Book Review: Managing Human Behavior in Public and Nonprofit Organizations

• Author: Kendra Stewart
• DOI: 10.1177/073437102237819
• Published date: 01 December 2002
• Date: 01 December 2002
• Subject Matter: Articles

gan, and Wisconsin. The scope of judicial review of grievance arbitration is

expanding in several states, with arbitrators’ awards more likely to be

vacated by judges. There is some evidence of a possible national trend for

new legislative restrictions on collective bargaining rights, as observed in

the chapters on California, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Another

general conclusion is that legal strikes are permissible in a growing number

of states, as public managers fear them less and unions are less inclined to

call them (yet Hawaii, moving against the national trend, extended interest

arbitration to its employees in 1995 to replace the strike).

Several chapters offer interesting and instructive data and insights on

developments in labor relations. William C. Houlihan’s examination of

Wisconsin, the first state to authorize collective bargaining, illustrates a

complex and diverse statutory and procedural treatment of collective bar-

gaining along many dimensions. A relatively recent innovation is the Qual-

ified Economic Offer (QEO), through which a school district can escape

arbitration with its teachers. The QEO may be implemented unilaterally by

the employer when negotiations are declared to be deadlocked, thereby

maintaining existing benefits and providing a small salary increase. The

QEO appears to have chilled collective bargaining in public education and

moved Wisconsin toward statewide determination of teacher bargaining

outcomes.

Despite its limitations, Collective Bargaining in the Public Sector isavalu-

able contribution to the relatively sparse literature on public sector labor

relations. The authors provide abundant detail and data on bargaining in

the eight states that should prove to be particularly useful for labor relations

researchers and practitioners. Instructors of labor relations courses will find

many helpful examples of labor relations law and practice.

—Richard C. Kearney

East Carolina University

Denhardt, Robert B., Denhardt, Janet Vinzant, and Aristigueta, Maria P.

(2002). Managing Human Behavior in Public and Nonprofit Organizations.

Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 456 pp.

DOI: 10.1177/073437102237819

This book is designed to be a text for an upper-level undergraduate or

graduate course on public sector or nonprofit management and organiza-

tional behavior.Organizational behavior is defined as “the study of individ-

BOOK REVIEWS 335

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