To keep government operating smoothly, changes in public management policy and strategy usually follow the old rule of change--that it must evolve in a systematic and incremental fashion. But in today's unpredictable world of shrinking budgets, demands for better service, and greater accountability, playing by the old rules just doesn't make sense.
In this book, L. Douglas Kiel presents a framework that addresses the new chaotic reality of public management and the need for responsive change and innovation. By acknowledging the potential for positive change and renewal that can arise from uncertainty and instability, Kiel offers managers a paradigm for transforming government performance.
In easy to understand terms, the author offers an overview of the concepts of chaos theory and the science of complexity and he demonstrates how public administrators can apply these concepts to create a new vision of organizational change. The book presents a range of both traditional and innovative management techniquesshaping organizational cultures, flattening hierarchies, and re-engineering work--and evaluates their capacity to allow organizational systems to respond to change.
Written for public administrators and the faculty and students of public management, this book describes the importance of disorder, instability, and change and examines how new chaos theories are applied to public management. Drawing on data from the author's case studies, the book is filled with charts, graphs, and practical computer spreadsheet exercises designed to give public managers and students of public management hands-on experience to meet the challenges of organizational change.

Shows government agencies how to meet the needs of customers seamlessly, that is, in a smooth, effortless, responsive manner. Details a step-by-step approach to assess, design and implement significant change in all levels of government?and how to overcome resistance along the way.

In this revised and enlarged edition of their established textbook, Gavin Drewry and Tony Butcher bring their wide--ranging, critical survey of the Britsh civil service fully up--to--date, concluding with an examination of the nature and significance of the a Next Stepsa programme which is currently transforming the structure and management of the civil service.

Public sector organizations are in one of the most challenging environments they have ever had to face as they bear much of the cost of the recession. More than ever before, public sector leaders need to instil strong performance improvement disciplines into their organizations that enable these leaders to fully understand: key outcomes and priority deliverables, how to allocate reduced financial resources and where to reduce costs and improve efficiencies without jeopardizing service delivery.
Written in an accessible and practical style, this fully-updated second edition addresses the efficiency drive using models, tools and ideas more commonly found in the corporate world, such as balanced scorecard and Lean. It also includes new case studies and real-life examples, from Audit Scotland, Belfast City Council, Brisbane City Council, City of Charlotte, Civil Service College (Singapore) FBI, NHS, Ministry of Works (Bahrain), Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the US Postal Service.

As a stand-alone treatment of Organizational Development (OD), this is an excellent supplement to traditional textbooks in the field and is a good addition to readings in organizational behavior and principles of management. Carnevale provides the essentials of OD and more through his strong handling of the field's underlying values and assumptions."Organizational Development in the Public Sector" covers many of the standard OD topics like action research, group dynamics, and coverage of OD as a field of study. There is considerable treatment of change, resistance to change, and defensive conduct concerning transformation in organizations. Carnevale also explores conflict resolution, leadership issues, systems theory, public-private differences, process consultation, a brief history of modern management reform, group dynamics, trust, hierarchy, and labor relations.

Headlines of public service corruption scandals are painful reminders of the need for continuing education in the subjects of ethics and integrity. Public service professionals employed as government officials, forensic scientists, investigators, first responders, and those within the legal and justice systems, face daily decisions that can mean the difference between life or death and freedom or imprisonment. Sometimes, such decisions can present ethical dilemmas even to the most seasoned of professionals. Building on the success of the first edition, Ethics for the Public Service Professional, Second Edition serves as a single-source resource for the topic of ethics and ethical decision making as it relates to government service. While incorporating an examination of the history of ethics, codes and legislation, the book exposes the reader to the challenges faced by today's public service professionals and administrators in incorporating ethics within daily decisions, procedures, and duties. Key features include: Current controversies in police, forensic, and other public service sectors including: racial profiling, evidence tampering, disaster response, and audits Important new mechanisms of accountability, including use-of-force reporting, citizen complaint procedures, and open government Contemporary news stories throughout the book introduce the reader to a broad range of ethical issues facing leaders within the public service workplace Chapter pedagogy including key terms, learning objectives, end-of-chapter questions, a variety of boxed ethical case examples, and references Ripped from the Headlines current event examples demonstrate actual scenarios involving the issues discussed within each chapter This in-depth text will be essential for the foundational development and explanation of protocols used within a successful organization. As such, Ethics for the Public Service Professional, Second Edition will help introduce ethics and ethical decision-making to both those new to the realm of forensic science, criminal justice, and emergency services and those already working in the field.

Praise for Leading Across Boundaries

"Leading Across Boundaries is a terrific resource for nonprofit leaders. It is filled with great stories of collaboration, and also with the how-to's to make them work "
-Arlene Kaukus, former president, United Way of Buffalo and Erie County, and a nonprofit consultant

"Linden illustrates the importance of collaboration, but drives further into issues of networks to teach us valuable lessons about core interests, trust, leadership, and success. This book is a very valuable and timely resource for practitioners who seek to produce more value from effective collaboration."
-Stephen Goldsmith, Daniel Paul Professor of Government, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and author, The Power of Social Innovation

"Linden provides a fresh, practitioner-oriented perspective on the topic of collaboration-especially for those in the public and nonprofit sectors wanting to benefit from Web 2.0 and social-networking technologies. It's a gem of a book and a terrific road map for leading change."

-Warren Master, president and editor-in-chief, The Public Manager

"Linden uses fabulous examples to illustrate the essential ideas for collaboration and for effective leadership. His discussions of political acumen and the interpersonal side of collaboration are especially enlightening. I've been a manager for a long time, and wish I'd read this book earlier in my career "
-Ellen Switkes, assistant vice president emeritus, academic advancement, office of the president, University of California

"Trust, transparency, and relationships are keys to successful collaboration. Linden takes these concepts and more and constructs a masterful lesson plan for us to follow."
-Tim Longo, police chief, Charlottesville, Virginia

..".an invaluable contribution to anyone charged with shaping organizations, big and small."-Don Kettl, author, The Next Government of the United States

Note: CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of eBook file.

The practice of public human resource management has changed significantly in the past 5 years due to increased outsourcing, privatization and the diminution of public employee rights. This revised edition of a core handbook provides a wide variety of practicing managers and public human resource managers with authoritative and state-of-art information on the practice of public human resource management. This new Third Edition features contributions from Donald Klingner, Mary Guy, Jonathan West, Jeffrey Brudney, Montgomery Van Wart, and others. Expanded and updated coverage includes increased outsourcing, privatization, diminishing employee rights, and emergency/disaster management.

This book argues that if public services are to be 'reformed' or 'improved', achieving the best possible quality of service is essential.It starts from the premise that citizens and users are the key 'stakeholders'. They need to be consulted and involved at every stage. Within inevitable resource constraints, it is their needs, balanced with those of society, which must be met. Service providers need to change their culture and behaviour to make this happen.This book presents a straightforward and comprehensive model for understanding quality and putting it into practice. Existing quality philosophies and approaches are examined. Overviews of recent policy on quality in central and local government, in the health service, and in public service partnerships are included. Finally, five practitioners present practical 'vignettes' of citizen involvement, local partnerships, and quality improvement in health, housing and local government.Providing Quality in the Public Sector is essential reading for students and practitioners in the fields of public policy, local government, health, housing and the voluntary sector.

The creation of rules that govern processes or behavior is essential to any organization, but these rules are often maligned for creating inefficiencies. This book provides the first comprehensive portrait of rules in public organizations and seeks to find the balance between rules that create red tape and rules that help public organizations function effectively, what the author calls "green tape." Drawing on a decade of original research and interdisciplinary scholarship, Leisha DeHart-Davis builds a framework of three perspectives on rules: the organizational perspective, which sees rules as a tool for achieving managerial goals and organizational functions; the individual perspective, which examines how rule design and implementation affect employees; and the behavioral perspective, which explores human responses to the intersection of the first two perspectives. The book then considers the effectiveness of rules, applying these perspectives to a case study of employee grievance policies in North Carolina local government. Finally, the book concludes by outlining five attributes of effective rules-green tape-to guide future rule creation in public organizations. It applies green tape principles to the Five-Second Rule, a crowd control policy Missouri police implemented in the wake of protests following the Michael Brown shooting. Government managers and scholars of public administration will benefit from DeHart-Davis's investigation and guidance.

"Ethics and Integrity in Public Administration" presents cutting-edge perspectives on the role of ethics in public sector management - what it is and where it is going. The contributors include a cross-section of authoritative authors from around the globe, and from both the academy and government. They cover a wide range of topics, diverse theoretical and conceptual paradigms, and global examples, and provide a broader view than what is typically offered in other books. The book includes both theoretical insights and commentaries grounded in practice. Chapters are divided into three parts: Ethical Foundations and Perspectives, Ethical Management and Ethical Leadership, and International and Comparative Perspectives.

This volume, the result of the 21st Conference on Postal and Delivery Economics (Ireland, 2013), describes the continuing problem of the decline of the postal sector in the face of electronic competition and offers strategies for the survival of mail services in a digital age.The 25 original papers in this collection provide econometric analyses on the changing demand and elasticity of mail in the modern era. Proposed solutions to declining interest in the postal sector include closer links between mail services and the digital sphere, expansion of the parcel sector, changes to the universal service obligation, legal reform and regulatory change. Professors and students of regulatory economics will have an interest in this book, as will managers and other decision-makers working within the postal sector. Contributors include: D. Bailly, L. Balk Hope, C. Borsenberger, A.T. Bozzo, M.D. Bradley, T.J. Brennan, K.L. Capogrossi, I. Carslake, M.M. Cigno, K.K. Clendenin, J. Colvin, H. Cremer, M.A. Crew, P. De Donder, B.K. Eakin, R. Eccles, K. Elkela, A. Fratini, F. Fustier, R.R. Geddes, D. Geradin, B. Gough, A. Gustafsson, A. Haller, J. Hearn, H. Hennessy, A. Hildingsson, A.C. Houck, G. Houpis, C. Jaag, L. Janin, D. Joram, S. Lecou, J. Levin, C. Malamataris, B. Marsh, M. Meidinger, M. Moloney, H. Nikali, C.J. Paterson, E.S. Pearsall, M.K. Perkins, J. Pickett, R. Sahly, S. Selander, C. Sheedy, M. Srinivasan, V.I. Stanford, C. Strobel, G. Swinand, U. Trinkner, T. Uotila, J. Vantomme, T. Walsh

For civil servants who take an oath to uphold the Constitution, that document is the supreme symbol of political morality. Constitutional issues are addressed by civil servants every day, whenever a policeman arrests a suspect or members of different branches of government meet. But how well do these individuals really understand the Constitution's application in their jobs?

This book encourages civil servants to reflect on specific constitutional principles and events and learn to apply them to the decisions they make. Twenty seminal articles by a preeminent scholar seek to legitimate public service by grounding its ethics in constitutional practice.

John Rohr stresses that ethical practice demands an immersion in the specifics of our constitutional tradition, and he offers a guide to attaining a greater sense of those constitutional principles that can be translated into action. Along the way he considers such timely issues as financial disclosure, the treatment of civil servants as second-class citizens, and instances of civil servants caught between executive and legislative forces.

Rohr's opening essays demonstrate that responsible use of administrative discretion is the key issue for career civil servants. Subsequent sections examine approaches to training civil servants using constitutional principles; character formation resulting from study of the constitutional tradition; and the ethical choices that are sometimes posed by separation of powers. A final group of chapters shows how a study of other countries' constitutional traditions can deepen an understanding of our own, while a closing essay looks at past issues and future prospects in administrative ethics from the perspective of Rohr's long involvement in the field.

Throughout this insightful collection, Rohr seeks to remind public servants of the nobility of their calling, reinforce their role in articulating public interests against the excesses of private concerns, and encourage managers to make greater use of constitutional language to describe their everyday activities. Although his work focuses on the federal career civil servant, it also offers valuable lessons applicable to state and local civil servants, elected officials, judges, military personnel, and those employed in the nonprofit sector.

Richard Davis is a founding member of Vanguard Consulting in the UK, and has worked with John Seddon for over 25 years. His was a significant role in developing the Vanguard method, which has allowed for dramatic improvements in public services. In this important book, Richard turns his attention to the important issue of 'responsibility' - on both the government's part and that of the users. While government wrestles with how to cut the cost of services, Davis shows that government can provide responsible, sustainable and effective services significantly more cheaply by focussing on what is of 'value' to individuals and communities. What is of 'value' can only be determined by fully understanding the context in which problems arise and then providing tailored support to get people's lives back on track and as quickly as possible. The emphasis changes from supplying services (chosen in advance by government regardless of actual need) to helping people to look after themselves and take responsibility for their own lives. It's a simple logic. The current system defines problems according to predetermined services and categories and if a person doesn't fit with their definitions (which is often the norm), they remain in trouble. These are many people who never fit into the categories the system has designed and constantly fall between the cracks - so the wider system continues to spend money because the services are ineffective; it racks up costs and failure and rarely solves the problems. But, as Responsibility and Public Services shows, the truth is that it is cheaper to help people directly than to continue providing the same old services. The thinking is that if a little time is taken to understand people in context and to find out what matters to them, the solutions are far easier and cheaper. It is not only cheaper to do this at the time but, because you build in resilience and help people take their own measures, it stays cheaper. The book is a rich compendium of examples of what changes when a responsible approach is taken - examples are drawn from the care sector, prisons, the police force, hospital services, education and many more.

Widespread sexual harassment in the public sector makes implementing sexual harassment policy a decidedly necessary task. In this book, the authors focus on the implementation of policy in public sector organizations using an analysis of case studies and survey data. The authors identify four major challenges to implementing sexual harassment policies and examine each starting with a description and concluding with specific recommendations for overcoming the challenges in policy making.

Examining how public and nonprofit managers improve productivity in their organizations, Evan M. Berman lays out a wide range of tools and strategies to promote employee motivation, client orientation, cost-effective service delivery, effective partnering, harmonious workplace relations, and the use of information technology. Productivity in Public and Nonprofit Organizations presents a positive view of the possibility of improvement through many hands-on examples of change. It offers specific advice on overcoming vital challenges that managers often encounter when they seek to improve their organizations and units. In a clear and effective writing style, Berman argues that managers must combine technology and analysis with psychology and foresight in human relations. This book further includes survey data about the use of productivity improvement strategies in a wide range of public and nonprofit organizations.

Productivity in Public and Nonprofit Organizations will be of great interest to professionals and students in the fields of public administration, management, and organization studies.

Examining how public and nonprofit managers improve productivity in their organizations, Evan M. Berman lays out a wide range of tools and strategies to promote employee motivation, client orientation, cost-effective service delivery, effective partnering, harmonious workplace relations, and the use of information technology. Productivity in Public and Nonprofit Organizations presents a positive view of the possibility of improvement through many hands-on examples of change. It offers specific advice on overcoming vital challenges that managers often encounter when they seek to improve their organizations and units. In a clear and effective writing style, Berman argues that managers must combine technology and analysis with psychology and foresight in human relations. This book further includes survey data about the use of productivity improvement strategies in a wide range of public and nonprofit organizations.

Productivity in Public and Nonprofit Organizations will be of great interest to professionals and students in the fields of public administration, management, and organization studies.

Deregulation, privatization and marketization have become the bywords for the reforms and debates surrounding the public sector. This major book is unique in its comparative analysis of the reform experience in Western and Eastern Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

Leading experts identify a number of key factors to systematically explain the similarities and differences, map common problems and together reflect on the future shape of the public sector, exploring significant themes in a lively and accessible way.

Although the concept of policy networks is now well-established in the field, most research has to content itself with description and analysis of their contribution to policy failure. This book goes further. It accepts policy networks as a fundamental characteristic of modern societies and presents an overview of the strategies for the management of these networks, as well as illustrating the various strategies for intervention.

Local governments in the United States are important in providing an almost endless variety of services that immediately affect our lives. And, in recent years local governments and administrators are becoming increasingly important as they try to deal effectively with drugs, AIDS, homelessness, gangs, economic decline, or even economic development. A well written examination, this important volume provides a descriptive analysis of how public administrators manage municipal government. Managing Local Government explores conceptual and empirical dimensions of public administration including the legal aspects of public management; human resource management; budgeting and public finance; the political dimension; intergovernmental relations; and ethical considerations. Within this context, the authors take up such pressing and practical issues as economic development, housing, culture and recreation, public safety, transportation, and waste disposal. Professionals and students of public administration, urban studies, policy studies, and political science will find this volume essential reading. " The American text, Managing Local Government: Public Administration in Practice is another example in the large collections of readings, modestly priced, and . . . covering key policy and administration issues. . . . The bringing together of these studies, mostly written by practitioners, is a long overdue and worthy contribution to the literature. The insights contained here could hitherto only be gleaned from professional journals. In teaching a course on municipal administration I found this book to contain important practical and theoretical insights. I can only hope that someone will be stimulated to draw together similar insights from the Canadian background." --Trevor Price, University of Windsor