Evidence-based management (EBMgt) derives principles of good management from scientific research, meta-analysis, literature reviews, and case studies, and then translates them into practice. This book is the first systematic assessment of EBMgt and its potential application in public management.

Evidence-based management (EBMgt) derives principles of good management from scientific research, meta-analysis, literature reviews, and case studies, and then translates them into practice. This book is the first systematic assessment of EBMgt and its potential application in public management.

The U.S. health care system faces well-known problems: 47 million people without health insurance, rapidly rising costs that consume 16 percent of the country's economic output, and widely uneven quality of care. Even many people with coverage are experiencing serious problems paying for the rapidly rising costs of health care and insurance.This book - a joint product of the National Academy of Public Administration and the National Academy of Social Science - undertakes a sweeping analysis of the management and administrative issues that arise in expanding health care coverage. The book identifies the core administrative functions that need to be performed in assuring access to health coverage, describes how these functions are performed at present and under proposed alternatives, draws lessons from experience in the U.S. and abroad, and assesses suggested administrative approaches designed to facilitate the improvement and expansion of health care coverage.Adequate health care is one of today's most crucial domestic policy concerns. "Expanding Access to Health Care" is designed to bring together in one place some of the best thinking on the subject, not as an exercise in advocacy, but rather to lay out the issues in a balanced way so that policymakers, researchers, and citizens can better understand the complex details of health care reform.

The U.S. health care system faces well-known problems: 47 million people without health insurance, rapidly rising costs that consume 16 percent of the country's economic output, and widely uneven quality of care. Even many people with coverage are experiencing serious problems paying for the rapidly rising costs of health care and insurance.This book - a joint product of the National Academy of Public Administration and the National Academy of Social Science - undertakes a sweeping analysis of the management and administrative issues that arise in expanding health care coverage. The book identifies the core administrative functions that need to be performed in assuring access to health coverage, describes how these functions are performed at present and under proposed alternatives, draws lessons from experience in the U.S. and abroad, and assesses suggested administrative approaches designed to facilitate the improvement and expansion of health care coverage.Adequate health care is one of today's most crucial domestic policy concerns. "Expanding Access to Health Care" is designed to bring together in one place some of the best thinking on the subject, not as an exercise in advocacy, but rather to lay out the issues in a balanced way so that policymakers, researchers, and citizens can better understand the complex details of health care reform.

Human resource management is experiencing profound change, new challenges, exciting accomplishments, and much uncertainity. The public service has moved away from the old days of "personnel management" concerned mostly with processing "personal action" paperwork, to a system where public employees are managed as human capital to get the work of the government done more effectively and efficiently. This volume brings together the latest thinking on human resource management in the public service, presented by distinguished thought leaders in the field. While it focuses primarily on federal government policies and practices, the principles, conclusions, and recommendations translate readily to state and local government, and to the private sector as well.

Human resource management is experiencing profound change, new challenges, exciting accomplishments, and much uncertainity. The public service has moved away from the old days of "personnel management" concerned mostly with processing "personal action" paperwork, to a system where public employees are managed as human capital to get the work of the government done more effectively and efficiently. This volume brings together the latest thinking on human resource management in the public service, presented by distinguished thought leaders in the field. While it focuses primarily on federal government policies and practices, the principles, conclusions, and recommendations translate readily to state and local government, and to the private sector as well.

This is the best single-source guide to leadership development in the public sector. It offers a wealth of advice for teachers, students, trainers, human resource officers, and established leaders. The all-original chapters include discussions of leadership frameworks, competencies for public leaders for the "new governance," and strategies for senior leaders in government.The book's wide-ranging coverage includes in-depth discussions of specific approaches to learning methods such as action learning and social artistry, as well as presentations of leader development models such as transformational stewardship and global leadership. The contributors present experiences from real-world leadership development programs, and the book situates leader development within the current trends of networks, collaboration, and boundary-crossing work in the public sector.

This timely book takes a wide-angled look at how the field of community development is evolving in an era of reduced resources, changing priorities, privatization, competition, and performance management at the federal, state, and local government levels, as well as for non-profits and private sector entities. It shows how community development organizations and programs are offering many new services, entering into new partnerships, developing extensive networks, and attracting new and alternative sources of funding - and how, in the process, these organizations are becoming more innovative, leaner in their operations, more competitive, and much more effective than ever before.Students, researchers, and policy-makers will all appreciate the numerous policy examples from the local, state, and federal levels, including a wide range of developments in housing, transportation, smart growth, education, and crime prevention. "Reengineering Community Development for the 21st Century" is an invaluable source for insights into the latest developments in community development financing and performance management.

This timely book takes a wide-angled look at how the field of community development is evolving in an era of reduced resources, changing priorities, privatization, competition, and performance management at the federal, state, and local government levels, as well as for non-profits and private sector entities. It shows how community development organizations and programs are offering many new services, entering into new partnerships, developing extensive networks, and attracting new and alternative sources of funding - and how, in the process, these organizations are becoming more innovative, leaner in their operations, more competitive, and much more effective than ever before.Students, researchers, and policy-makers will all appreciate the numerous policy examples from the local, state, and federal levels, including a wide range of developments in housing, transportation, smart growth, education, and crime prevention. "Reengineering Community Development for the 21st Century" is an invaluable source for insights into the latest developments in community development financing and performance management.

This is the best single-source guide to leadership development in the public sector. It offers a wealth of advice for teachers, students, trainers, human resource officers, and established leaders. The all-original chapters include discussions of leadership frameworks, competencies for public leaders for the "new governance," and strategies for senior leaders in government.The book's wide-ranging coverage includes in-depth discussions of specific approaches to learning methods such as action learning and social artistry, as well as presentations of leader development models such as transformational stewardship and global leadership. The contributors present experiences from real-world leadership development programs, and the book situates leader development within the current trends of networks, collaboration, and boundary-crossing work in the public sector.

The forces of globalization are shifting our world, including the public sector, away from hierarchy and command and control toward one of collaboration and networks. The way public leadership is thought about and practiced must be, and is being, transformed. This volume in the "Transformational Trends in Governance & Democracy" series explores what the shift looks like and also offers guidance on what it should look like. Specifically, the book focuses on the role of "career leaders" - those in public service - who are agents of change not only in their own organizations, but also in their communities and policy domains. These leaders work in network settings, making connections and collaborating to create public value and advance the common good. Featuring the insights of an authoritative group of contributors, the volume offers a mix of scholarship, from philosophical discussions to conceptual models to empirical studies that, taken together, will help inform the transformation of public leadership that is already underway.

This timely work presents cutting-edge analysis of the problems of U.S. foreign assistance programs - why these problems have not been solved in the past, and how they might be solved in the future. The book focuses primarily on U.S. foreign assistance and foreign policy as they apply to nation building, governance, and democratization. The expert contributors examine issues currently in play, and also trace the history and evolution of many of these problems over the years. They address policy concerns as well as management and organizational factors as they affect programs and policies. "Foreign Aid and Foreign Policy" includes several chapter-length case studies (on Iraq, Pakistan, Ghana, Haiti, and various countries in Eastern Europe and Africa), but the bulk of the book presents broad coverage of general topics such as foreign aid and security, NGOs and foreign aid, capacity building, and building democracy abroad. Each chapter offers recommendations on how to improve the U.S. system of aid in the context of foreign policy.

This book provides a fresh look at the process by which governments hold themselves accountable to their citizens for performance. Unlike the plethora of other books in the field, it examines all aspects of the Performance Management and Budgeting issue, not only from the federal, state, and local perspectives, but also internationally in both developing and developed countries.Covering both conceptual and theoretical frameworks in performance management and budget, the book analyzes the effectiveness of different approaches. Featuring insights from a group of distinguished contributors, it ties current performance management approaches into the century-old literature on public sector reform and management, and presents arguments for and against performance management as well as recommendations on how to improve the enterprise.

The forces of globalization are shifting our world, including the public sector, away from hierarchy and command and control toward one of collaboration and networks. The way public leadership is thought about and practiced must be, and is being, transformed. This volume in the "Transformational Trends in Governance & Democracy" series explores what the shift looks like and also offers guidance on what it should look like. Specifically, the book focuses on the role of "career leaders" - those in public service - who are agents of change not only in their own organizations, but also in their communities and policy domains. These leaders work in network settings, making connections and collaborating to create public value and advance the common good. Featuring the insights of an authoritative group of contributors, the volume offers a mix of scholarship, from philosophical discussions to conceptual models to empirical studies that, taken together, will help inform the transformation of public leadership that is already underway.

This timely work presents cutting-edge analysis of the problems of U.S. foreign assistance programs - why these problems have not been solved in the past, and how they might be solved in the future. The book focuses primarily on U.S. foreign assistance and foreign policy as they apply to nation building, governance, and democratization. The expert contributors examine issues currently in play, and also trace the history and evolution of many of these problems over the years. They address policy concerns as well as management and organizational factors as they affect programs and policies. "Foreign Aid and Foreign Policy" includes several chapter-length case studies (on Iraq, Pakistan, Ghana, Haiti, and various countries in Eastern Europe and Africa), but the bulk of the book presents broad coverage of general topics such as foreign aid and security, NGOs and foreign aid, capacity building, and building democracy abroad. Each chapter offers recommendations on how to improve the U.S. system of aid in the context of foreign policy.

How do you put the "public" in public management? How can the traditional ethos of professionalism and technical expertise be reconciled with norms of representation and citizen participation at a time when technology is transforming communication between citizens and government - in some ways enhancing the exchange and in other ways complicating it? "Modernizing Democracy: Innovations in Citizen Participation" points the way. Written for public administration professionals, scholars, and students interested in citizen participation, it brings together new analyses of innovative practices, from hands-on community learning and focus groups to high-tech information systems and decision support technologies. The expert contributors illuminate the various roles that public administrators and leaders can play in fostering constructive, meaningful citizen involvement at all stages of the public policy process - from initiation and planning to feedback on public agency performance.

How do you put the "public" in public management? How can the traditional ethos of professionalism and technical expertise be reconciled with norms of representation and citizen participation at a time when technology is transforming communication between citizens and government - in some ways enhancing the exchange and in other ways complicating it? "Modernizing Democracy: Innovations in Citizen Participation" points the way. Written for public administration professionals, scholars, and students interested in citizen participation, it brings together new analyses of innovative practices, from hands-on community learning and focus groups to high-tech information systems and decision support technologies. The expert contributors illuminate the various roles that public administrators and leaders can play in fostering constructive, meaningful citizen involvement at all stages of the public policy process - from initiation and planning to feedback on public agency performance.

This book provides a fresh look at the process by which governments hold themselves accountable to their citizens for performance. Unlike the plethora of other books in the field, it examines all aspects of the Performance Management and Budgeting issue, not only from the federal, state, and local perspectives, but also internationally in both developing and developed countries.Covering both conceptual and theoretical frameworks in performance management and budget, the book analyzes the effectiveness of different approaches. Featuring insights from a group of distinguished contributors, it ties current performance management approaches into the century-old literature on public sector reform and management, and presents arguments for and against performance management as well as recommendations on how to improve the enterprise.

Microcredit is a grassroots development strategy that grants small-scale loans to poor borrowers for self-employment projects that generate income. Microcredit, along with other grassroots approaches, offers an alternative to the top-down macroeconomic approaches that have characterized policies in developing countries since World War II. Aside from a few high profile success stories, the top-down approach has failed. The vast majority of people living in developing countries still suffer from extreme poverty and underdevelopment. While effective macropolicies remain necessary for any successful development strategy, the need for complementary microstrategies at the grassroots level has become apparent. Among the various grassroots approaches, microcredit not only shows unique promise in alleviating poverty, but also offers the poor a better future through self-reliance. While positive microcredit benefits have begun to emerge in evaluations, scholars still debate the proper role of microcredit in overall development policy. The purpose of this book is to address the major policy issues surrounding the use of microcredit as a tool for economic and social development.

Using a set of rules as a guide for cost-effective policy analysis, Communicating Social Science Research to Policy Makers helps applied researchers avoid costly mistakes in policy planning and public administration research. Beginning with a practical approach to policy analysis, authors Roger J. Vaughan and Terry F. Buss show the reader how to prepare a nonbiased description of the problem to be studied, how to diagnose the causes of the problem, how to explore the various strategies for dealing with the problem and related issues, how to use formal forecasting projections, how to do cost-benefits analysis, how an analyst can decide what information to communicate, and strategies for the most-effective communication of policy analysis.

Many new development initiatives have been introduced in Africa over the past few decades. Each of these has been heralded as marking a new era in the continent's development. However, many of these initiatives have failed to produce sustained results due to numerous challenges, including, most importantly, the lack of good governance. The Africa Progress Panel stated in 2011 that good governance is the key enabling factor for sustainable development. This book discusses the role good governance plays in achieving sustainable development and eradicating extreme poverty in Africa. The contributed chapters in this book seek to broaden the policy debate and provide conversations about the sustainable development challenges facing African countries from multiple viewpoints and interdisciplinary perspectives-from academics, researchers, policymakers, and practitioners in the field. The book focuses on the governance perspectives of practitioners who deal with day-to-day realities on the ground, with the goal to use evidence-based information to make informed policies, programs, and strategies to move the continent toward achieving sustainable development. This book tries to strike a balance between recognizing the need to bring politics back into development programs and understanding the limitations of political institutions in weak states. To that end, it looks at the challenges of development from the perspective of human security, with a focus on strengthening the human resource component of African economies in order to achieve better governance as part of a sustainable development process.

"Even after years of receiving considerable foreign aid, Haiti remains an impoverished, tremendously fragile state. Over a span of ten years, the United States spent over $4 billion in aid to Haiti, yet the average Haitian still has to survive on one dollar a day. Why has assistance been so ineffectual, and what can we learn from Haiti's plight about foreign aid in general? Haiti in the Balance tackles those questions by analyzing nearly twenty years of Haitian history, politics, and foreign relations. Terry Buss and his colleagues at the National Academy on Public Administration found a general failure to reinforce the capacity of institutions at all levels of Haitian government. Building up that system of institutions appears to be a necessary precursor to a nation using foreign aid in the most effective manner. Such an effort demands improved security, a more professional (and less corrupt) bureaucracy, and eventually decentralization and perhaps even some privatization. Different levels of government must be willing to learn how best to work with one another: according to Buss, ""Haitian governments seemed consumed by politics, rather than good governance."" People still matter, and so does administration. Until we learn that lesson, even the most generous foreign aid will not fulfill its intent. "

Policy makers--Republican and Democrat, liberal and conservative--call for federal intervention to fund emerging high-growth industries, believing they are starved for capital. Congressional hearings, newspapers, industry newsletters, and government reports all assert that capital gaps exist for these firms. But the widely held belief that emerging high-growth firms like those in high technology--so vital to the growth of the U.S. economy--face severe capital gaps, preventing them from starting up or growing to their full potential, is false. This book systematically brings together, for the first time, disparate sources of information from a wide variety of disciplines and synthesizes them into a compelling case against federal intervention.

Scientific studies, conventional wisdom among entrepreneurs and investors, and economic reasoning all fail to support the existence of widespread capital gaps for start-up high-growth firms. Nor does this evidence show capital in short supply in some regions, in industrial sectors including high technology, or for women and minorities. Nor do existing federal programs providing capital to emerging high-growth businesses reveal capital gaps. Rather, they either unnecessarily duplicate private investment or represent poor investment decisions. This study shows that calls for increased federal intervention, using public monies to plug capital gaps, are unjustified.

Using a set of rules as a guide for cost-effective policy analysis, Communicating Social Science Research to Policy Makers helps applied researchers avoid costly mistakes in policy planning and public administration research. Beginning with a practical approach to policy analysis, authors Roger J. Vaughan and Terry F. Buss show the reader how to prepare a nonbiased description of the problem to be studied, how to diagnose the causes of the problem, how to explore the various strategies for dealing with the problem and related issues, how to use formal forecasting projections, how to do cost-benefits analysis, how an analyst can decide what information to communicate, and strategies for the most-effective communication of policy analysis.

This useful and clearly written book provides a discussionof the major issues involved in dealing with the homeless, summarizes information available from a number of studies, and draws conclusions about current public policy and future policy alternatives. . . . An important addition to any library dealing with contemporary social concerns. " Choice"

The homeless have become more and more numerous and visible in our society. "Responding to America's HomelesS" presents the most complete, up-to-date scientific evidence concerning the nature, extent, and causes of homelessness. Using an unprecedented survey of 1,000 homeless individuals and families, as well as previous national, local, and scholarly research, the authors draw a vivid portrait of the homeless population and their needs. They challenge the widely held view that most homeless are mentally ill, proposing an original classification of the homeless based on needs for various forms of assistance. On the basis of this empirical research, the authors evaluate current public policies for dealing with the homeless and present alternative plans aimed at returning homeless people to more normal, secure circumstances.