly more reliant upon the use of service charges and fees. Explain why there has been a shift in relying upon service charges and fees to generate revenue for local governments. As you explain this revenue policy, discuss their benefits and challenges/barriers while providing three examples of each (3 examples of benefits; 3 examples of challenges/barriers).
4. Increasingly, local governments are using performance measurement data to inform decisionmaking and, in particular, resource allocation. From a public manager’s perspective, discuss the rationale behind the push to use performance data in the budgeting process (e.g., Government Performance and Results Act) along with the benefits and challenges. Finally, develop a model or process where performance measurement information is used to assess the effectiveness of a local government service (other than a form of dispatching measurement).
PA 664 Management of Public Organizations
1. Management of diversity may be viewed as one of the new organizational paradigms for public and nonprofit managers. Discuss the role of the manager in recognizing, valuing, and engaging diffe rences. Include commentary on what basic “cultural competence” skills are necessary for effective cross-cultural service delivery. Then discuss (a) diversity and decision-making and (b) leading in culturally diverse organizations.
2. Conflict management is an important public and nonprofit management role. Explain and discuss the (a) systems, (b) attribution, and (c) social exchange theories of conflict.
Describe four major sources of interpersonal conflict in public and nonprofit organizations. With this backdrop and a mindset that embraces conflict as an opportunity, discuss at least four benefits of conflict.
3. A critical part of the role of public and nonprofit managers is to get the best qualitative and quantitative performance from the fewest resources while serving the public interest. Market-based strategies are among the tools available to achieve this and have been well studied. Provide an overview of what market-based strategies are. Then, describe and discuss at least eight lessons learned from such strategies that cover (a) service delivery, and/or (b) internal government services.
4. Knowledge management (KM) is an emerging management role for public and nonprofit managers. Define KM and the difference between explicit and tacit organizational knowledge. Explain the converging trends that are driving organizational
KM. Contrast this relatively new managerial role with the theory of learning organizations.

PA 672 Administrative Regulation
1. Briefly describe at least five major pieces of legislation that have affected administrative law and discuss their contribution to making administrative law what it is today.
2. Critics suggest that the bureaucracy is unchecked. While public agencies occasionally make unwise decisions, generally they are relatively well overseen by all three branches of government. Write a detailed essay (not a list) about how the federal bureaucracy is checked, e.g., by the President via executive orders. Tip: all three branches check the bureaucracy.
3. What are at least five major values that are traded-off in the rule-making process?
Define your terms and discuss how these trade-offs happen.
4. Discuss procedural due process in administrative process; what factors must be balanced by the courts, such as the Supreme Court? Provide at least three case examples that shed light on the principle of proportionality (e.g., Goss v Lopez); that is, the more substantial the outcome, the more due process may be required.
PA 680 Public Policy Analysis
1. When conducting a policy analysis, “defining the problem” is a very difficult enterprise in and of itself. There are multiple answers to this question which will, in turn have an impact on the type of policy instrument one selects. It is critical to understand that there is a fundamental inadequacy in the way we think about policy problems in simple, functional terms (e.g., this is an immigration problem; this is a health problem, etc.).
Problems have numerous dimensions. Analyze the variety of dimensions of two public policy problems. At a minimum, you should include an analysis of the stakeholders, the costs of the problems, and the history or origins of the problems.
2. One might describe the working policy analyst’s duties as including collection and organization of data, application of appropriate analytical techniques, clarification of the issues involved, and formulation of alternatives for resolution of a problem, with perhaps a recommendation as to the best way to go. For the policymaker, this rational methodology of analysis constitutes only one kind of approach to public problemsolving, and often not the most persuasive one. In the political process there are other, less rational factors operating than in the logical-rational mode of the policy analyst.
Select and discuss at least two of these “non-rational” factors in the decisions of policymakers.
3. Discuss the stages of public policy analysis including defining what each stage is, the role of each stage in the process of policy analysis, the problems the analyst faces in each of these stages, and how these problems can be limited or avoided. Finally,

discuss the potential contributions and limitations of policy analysis for improving public policy and solving public problems.
4. There are many ways to view the “fairness” or equity of a policy proposal. This includes whether you feel the situation is best viewed in terms of horizontal or vertical equity and your view about who should pay (or not pay) and who benefits (or should not benefit). Evaluate the equity of each of the following policy proposals. a) Gradually increase the gas tax by 15 cents beginning in 2013 to fully fund the transportation trust fund for federal transportation projects. b) Index the retirement age to increases in longevity, which means that retirement age in 2050 would be around 68 rather than 67 in order to increase the fiscal solvency of social security through 2075. c) Increase the maximum income level that people and employers pay social security taxes (i.e., Payroll Tax) in order to increase the fiscal solvency through 2075. d) Reduce the budget of the Smithsonian and National Park Service and allow these agencies to offset the cuts by charging user fees (e.g., admission fees) to save $300 million in 2015.
[Background for this question may be found at http://www.fiscalcommission.gov
]
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Question # 1 Leadership/Management
1. You are the City Manager of the City of Anywhere. During your current mid-year budget review, you have learned that 20% of your anticipated general revenue will not be realized in the next fiscal year. You have called a meeting of your Department
Directors to consider next fiscal year’s shortfall and propose a plan for the City Council’s action. Your plan should:
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Articulate the challenges that the City is facing and specify financial, human resource, managerial, and political objectives.
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Propose a detailed strategy to address the shortfall. Disclose and discuss two to three possible unintended consequences of your strategy.
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Address how your team will communicate with staff to lead the organization through the challenges.
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Address how you will explain the plan to the city council members and the public.

Question # 2 Policy Process
You are an assistant to the City Manager for a medium sized city in Southern California.
A new policy/law has been passed by the state legislature that will impact the city
(select a policy issue that you are familiar with, e.g., reducing greenhouse gas emission by 20%). You need to develop a briefing paper for the city council, city manager, and staff that explains the policy in detail, including its development and possible implications for the city.
As part of this briefing you should: a) Provide an overview of how the policy/law came to be
– identifying the main stakeholders at the federal, state, and local levels.
b) Present a brief on the social, political, and economic context of the policy.
c) Analyze how the policy/law is likely to impact the city by applying the key steps of policy management.
d) Recommend an approach for the city to effectively implement the policy/legislation.
Question #3 Critical Thinking/ Problem Solving
You are the lead policy analyst for a Southern California municipality of approximately
200,000 people. This is a blue-collar city that has never been known to be particularly affluent. The past two years, due to an economic downturn, have been especially rough for the city. Over the past decade the nature of the local economy has also gone through significant changes. Historically, it was dominated by large labor intensive industries. Currently, however, most of the large employers are technology-driven and are not necessarily as labor intensive. The unemployment rate, which has traditionally fluctuated around 10%, has risen over the past two years to 20%. The worsening condition of the city has become the focal point of local and national attention.
The federal government has decided to award the municipality a $10 million grant to address the growing unemployment problem. The city council, however, is divided on how the funds should be spent. Half of the members believe that the funds should be spent on attracting new businesses. Their main argument is that new businesses will provide additional jobs. Such a strategy would also increase revenues for the city. The other half believes that money should be spent on education. Their main argument is based on the fact that education leads to more innovation, which in turn creates more business opportunities and jobs.
You have been tasked with evaluating these two perspectives and providing a conclusive recommendation to the council for spending the grant money.
In your answer:

a) Clearly articulate the problem and identify the major stakeholder groups. What are their interests? b) Identify an alternative explanation (other than the economic downturn) to the rise in the unemployment rate. c) Define the management objectives and analyze the merits of both approaches (e.g., effectiveness, opportunity cost) in achieving the objectives. Do you have sufficient data or would you need additional information/research to make your decision? What additional information do you need and how would you go about obtaining/conducting it? d) Make a recommendation and justify it.
Question #4 Public Service Perspective
You have worked as a public manager for over twenty years. You are proud of your public service and have been recognized by family and community for your efforts.
Recently your nephew came to you for advice about a career in the public sector. Your nephew particularly wants to know: a) How is management in the public sector different from the private sector? b) What are the dilemmas of management in a democratic governance system? c) What motivates you to work in the public sector and how do you keep motivated over the long term despite organizational and political challenges? d) What ethical issues are involved with working in the public sector? How do you resolve them?
Question #5 Diversity/Communications
It has been quite a month since you took over this troubled division as the manager where a culture war seems to have broken out. The administration is looking to you to help calm things down, but simultaneously ensure that any unprofessional behavior stops immediately. It is a tall order. The division does a lot of case work with the public so it has both individual case meetings in cubicles (although the vast majority are by letter, email and phone) and front-counter interactions.
Some of the issues at hand include the following: a) A number of employees wear religious clothing or ornaments. There have been some complaints from the public about some of them. O ne employee’s cubicle has walls with religious pictures and shelves with religious icons on them. The same employee occasionally wears a pressed shirt that has the name of her religious group embroidered on the back in very large lettering. b) Your predecessor allowed some employees to engage in religious activities in a spare room of the office. There are internal complaints about the separation of church

and state, and threats to complain outside the organization. The religious activities have been conducted during the noon lunch hour and an afternoon break around 3:30. c) A conservative employee is offended by the behavior of a supervisor who jokingly says things like, “now girls,” and compliments people on their “apparel.” Your supervisor noted in a sneering tone that the employee in question is an “overbearing, judgmental religious bigot.” d) A female employee has informed you that her new husband insists she start wearing a traditional set of religious clothing which conceals much of her face.
She occasionally deals with the general public at the front counter. State law does not allow switching out positions based on religious garb in general, but it is unclear and legally untested whether this is an extreme or special case. You know that it will be upsetting to a number of the employees, and clients who are used to seeing the face of the person that they are talking to.
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Discuss the major managerial and legal issues that you must sort out before you decide on actions.
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What ethical and/or legal principles have to be balanced?
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Discuss the actions that you would take, including consultations.
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Discuss or amplify how you would show empathy and sensitivity while enforcing rules.
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Compose a single paragraph that you intend to send to employees as a reminder about civility, diversity, and professionalism. It should be aspirational in tone rather than rule-oriented (which you will address separately).