STEVEN M. MASER
Professor of Public Management and Public Policy
S.B., Massachusetts Institute of Technology
M.A., Ph.D., University of Rochester

EML: smaser@willamette.edu
Homepage: www.willamette.edu/~smaser

I teach courses on negotiation and conflict management. I also teach courses about politics. To me, politics isn't something restricted to public elections, legislatures, or bureaucracies. It's a form of conflict, more difficult in some situations than in others, but just as much a part of business as government. My job is to teach people how to identify, structure, and resolve conflict to serve the interests of their organizations.

I enjoy teaching in a professional school. The students are highly motivated and have a right to know the relevance of the theories we are teaching them. Providing the answer is a welcome challenge. To do that, I create courses with field projects. They breathe life into theory and serve a practical purpose.

Steven Maser is a Professor of Public Management and Public Policy at Atkinson Graduate School of Management. He teaches courses in negotiation and conflict management. Professor Maser is a past director of the Atkinson School Executive Development Center and has served on numerous boards and commissions locally and regionally, including a citizens task force assigned to study bringing professional soccer to the city of Portland.
Steven has been a visiting professor of Political Economy at the Olin School of Business at Washington University, a visiting Professor at Tokyo International University and a visiting scholar at Yale Law School. His writings have appeared in the Journal of Public Affairs Education, International Public Management Journal, Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy and the Journal of Business and Management, among others.

Personal Interests:
Hiking, biking, jazz and musical theater, movies, reading.

Negotiation, Conflict Management, Economics of Organizations

“Helping Legislators Legislate:  An Executive Education Program for State Senators” (with L. Leete), 13 Journal of Public Affairs Education, 2, Summer, 2007; Reprinted in 14 Journal of the American Society of Legislative Clerks and Secretaries, 2, 2008.

"A Review Essay on the New Scholarship of Learning. What If You Want To Improve...Grading?" Journal of Public Affairs Education, 2000.

Current Projects:

“Public Administration Competencies for Students in the 21st Century” (with Jeff Raffel) in The State of Public Administration: Issues, Challenges and Opportunities, Donald Menzel and Harvey White, Editors (M.E.Sharpe: forthcoming)

Learning About Ethics: An Experiential Approach (with J. Caldwell and J. Roney), paper presented at the meetings of the Society for Business Ethics, Atlanta, GA, August, 2006; in revision for submission

Trading Off Conflict and Management Control: An Exploration

The Bid Protest Process in the Weapons Acquisition at DOD (funded research)