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The John Gaus Award is given annually to honor the recipient's lifetime of exemplary scholarship in the joint tradition of political science and public administration and to recognize achievement and encourage scholarship in public administration.

Award Committee: Sally Coleman Selden, Chair, Lynchburg College; Dan Balfour, Grand Valley State University; and Joan E. Pynes, University of South Florida

Recipient: Hal Rainey, University of Georgia
 
Award Address: "Organizations, Politics, and Public Purposes: Analyzing Public Organizations and Public Management"

Citation: The American Political Science Association confers the 2011 John Gaus award on Hal Rainey in recognition of a “lifetime of exemplary scholarship in the joint tradition of political science and public administration.”  Professor Rainey, according to one of his former students, “is best known for his good nature, humor, and exceptional scholarly work.”  

Professor Rainey is the Alumni Foundation Distinguished Professor of Public Administration in the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Georgia. In the course of his distinguished career at the University of Georgia, he has served on governmental commissions at the state and local levels, and in a variety of training, consulting and practical research roles with federal, state, and local agencies.

As a premier scholar in public management and organizational theory, Professor Rainey has played a leading role in the development of theory and research on public management and organizations.  His seminal book, Understanding and Managing Public Organizations, now in its fourth edition, is perhaps the most comprehensive and well-documented book on public sector management that currently exists.  Since the first edition of his book won the Best Book Award from the Public Sector Division of the Academy of Management, students and faculty in the field have come to rely upon his careful and precise inventory, review and synthesis of research in public management.  Professor Rainey's work has shaped how a generation of scholars understand and research public organizations--their operations and effectiveness.

Professor Rainey’s most influential work comes from his early quantitative research on public and private management, which has formed a cornerstone of public administration scholarship.  This work set in motion several decades of sustained study by researchers who have sought to better understand what makes the management of government and nonprofit activities different from that of business.  From Rainey’s early work on sector differences came a number of studies examining goal ambiguity, leadership, incentives and motivation, red tape, and reform and change.  One of the nominators wrote that Professor Rainey “is a scholar’s scholar; his work is always careful in design and execution, rigorous in methodology, quick to recognize the contributions of others, and modest in making claims about the significance of his work.”

For his research contributions to the field of public administration, Professor Rainey has received numerous awards, including the Charles Levine Award for Excellence in Public Administration, conferred jointly by the American Society for Public Administration and the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration, as well as the Dwight Waldo Award for career contributions to scholarship in public administration.   Professor Rainey is an Elected Fellow of  the National Academy of Public Administration.  He has served as chair of the Public Administration Section of the American Political Science Association and chair of the Public and Nonprofit Division of the Academy of Management.  During his exceptional career, Professor Rainey has served on more than 100 doctoral dissertation committees and 12 editorial boards.