Boschken, Herman L. 1944-

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BOSCHKEN, Herman L. 1944-

PERSONAL: Born June 12, 1944, in San Jose, CA; son of Herman Hoeft (a commercial banker) and Lutha (a homemaker; maiden name, Rossi) Boschken; married Irene Hartung (an educational administrator), August 28, 1966; children: Steven F., David Rossi. Ethnicity: "White." Education: University of California, Berkeley, B.S., 1966, M.B.A., 1968; University of Washington, Seattle, Ph.D., 1972. Hobbies and other interests: Winemaking, skiing.


ADDRESSES: Offıce—Department of Organization and Management, San Jose State University, San Jose, CA 95192-0070. E-mail—[email protected].


CAREER: Ford Motor Co., Dearborn, MI, strategic financial analyst for product development group, 1967-69; San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, assistant professor of management, 1973-77; University of Southern California, Los Angeles, assistant professor of policy, planning, and development, 1977-81; University of California, Berkeley, visiting professor at Haas School of Business, 1981-82; San Jose State University, San Jose, CA, professor of organization and management, 1982—. University of New Brunswick, holder of Fulbright New Brunswick Distinguished Chair in Property Studies, 2000-01. Consultant to Vail Resorts, Scholastic Corp., and governments of Canada, Sweden, and South Africa.


MEMBER: American Political Science Association, American Society for Public Administration, Academy of Management.


AWARDS, HONORS: Federal sea grant, Department of Commerce, 1979-81; senior Fulbright scholar at University of Umea, 1983; Jeffrey Pressman Award for best article, Policy Studies Review, 1986, for "Public Enterprise, Economic Development, and the Impact of Environmental Regulation: The Experience of American Seaports on the Pacific Rim"; Charles H. Levine Award, Public Sector, Academy of Management, 1988; Herbert Kaufman Award, American Political Science Association, 1990, for "Analyzing Performance Skewness in Public Agencies: The Case of Urban Mass Transit"; Best Book of the Year, Public Sector, Academy of Management, 2002, for Social Class, Politics, and Urban Markets: The Makings of Bias in Policy Outcomes; grants from National Science Foundation, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration federal sea grant program, California Lottery Fund for University Research, American Political Science Association, Lincoln Foundation, and California Department of Real Estate.

WRITINGS:

Corporate Power and the Mismarketing of Urban Development, Praeger (New York, NY), 1974.

Port Authorities as Public Enterprises: Organizational Adjustment to Conflicting Demands, NOAA Sea Grant Program/University of Southern California (Los Angeles, CA), 1982.

Land Use Conflicts: Organizational Design and Resource Management, University of Illinois Press (Champaign, IL), 1982.

Strategic Design and Organizational Change: Pacific Rim Seaports in Transition, University of Alabama Press (University, AL), 1988.

Social Class, Politics, and Urban Markets: The Makings of Bias in Policy Outcomes, Stanford University Press (Stanford, CA), 2002.


Contributor to books, including The Breakdown of Class Politics: A Debate on Post-Industrial Stratification, edited by Terry N. Clark and Seymour Martin Lipset, Johns Hopkins University Press (Baltimore, MD), 2001; and Strategic Management, 6th edition, edited by Charles Hill and Gareth Jones, Houghton-Mifflin (Boston, MA), 2003. Contributor to academic journals, including Administration and Society, Social Science Quarterly, Urban Affairs Review, Urban Studies, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Public Works Management and Policy, Public Administration Review, Academy of Mangement Review, Journal of Management, Coastal Zone Management Journal, and Journal of Leisure Research. Associate editor, Political Research Quarterly, 1978-82; editor, Intermodal Fare, 1994-98.


WORK IN PROGRESS: Impacts of the American Upper Middle Class and Government Structure on Global-City Development.


SIDELIGHTS: Herman L. Boschken told CA: "My writing has always been attendant to my deep interest in public-policy research. I write to articulate the complex concepts that I work with and to share the important and often provocative findings that I discover in the social sciences. Although my focus is specialized in urban affairs, transportation, and the environment, I direct my writings toward a broader audience—one that can see the larger practical implications of policy outcomes on society.

"Most writers are embedded in a small community of intellectuals sharing some common interests. Over the past thirty years, there have been several of these which have provided inspiration, support, and critical review. Early on, my policy focus was on land use and environmental policy. In those days, there was a small but geographically spread community that was interested in investigating environmental policymaking from the standpoint of American federalism and intergovernmental relations. My writing in this field resulted in several refereed articles and two books, Land Use Conflicts: Organizational Design and Resource Management and Corporate Power and the Mismarketing of Urban Development. Another community which I was part of in the 1980s jelled around the emergence of global transportation and the 'container revolution.' The nexus of this new intermodal transportation system was in the Pacific Rim and facilitated the globalization of trade between Asia and the United States. Being a Californian from birth, I was particularly well-situated to appreciate the new developments which ultimately spawned Silicon Valley growth and the spreading of globalization across the country from its trans-Pacific origins. Ultimately, my research led me to publish several more articles and a book called Strategic Design and Organizational Change: Pacific Rim Seaports in Transition.


"My most recent research and writing began about 1990 and evolved around a community of scholars interested in the causes of bias in urban policy outcomes. For years, the literature was only interested in measuring policy performance from a single perspective, usually regarding whether outcomes were efficient or alternatively whether they were effectively delivered. But growing evidence suggested that in comparing public agencies, the impact of their policy-making was being skewed to benefit one 'public' at the expense of another. Bias varied from agency to agency, but the skewing of outcomes to favor certain interests over others was not well researched. Having enormous implications for equality and accountability, the subject piqued my interest. I organized an effort to evaluate social science literature to see what best explained the causes of bias in policy outcomes. What I found amazed a lot of people: the single most important factor implicated in the bias was social class and not the usual suspects of active politics, wealth and poverty, or the structure of the government. Specifically, the American upper-middle class, although a small proportion of the population, had come to be disproportionately represented, not by active civic engagement, but by a symbolic icon or genre which influenced policymakers through what Clarence Stone calls 'systemic power.' With the collaboration of yet another small community of scholars, the research led to nearly a dozen refereed articles over the decade and the book Social Class, Politics, and Urban Markets: The Makings of Bias in Policy Outcomes.

"This work is leading me down a new path which looks at the causes that distinguish American global cities from their non-global counterparts. The major focus carries forward an interest in the upper-middle class genre in determining which cities become global, but it also will look at several other factors as well. The research promises to be important, because global cities appear to be emerging as city states, potentially replacing national governments (including that of the United States) in their power to provide for peace and security in a world of haves and have-nots. A concept article was published in the Urban Affairs Review in July, 2003."


BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Planning Association Journal, winter, 1983, review of Land Use Conflicts: Organizational Design and Resource Management.

Annals of Regional Science, October, 1975, review of Corporate Power and the Mismarketing of Urban Development.

Journal of Economic Literature, March, 1975, review of Corporate Power and the Mismarketing of Urban Development.

Real Estate Review, winter, 1976, review of Corporate Power and the Mismarketing of Urban Development.

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