Banishing Bureaucracy


Book Description

The sisters are back in full form--ready, willing, and able to lend their shared wisdom, encouragement, and homegirl attitude to help women get through the minute-to-minute obstacle course called daily living.




The Reinventor's Fieldbook


Book Description

Presenting more than 70 tools, The Reinventor's Fieldbook includes hundreds of practical "lessons learned," "do's and don'ts," "steps to take," and "pitfalls to avoid" in public management and governance. Based on dozens of case studies from five countries, it covers the waterfront of high-performance public organizations, including: customer choice and customer service standards, performance measurement, and performance budgeting; employee empowerment and labor-management partnerships; managed competition and asset privatization; partnerships with communities; culture change strategies; and administrative system reform.




Reinventing Government


Book Description

"A landmark in the debate on the future of public policy."—The Washington Post.




Laboratories of Democracy


Book Description




Reinventing America's Schools


Book Description

From David Osborne, the author of Reinventing Government--a biting analysis of the failure of America's public schools and a comprehensive plan for revitalizing American education. In Reinventing America's Schools, David Osborne, one of the world's foremost experts on public sector reform, offers a comprehensive analysis of the charter school movements and presents a theory that will do for American schools what his New York Times bestseller Reinventing Government did for public governance in 1992. In 2005, when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, the city got an unexpected opportunity to recreate their school system from scratch. The state's Recovery School District (RSD), created to turn around failing schools, gradually transformed all of its New Orleans schools into charter schools, and the results are shaking the very foundations of American education. Test scores, school performance scores, graduation and dropout rates, ACT scores, college-going rates, and independent studies all tell the same story: the city's RSD schools have tripled their effectiveness in eight years. Now other cities are following suit, with state governments reinventing failing schools in Newark, Camden, Memphis, Denver, Indianapolis, Cleveland, and Oakland. In this book, Osborne uses compelling stories from cities like New Orleans and lays out the history and possible future of public education. Ultimately, he uses his extensive research to argue that in today's world, we should treat every public school like a charter school and grant them autonomy, accountability, diversity of school designs, and parental choice.




Bureaucracy


Book Description

Author Ludwig von Mises was concerned with the spread of socialist ideals and the increasing bureaucratization of economic life. While he does not deny the necessity of certain bureaucratic structures for the smooth operation of any civilized state, he disagrees with the extent to which it has come to dominate the public life of European countries and the United States. The author's purpose is to demonstrate that the negative aspects of bureaucracy are not so much a result of bad policies or corruption as the public tends to think but are the bureaucratic structures due to the very tasks these structures have to deal with. The main body of the book is therefore devoted to a comparison between private enterprise on the one hand and bureaucratic agencies/public enterprise on the other.




Dismantling Democratic States


Book Description

Bureaucracy is a much-maligned feature of contemporary government. And yet the aftermath of September 11 has opened the door to a reassessment of the role of a skilled civil service in the survival and viability of democratic society. Here, Ezra Suleiman offers a timely and powerful corrective to the widespread view that bureaucracy is the source of democracy's ills. This is a book as much about good governance as it is about bureaucratic organizations. Suleiman asks: Is democratic governance hindered without an effective instrument in the hands of the legitimately elected political leadership? Is a professional bureaucracy required for developing but not for maintaining a democratic state? Why has a reform movement arisen in recent years championing the gradual dismantling of bureaucracy, and what are the consequences? Suleiman undertakes a comparative analysis of the drive toward a civil service grounded in the New Public Management. He argues that "government reinvention" has limited bureaucracy's capacity to adequately serve the public good. All bureaucracies have been under political pressure in recent years to reduce not only their size but also their effectiveness, and all have experienced growing deprofessionalism and politicization. He compares the impact of this evolution in both democratic societies and societies struggling to consolidate democratic institutions. Dismantling Democratic States cautions that our failure to acknowledge the role of an effective bureaucracy in building and preserving democratic political systems threatens the survival of democracy itself.




Political Decisions and Agency Performance


Book Description

All over the world, many people who live in urban areas find themselves in an arduous social situation. In the third world, people in overcrowded metropolitan areas have a problem in maintaining even the slightest standards of living. But also richer parts of the world, the United States, Europe and the far-East, show growing social inequalities in their cities. And social problems are not confined to the large metropolitan areas: impoverishment, long-term unemployment, social isolation, and the dependency on welfare programs pops up in medium-sized cities and even in smaller communities. At the same time, these cities are confronted with a growing bureaucratic conglomerate which is increasingly inapt to fight social degeneration. The catastrophe seems to be total: how to deal at once with declining social conditions and bureaucratic inadequacy? Two American authors, Osborne and Plastrik (1997), claim to have found the answer: just banish bureaucracy. The liberating accomplishments of the free market will elevate ordinary citizens and force lazy, incompetent bureaucrats to do their work properly. If they succeed, they survive. Otherwise, these agencies will vanish. They illustrate their arguments with the American city of 'Uphill Battle' which stopped its decline by reinventing government. Strict performance measures, allotting financial controls and incentives to the citizens, and improving accountability have saved the city. We should, however, be very careful in taking such measures so far that they banish bureaucracy. It is far from obvious that simply banishing bureaucracy indeed will help people in poor social situations.




Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations


Book Description

How can leaders use strategic planning to strengthen their public and nonprofit organizations? In this fourth edition of his perennial bestseller Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations, Bryson provides the most updated version of his thoughtful strategic planning model and outlines the reasons public and nonprofit organizations must embrace strategic planning to improve their performance. Introduced in the first edition and refined over the past 18 years, the Strategy Change Cycle--a proven planning process used successfully by a large number of nonprofit and public organizations--is the framework used to guide the reader through the strategic planning process. Bryson offers detailed guidance on implementing the process, and specific tools and techniques to make the process work in any organization. In addition, he clarifies the organizational designs through which strategic thought and action will be encouraged and embraced throughout an entire organization. In addition to updated examples, new cases, and additional information on boundaries, distinctive competencies, Actor-Network theory, Bryson will creat an instructor's manual with sample syllabi, PowerPoint teaching slides, and additional cases.




Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance


Book Description

This global encyclopedic work serves as a comprehensive collection of global scholarship regarding the vast fields of public administration, public policy, governance, and management. Written and edited by leading international scholars and practitioners, this exhaustive resource covers all areas of the above fields and their numerous subfields of study. In keeping with the multidisciplinary spirit of these fields and subfields, the entries make use of various theoretical, empirical, analytical, practical, and methodological bases of knowledge. Expanded and updated, the second edition includes over a thousand of new entries representing the most current research in public administration, public policy, governance, nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations, and management covering such important sub-areas as: 1. organization theory, behavior, change and development; 2. administrative theory and practice; 3. Bureaucracy; 4. public budgeting and financial management; 5. public economy and public management 6. public personnel administration and labor-management relations; 7. crisis and emergency management; 8. institutional theory and public administration; 9. law and regulations; 10. ethics and accountability; 11. public governance and private governance; 12. Nonprofit management and nongovernmental organizations; 13. Social, health, and environmental policy areas; 14. pandemic and crisis management; 15. administrative and governance reforms; 16. comparative public administration and governance; 17. globalization and international issues; 18. performance management; 19. geographical areas of the world with country-focused entries like Japan, China, Latin America, Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Russia and Eastern Europe, North America; and 20. a lot more. Relevant to professionals, experts, scholars, general readers, researchers, policy makers and manger, and students worldwide, this work will serve as the most viable global reference source for those looking for an introduction and advance knowledge to the field.