Published in The White House and the Blue House: Government Reform in the United States and Korea,

Published in The White House and the Blue House: Government Reform in the United States and Korea,

Yong Hyo Cho and H. George Frederickson, eds. (Lanham, MD: University Press of American, 1998).

The American Tradition of Administrative Reform

James P. Pfiffner

George Mason University

Visiting Scholar, the Brookings Institution

This paper will examine the major administrative reforms efforts of the 20^th century by looking at the experience with the major blue ribbon commissions, administrative and personnel management reforms, and budgetary reforms. After briefly surveying the major trends in these areas, the paper will turn to major trends in business management and how these techniques may be relevant to the public sector. It will then turn to the National Performance Review, the most extensive government management reform effort of the 20^th century. Finally, the conclusion will pull together lessons from our experience with management reform.

I. Major Management Reforms and Recommendations

Blue Ribbon Reform Commissions

1912 Commission on Economy and Efficiency (Taft Commission)

recommended an executive budget

1936 President's Committee on Administrative Management (Brownlow Committee)

recommended increased presidential power and staff

1947 Hoover Commission

recommended personnel management reforms and reorganizations

1955 Second Hoover Commission

recommended cutting government programs and administrative reform

1969 Advisory Commission on Executive Organization (the Ash Council)

recommended major restructuring of the executive branch

1977 President's Personnel Management Project

recommended major personnel management changes

1981 Grace Commission

recommended cost savings and management changes

1983 Greenspan Commission

recommended benefit cuts and tax increases to save Social Security

1987 National Commission on the Public Service (Volcker Commission)

Recommended pay increase, management reform, cutting political appointees

Blue Ribbon Commissions

As is clear from the list of blue ribbon commissions, the 20^th century has seen a number of initiatives to recommend broad scale reform of the national government.^[1] Sometimes the commission was appointed by the president to tell him what he wanted to hear, that is, provide political or technical legitimacy for a specific change. The President's' Committee on Administrative Management was clearly working with FDR when it formulated its proposals to reform the presidency and executive branch. Sometimes the commission is created by Congress for its own purposes, which may or may not coincide with presidential desires. Part of the intent of the Hoover Commissions was to counter the New Deal expansions of the federal government.

Sometimes the purpose was to provide political cover for necessary bi-partisan changes in policy, as was the case with the 1983 National Commission on Social Security Reform recommendations to reduce benefits and raise taxes for Social Security. And sometimes the purpose of a commission is to provide breathing room and time for politically pressured government officials. As a ditty from the British humor periodical, Punch, put it:

If you're pestered by critics and hounded by faction

To take some precipitate, positive action,

The proper procedure, to take my advice, is

Appoint a commission and stave off the crisis^[2]

The more substantive purposes of these commissions were often to enhance the capacity of the president to manage the executive branch, to reorganize the executive branch, or to promote efficiency either by cutting programs or by improving management.

Presidential Authority

In response to increasing deficits at the turn of the century, the President's Commission on Economy and Efficiency recommended the creation of an executive budget to create a more coherent budgetary process and to give the president more control of budget requests to Congress.

After the creation of a plethora of new agencies to administer New Deal programs, the executive branch seemed fragmented, and FDR wanted more executive power to control the government. His Committee on Administrative Management submitted recommendations to give the president professional staff help, more administrative controls in budgeting, accounting, and personnel and proposed reorganizing the executive branch. After FDR's court packing plan was rejected by Congress, the Brownlow Committee recommendations were also rejected.

The President's Personnel Management Project submitted recommendations that led to the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act (CSRA) which gave the president the authority to appoint the director of the newly created Office of Personnel Management. It also created the Senior Executive Service and gave the president's appointees in agencies the authority to move them to different positions for managerial purposes.

Reorganization

Several commissions recommended significant reorganization of the government. The Taft Commission proposal resulted in the creation of the Bureau of the Budget and the Genral Accounting Office in 1921. The Brownlow Committee proposals finally bore fruit when the president was given reorganization authority in 1939 and used it to create by executive order the Executive Office of the President. The Hoover Commissions recommended reorganizations.

President Nixon's Advisory Council on Government Organization recommended the most ambitious reorganization of the executive branch since the Brownlow Committee. Two of its recommendations were successful: the transformation of the Bureau of the Budget into the Office of Management and Budget and the creation of the Domestic Policy Council in 1970. Its most sweeping proposals, however, called for the reorganization of much of the executive branch into four "super" departments organized around functional areas. While the proposals made sense from an organizational point of view, Nixon soon became caught up in the Watergate scandal and the proposals were abandoned.

President Carter appointed a reorganization project to try to reduce the number of agancies in the executive branch, but the most successful of his reorganizations was the reorganization of the Civil Service Commission, a three person bi-partisan commission, with the Office of Personnel Management, headed by a single person appointed by the president.

Management Capacity and Efficiency

Commissions are sometimes privately conducted, rather than being officially created by Congress or the president; and they often propose increased economy and efficiency or improved management. One such commission was the President's Private-Sector Survey on Cost Control, known as the Grace Commission after its director, business executive Peter J. Grace. The commission claimed that billions of dollars could be saved if its policies to root out "waste, fraud, and abuse" were followed. The recommendations, however, were hostile to the public service and greatly exaggerated potential savings which were often based on policy changes rather than managerial efficiencies.

The National Commission on the Public Service was organized by a bi-partisan group of former public officials and business executives, and chiared by former Federal Reserve Chairman, Paul Volcker. In 1987 it proposed a number of measures designed to improve the managerial capacity of the federal government, rather than policy changes or reorganizations. It argued that continued investment was needed if the government were to be run effectively by a competent public service. Its proposals included increased pay and continued education and training in the civil service (as did Brownlow and Hoover) and the delegation of personnel authority to departments and agencies (as did Hoover I and CSRA). It also argued that the increasing numbers of politcal appointees were actually counterproductive to presidential control of the executive branch and recommended cutting their numbers from about 3,000 to about 2,000. Shortly after its report, Leadership for America, pay was increased for federal executives and the OPM took its proposals for education and training seriously. Its proposal for cutting the numbers of political appointees, however, was ignored.

Personnel Management Reforms

Administrative and Personnel Management Reforms

1883 The Pendleton Act

created the merit system and the Civil Service Commission

1923 The Classification Act

created the system of classifying jobs in the Civil Service

1939 Hatch Act

prohibited partisan political activity by civil servants

1949 Hoover Commission

personnel management and reorganization proposals adopted

1953 Schedule C Positions created

200 new political appointments at GS-15 and below levels

1955 Second Hoover Commission

personnel management proposals adopted

1970 Office of Management and Budget created from old BOB

deeper political control, Domestic Policy Council created

1973 Management by Objectives

government-wide adoption of management technique

1978 Civil Service Reform Act

created OPM, abolished CSC, created SES, management reforms

1970s Organization Development

encouraged more communication between superiors and subordinates

1988 Total Quality Management

imposed throughout the government by executive order

1993 National Performance Review

personnel cuts, management reforms

1993 Government Performance and Results Act

mandates strategic planning and quantitative indicators of objectives

Management reform efforts in the federal government for the past century have centered largely around the merit system which was established in 1883 by the Pendleton Act. Although it covered only 10 per cent of the federal workforce in the beginning its scope was gradually expanded and its requirements refined. The Classification Act of 1923 provided for uniformity in the hiring and pay for different occupations throughout the government, and the Hatch Act of 1939 prohibited partisan political activities by civil servants or partisan pressure from political appointees. (It was modified in 1993 to allow some political activities by civil servants.)

After the growth in government spurred by the New Deal and World War II, the Hoover Commission of 1949 took a look at organization, personnel, and management issues. The Commission issued 277 recommendations on a wide range of managerial issues and was successful in winning adoption of more than half of them by Congress. Former President Hoover headed a second commission that made more than 300 recommendations for savings in 1955. The bulk of the recommendations were in line with the managerial thrust of the first commission, though fewer of them were adopted. Both Hoover Commissions were critical of the size of the government and were based on traditional public administration principles of the administrative presidency.^[3]

A number of management reforms were intended to increase the political control of the president over the executive branch. After 20 years of Democratic control of the presidency the Republicans decided that they needed more partisans in the executive branch than were provided by presidential appointments. In 1953 "Schedule C" Positions (in contrast to Schedules A and B) were created to provide political appointees at the GS-15 and below levels. By the 1990s the number had increased to about 1,700. When the Office of Management and Budget was created in 1970, political appointees were placed much deeper in the organization than had been the case before, and by the 1980s there were more than 30 political appointees in OMB.^[4] The Civil Service Reform Act created the Senior Executive Service of about 7,000 positions at the top of the career ladder in the executive branch, ten per cent of which could be politically appointed. In addition to the new authority to move career SES members to different positions, agency heads could place political appointees into any position not specifically designated as "career reserved."

Other management reforms were not so directly political, but were aimed at improving management at all levels of the bureaucracy. Management by Objectives mandated that supervisors explicitly set goals with their subordinates. The Organization Development movement was adapted from the private sector and was popular in the government in the 1970s and 1980s. It recommended reducing hierarchical barriers, greater honesty between superiors and subordinates, and the sharing of personal feelings among members of organizations. The Total Quality Management movement swept the private sector the 1980s and was mandated throughout the federal government by executive order in 1988. The techniques were drawn from the ideas of Edward Deming who espoused careful statistical analysis and the attention to quality control at all stages of the production process. The Deming method was based on a number of principles and emphasized a long term perspective on organizational productivity.^[5] Rather than the radical restructuring favored by the reengineering movement, TQM advocated a bottom-up focus on improving organizational processes.^[6]

The Government Performance and Results Act was passed in 1993 and was intended to improve government performance by requiring that federal agencies prepare strategic plans that would articulate agency missions. Agencies would then develop specific, quantifiable outcome indicators against which to measure their progress. The newly developed information could be used by OMB and Congress in deciding how to evaluate programs and make budget decisions. The National Performance Review was also initiated by the Clinton Administration in 1993 and will be discussed in more depth below.

Budgetary Reforms

1921 Budget and Accounting Act

creates Bureau of the Budget, the executive budget, GAO

1939 BOB transferred to Executive Office of the President

gives president more direct control of budgeting

1965 Planning Programming Budgeting Systems

quantitative analysis of agency goals mandated throughout government

1974 Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act

limits impoundment and sets up new congressional budget process

1977 Zero Based Budgeting

marginal analysis of decision packages mandated throughout government

1981 Reconciliation used by Reagan Administration to pass budget priorities

all spending bills could be placed in one omnibus bill

1983 Social Security Fund made solvent

tax increases and benefit cuts

1985 Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Deficit Reduction

requires 25 percent cut in deficit in each of four years

1990 Budget Reform

cuts $500 billion from deficit over five years

1993 Budget Bill

cuts $500 from deficit over five years

1995 Enhanced Rescission - equivalent to an item veto for the president

allows president to reduce spending bills by selective veto

1997 Balanced Budget Amendment

constitutional amendment considered by Congress

The major budgetary reforms of the 20th century have concerned many of the management issues discussed above, but in addition they have proposed changes in the budget process or have managed policy changes to effect budgetary savings.

Perhaps the most important change in the budgetary process of the century was the creation of the executive budget by the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921. It gave the president important leverage over requests that would be considered in Congress and if fixed accountability for the budget on the president (even though The Budget of the United States is merely a request from the president to Congress to appropriate funds).

Between 1921 and 1974 control over budget priorities gravitated to the president, even though control of the details of appropriations bills remained firmly in congressional hands. Executive attempts to dominate the budgetary process reached a peak when President Nixon began to impound, that is not spend, significant amounts of funds provided by Congress. Nixon was reacting to the very real increase in the size deficits, but his actions were clearly an extra constitutional assertion of presidential power.^[7] Congress reacted by passing the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 which closely circumscribed impoundment and set up a congressional budget process. Budget committees were created in both houses to consider overall expenditure limits and levels of revenues; concurrent resolutions were created to enforce budget decisions.

While the impoundment controls were generally succssful, the new institutions and procedures created the tools for congressional assertion of budget authorities, but they did not create the political will to use the tools. Backers of the reform had hoped it would enforce fiscal discipline and reduce the deficit, but the economic effects of stagflation could not be overcome by the new budget process. Deficits continued to increase.

In addition to changes in the budgetary process, several executive branch techniques to enhance rational decision making were introduced.^[8] In 1965 President Johnson became so enamored of the Planning Programming Budgeting Systems approach which Robert McNamara had instituted in the Pentagon that he ordered it implemented throughout the executive branch. The intent of PPBS was to shift the budgetary focus away from inputs (personnel, objects purchased, etc.) To outcomes (achieving the goals of policies, such as literacy, a clean environment, efficient transportation, etc.). The problem was that this called for clearly defining goals of policies and the precise measurement of policy success. This analytic task proved to be virtually impossible, despite the progress that was made in the Defense Department. When Richar Nixon came to office PPBS was formally abandoned.

When Jimmy Carter was elected he brought with him a business technique, Zero Based Budgeting (ZBB) that he had used as governor of Georgia. The technique which was mandated throughout the federal government, was intended to help federal managers set spending priorities. Funding for each program was to be proposed in several "decision packages" that represented different levels of funding for programs. As the different packages were gathered at higher levels in the agency the different levels of funding could be compared and traded off by policy makers. Although ZBB was adopted throughout the government, it did not have a great impact on spending priorities. In 1981 the Reagan Administration dropped ZBB.

In addition to reforms in the budgetary process budget reforms in the late 20th century have often taken the form of direct or mandated cuts in spending.

In 1983 the National Commission on Social Security Reform proposed a compromise that would assure the adequate financing of the Social Security Trust Fund well into the 21^st Century. The magic was not in the brilliance of the proposals themselves but in the political cover it provided for the leaders of the two parties and two branches of government (Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neil) who had to bless the compromise with its tax increases and benefit cuts in order to have it adopted.

When budget deficits reached $200 billion and promised to continue "as far as the eye could see," Senate leaders put together a combination of tax increases and spending cuts that would put the deficit on a downward track. When it was rejected by the Reagan White House and the Democrats in the House in the spring of 1985, the public reaction was so negative that Congress passed the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings deficit reduction plan in the fall of 1985. The plan called for a 25 percent reduction in the deficit for the next four years. The level of cuts, however, was too large for the political system to digest. After several years of meeting the deficit reduction targets by blue smoke and mirrors (accounting gimmicks), the targets were amended and then abandoned in 1990.

In 1988 the bipartisan National Economic Commission recommended a combination of spending cuts and tax increases to move the budget toward balance. But George Bush had promised "no new taxes" in his campaign and dismissed the proposals as an excuse to raise taxes. By 1990 President Bush had become convinced that something had to be done about the increasing deficits, and he decided to abandon his "no new taxes" pledge in order to cooperate with the Democrats in Congress in reducing the deficit. The two parties were able to come to an agreement on a package of spending limits, cuts, and tax increases to cut the deficit by about $500 billion over the next five years. ^[9]

President Clinton's first budget, submitted in 1993, called for spending cuts and tax increases totalling about $500 billion over five years. He fought for its passage in Congress and was victorious in several close votes in the summer of 1993.^[10] By Fiscal Year 1996 the budget deficit had dropped to $106 billion, though it would begin to rise again by the end of the century if further cuts were not enacted.

The most recent "reform" of the budgetary process was also intended to reduce the deficit and control federal spending. In the spring of 1995 the Republican Congress voted to give the president the equivalent of a line item veto (actually, enhanced rescission) over appropriations. After Congress had passed a spending bill the president would be able to select parts of it for rescission. These sections of the bill would be sent back to Congress which could pass them again with a simple majority. But this bill could be vetoed by the President, which in turn could only be overridden by Congress with two thirds majority in each house.

The intent of the backers of the bill was to enable the president to save the taxpayers' money by vetoing unnecessary or "porkbarrel" expenditures, assuming that the president would be more responsible than Congress in spending matters. If the president acted wisely and responsibly, this new power could result in budgetary savings. But it would not make much difference in the deficit, because most of the budget is not subject to this item veto, e.g. entitlement spending and interest on the debt. Thus the president now has greater power over the budget in small things which could help him tactically with small expenditures and individual members of Congress, but is unlikely to make large changes in spending.

While all of the above reforms have had an impact on the administration of the government, often in a discrete way, U.S. public administration has also been shaped in profound ways by the broader historical trends of the 20^th century. The progressive era after the turn of the century ushered in an era in which the government would play a much more active role in the economy of the country. The New Deal brought forth a new government activism that was intended to help those who could not deal with the effects of the Great Depression and left a legacy of expectations that the government would help those most in need. World War II saw the expansion of the federal government and the flow of talent to Washington. Mobilization of the economy by the government for war production brought governmental controls deeper into business decision making. Lyndon Johnson's Great Society legislation created many new programs to help the less fortunate as well as new types of federal grants for state and local governments. The fiscal federalism flow of aid from the federal to state and local governments peaked in the late 1970s, but did not disappear. The 1980s saw the attempt to reduce many of the programs of the New Deal and Great Society, and the privitization of governmental services by contracting government services out to private businesses. The pressure to reduce the huge deficits accumulated since 1980 (and a quadruples national debt of $5 trillion) ensured that the 1990s would be an era of cutbacks in federal programs and attempts to trim entitlements.

II. Business Management Techniques and Public Administration

U.S. public administration has always looked to the best practices in business management for ideas about how to improve government administration. Frederick Taylor, the father of "scientific management" testified about his techniques before Congress in the early 20^th century. Taylor's ideas about management, since they were primarily concerned with physical production, were not widely applicable to government administration which was primarily service and clerical oriented. But the influence of scientific management did have a profound effect on government and business thinking because of its devotion to careful measurement and a rigorous approach to management. Its conviction that there was one best way to accomplish any management job and the optimism that it could be discovered by careful analysis widely influenced public administration, particularly the "high noon of orthodoxy" in the 1930s and the publication of Papers on the Science of Administration.^[11]

The challenge to scientific management by the human relations movement, pioneered by Elton Mayo in the 1930s and carried on by Douglas MacGregor in the 1950s produced profound changes in business management theory in mid-twentieth century. The idea that workers would be much more productive if treated well and asked to participate in decision making had a much more direct effect on government management and spawned a broad variety of management techniques and fads in the second half of the 20^th century. These new approaches were adopted by U.S. corporations as well as by U.S. governments at federal, state, and local levels.

While the broad, human relations approach to management was easily adaptable to public administration, many of the other management techniques of the late 20^th century were not necessarily so easily adapted to the public sector. This section will examine some of the differences between the public and private sectors and argue that the transferability of techniques must be selective.

The political scientist Wallace Sayer is known for his statement that "the public and private sectors are fundamentally alike in all unimportant respects." He was taking issue with the "generic" approach to management that argued (along with Woodrow Wilson) that management is management and that the context is not relevant. The basic challenge is the same: to organize people and resources to accomplish a goal. Whether that goal was the building of buildings or the defense of the country was immaterial to managing the undertaking.

Sayer and others have argued, however, that the purposes of the two enterprises, public and business, are fundamentally different and management has to take this into account. Three major differences between the sectors are relevant here: the different goals of the two sectors, the flexibility that managers have in the different arenas, and their fundamental purposes.

Public Goods

Traditional economic theory holds that in a capitalist economy the purpose and motivating factor in business enterprise is to earn a profit. Efficiency is ensured by the competition of different entrepreneurs to offer superior products and services to customers. If a business makes a profit, providing it stays within the laws, that is sufficient justification for its existence. Within such a capitalistic system governmental action is justified when a service is useful to the economy, (or polity) but there is not sufficient incentive in the private sector to provide it. The classic example of such a "public good" is national defense. If the government does not provide it, there will be no national military capability. And all taxpayers must be coerced (by the law) to pay their share to support it, because trying to rely on voluntary contributions would lead some "free riders" to shirk their duty to contribute.

The same theory justifies government regulations to limit environmental pollution. In a competitive business environment there is not sufficient incentive to clean up industrial wastes before dumping them into the environment. Such "spillover" effects will affect not only the producers and customers, but also others who for instance live down stream, and who have nothing to do with the business. Only a broadly enforced regime of regulation could ensure that all are subject to similar controls.

Within this framework, the justification for governmental provision of goods and services is that the private sector will not provide enough of some desirable goods, if any at all. The rich may be able to afford private security forces and educational tutors for their children. But if left only to private provision of safety and education, the economy as a whole will suffer. A thriving business economy must have an orderly society (as well as judicial adjudication of civil differences) and a broadly educated workforce. Thus the justification for governmental provision of these services.

But this framework is only how a capitalist society thinks about and justifies governmental action. The theory does not specify which goods and services the government ought to provide. These specific decisions are the result of the constitutionally prescribed political process. Thus different majorities at different times in history might make different decisions about which services the government will provide. Determining what the government will do is essentially a political question.

The problem with management techniques and their transferability is that in businesses there is a "bottom line." That is, if a business is making a profit its existence is justified, and its various parts can be justified by how they contribute to making that profit. Efficiency can be calculated by showing how the same product can be produced with fewer resources.

Evaluating public services is much more difficult because there is no "bottom line." Since by definition, the public sector is providing services that would not produce a profit in the private sector (at least in the same quantity), there is no way to judge how much any portion of activity contributes to profitability. Thus there is no pricing system by which to judge whether any given activity is worth carrying out.

The fundamental purposes (mission or goals) of public organizations are determined by public law. They are created by law to accomplish certain purposes, and the law justifies their existence, not economic profitability.

Management Flexibility

Because of these differences in the fundamental purposes of the public and private sectors, the range of managerial discretion is different in the two spheres. Business owners and managers are free to decide what to produce and what line of business to be in. Public managers do not own their organizations and are constrained by the laws which created the programs they operate.

In the business world managers have the option of deciding what line of work to be in, whether to branch out into another area or whether to drop a line of the business that is not profitable. 3M can decide to expand its product line from adhesive tape to digitally recording tape based on its judgement of its capacity and the potential market. The advice of some business management consultants is "stick to your knitting," that is, do what you do best. The point is that in the private sector managers have a choice. In the public sector, however, executives have only a narrow range of choice; they can try new ways to accomplish the mission, but they cannot change the mission of the agency. At the federal level that is for Congress to decide. For instance, if the Department of Defense thinks it is a bad idea to expand its mission to drug interdiction, it can only make that argument to Congress which has the constitutional authority to make the final decision.

When Roy Chapin became CEO of American Motors in 1977 he decided (in consultation with the board of directors) to change the market segment AMC would focus on; he closed plants; and personally made broad personnel changes.^[12] But intractable political constraints affect public managers with respect to placement or closing of physical plant. Congress may specify where certain installations are to be located for political purposes, or it may forbid the closing of installations because of political pressure. In the 1970s and 1980s the Defense Department wanted to close a number of bases for management and efficiency reasons, but pressure from Congress because of lost jobs and effect on local economy kept them open. Finally, the Base Closing and Realignment Commission was created to achieve a political compromise and allow some of the bases to be closed.

In addition to policy control by Congress, federal career managers are also subject to leadership and priority setting by the political appointees of the president. While presidential appointees must carry out the mission of the agency within the intent of public law, there is a certain amount of flexibility in emphasis and discretion in method enjoyed by the executive branch. But from the perspective of career managers, this executive discretion is sometimes exercised for political rather than managerial purposes. Location and spending decisions can be made to please constituencies by the president as well as by Congress.

One of the highest values of public administration is the ideal of efficiency, but this value may be stressed so often and so much in the literature and rhetoric of the field because in reality its achievement is often compromised by other values. Public organizations value equity, whether of the provision of services to citizens or in the equitable treatment of employees of public organizations. Personnel decisions in the public sector are constrained by concerns of equity, but also by protections against political manipulation and favoritism that often tempts political leaders. Thus a large set of rules and regulations to prevent partisan abuse constrain the actions of public sector managers. The private sector is not entirely free of considerations other than efficiency, but business managers are not nearly so bound by rules and regulations to enforce equity and preclude partisan bias.

Perhaps the most far reaching constraint on public sector managers is the need for accountability: to the citizens, but more directly to Congress and the president. This accountability is often enforced by the press which is always eager to unearth a scandal in the spending of taxpayers' money. With the possibility of political embarrassment, political superiors impose a plethora of rules intended to reduce the possibility of any embarrassing incident. One horror story can engender a plethora of rules and regulations to prevent any recurrence. These rules and regulations constrain the discretion of good managers at the same time that they prevent abuses.

Given these profound differences between the business world and public administration, we should not be surprised if management techniques from one sector do not have direct relevance to the other.

Business Management Fads

In the latter part of the 20^th century a series of management fads have swept through the corporate world, most of them building on the human relations movement and often meant to counteract the perceived overemphasis on quantification that was spawned by Taylorism and MBA schools.^[13] In a book called The Witch Doctors: Making Sense of the Management Gurus, John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge survey and analyze this trend. They argue that these management techniques or fads are sweeping the business community with increasing frequency. Among the fads they treat are: theory Z, management by objectives, brainstorming, managerial grid, T groups, excellence, managing by walking around, etc. They state that of the leading 25 leading management techniques internationally the average company has used 14. They argue that the life cycle of these fads in shrinking and that new fads replace others at an increasing rate.^[14] They also point out that management consulting is big business, employing 100,000 people full time and American firms spending $15 billion per year on it.^[15]

While they admit that some of the energy spent on these management fads pays off in improved performance, they are also quite critical of "faddishness" of the fads and their often shallow implementation. They argue that management "gurus are con artists, the witch doctors of our age, playing on business people's anxieties in order to sell snake oil," and that their popularity "is propelled by two primal human instincts: fear and greed."^[16] They portray a climate in which business managers feel that they have to master the latest fad or they will be at a great disadvantage in the market place.

The substance of most of the management fads, according to Micklethwait and Wooldridge, "is blindingly obvious" and "applied common sense." On the other hand, the fads fly by at such velocity that "mangers have learned how to pay lip service to theiroies without really understanding them, let alone bothering to implement them."^[17] Managers often seem to think that the latest technique is a mechanical fix, and that the solution to their problems can be applied by formula to solve any management problems that the organizations might have.

An example of such a fad was embodied in a book by James Champy and Michael Hammer, Reengineering the Corporation, sold 2 million copies in 17 languages and became the bible for managers on the "cutting edge" of the management.^[18] The number of articles that mentioned "reengineering" in their title was about 10 in 1990 but up to 800 in 1994.^[19] While the technique emphasized the reworking and improvement of production processes, the emphasis for many in the business world was firing workers, or "downsizing." Many took their cue from an article that Hammer published in the Harvard Business Review entitled, "Reengineering Work: Don't Automate, Obliterate."^[20] The advice was taken in important sectors of the business world and a number of large corporations fired thousands of workers and saw their stock prices increase in value.

While the downsizing seemed to help many organizations in the short run, and their companies outperformed the stock market six months after the downsizing, after three years these same companies fell behind the stock market.^[21] The problems created by the simple-minded approach to downsizing became evident as companies had to retrain people to perform the essential functions of the midlevel managers who were fired because their jobs were seen as redundant^[22]

Hammer admitted that the reenginering movement in its mechanical approach to corporate management neglected the human factor. "The real point of this is longer-term growth on the revenue side. It's not so much getting rid of people. It's getting more out of people."^[23] While the original intention of reengineering was more than just downsizing, the temptation was to use the technique as a mechanical fix and panacea. Approaches to reengineering became popular in the federal government during the downsizing after President Clinton was elected.

Thus care must be taken by private sector managers in deciding whether to adopt the latest management fad in their companies. One indicator of skepticism was the presence on the New York Times best seller list of The Dilbert Principle and Dogbert's Top Secret Management Handbook.^[24] These books by Scott Adams lampoon and satirize the fadishness and purported hipocracy of contemporary management thinking.

All of the warnings about management fads and their questionable efficacy in the private sector also apply to the public sector. Management scholar Henry Mintzberg even argued that a skull and cross bones ought to be imprinted on the cover of the Harvard Business Review along with the warning: "not to be taken by the public sector."^[25]

Scholar Graham T. Allison, after a careful analysis of the similarities and differences between public and private sector management concluded: "that public and private management are at least as different as they are similar, and that the differences are more important than the similarities....the notion that there is any significant body of private management practices and skills that can be transferred directly to public management tasks in a way that produces significant improvements is wrong."^[26]

While it may be true that the best managed companies in the private sector are the most productive organizations in the country, it does not necessarily follow that business management is always more efficient than public management. Because of the profound differences outlined in this section, the two sectors are not directly comparable on efficiency criteria. This will not stop the invidious comparisons between the two sectors that are often made by those enamored of the efficiency of market systems or by politicians making partisan points. But neither should these very real differences stop public sector managers from learning as much as possible from business practices and using them when applicable in the public sector. It is just that our expectations should not be too high. There is always room for improvement, but we should not expect miracles from the latest management fad.

Management Challenges Inherent in U.S. Government

There are special challenges in trying to manage in the federal government that are different from most other organizations, public or private. Primary among these is the very structure of the institutions and the constitutional nature of the policy making process. The Framers of the Constitution set up a system that would be self checking, because ‘men are not angels.' In the words of James Madison in Federalist No. 51: the government would be self regulataing because of rivalries built into the system by "...giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others....Ambition must be made to counteract ambition."

Thus policymaking often entails competition between the president and Congress with the result that laws are often ambiguous, presenting challenges to public administrators. In the situation of divided government when different poltical parties controll the two policymaking branches, public mangers may receive opposing signals or policy directives from their legitimate bosses in Congress and the executive branch. The American government thus violates Max Weber's rule of monocratic hierarchy because public administrators have tow legitimate bosses.

When there is distrust between the executive and Congress, laws or legislative directions may be passed which, in the eyes of the executive constitute "micromanagement" of the executive. The perspective of public managers is ‘just give us a pot of money, and we who are experts will determine the most effective way to accomplish the mission.' But when there have been instances of bad faith on the part of the executive (e.g. taking money provided by Congress for X and spending in on Y), Congress may retaliate by providing appropriations in exquisite detail, precluding even a reasonable amount of discretion.^[27] This "micromanagement," though sometimes appropriate or necessary, often leads to inefficiency.

Another cause of difficulty and inefficiency in the federal government lies in the nature of democracy itself. With presidential elections every four years and congressional elections every two years, there is great potential for reversals in policy direction. Frequent changes in partisan control of the government make long term planning difficult and often frustrate public managers who must plan to implement programs for long term effectiveness.

Public administrators are often frustrated by what they perceive to be the petty politics of decision making by politicians in Congress and the executive, when decisions are made on the basis of short term political advantage rather than on programmatic criteria. This might take the form of locating federal installations in the districts or states of powerful legislators or making spending decisions intended to influence the votes of a certain region in the country. At times much of the government may be shut down, because of the lack of agreement on policy between the two branches resulting in the failure to pass appropriations legislation to finance government operations. But the Constitution must be taken seriously, even at the cost of economic efficiency.

Justice Brandeis expressed this point of view when he observed that the constitutional structure of the federal government was designed "not to promote efficiency but to preclude the exercise of arbitrary power." Thus the "rational" criteria of administrators, based only on the "merits" of the program in question are often overridden by politicians, either for the "petty" reasons of individual political advantage or for the grander political purpose of changing the policy direction of the country. The purpose of these constitutional impediments is accountability and limited government. The price in efficiency in high, but one well worth paying in a government that operates with the consent of the governed and distrusts concentrated power.

Further difficulties are imposed on management of the federal government by the large number of political appointees who reign at the top of the executive branch. In contrast with every other modern, industrialized democracy, the United States (with the smallest public sector) has the largest number of political appointees. While Britain has about 50 and Germany several hundred, the US president can appoint about 3,000 people to run the executive branch in addition to about 500 White House staffers.

The theory is that the president is elected and must have people who are personal and partisan loyalists to carry out policy directives in the bureaucracy. The assumption is that career civil servants in the executive branch are not sufficiently committed to changes in policy to be willing to carry out the president's wishes. While there are good reasons for having presidential appointees lead the executive branch, the number has increased in recent decades and political appointments now reach deeper into the bureaucracy than before.

A number of public management commissions and scholars have argued that these trends have made federal management more cumbersome. Turnover in the political ranks, with time in office averaging 18-24 months is disruptive. Accountability is diffused with more and more bosses, some having their own political agendas. It becomes harder to retain the best career executives when their career aspirations often must be cut off below the deputy assistant secretary level. And often the recruitment of political appointees is based on political loyalty rather than professional qualifications.^[28]

When problems in federal management, organization, or policy result in dissatisfaction with the administration of public policy, there is a temptation to search for a management fix or panacea. But the reality is that many of the problems in the federal management are caused by the nature of the work government does (which is inherently not measurable by any bottom line) and which is determined by institutions that are designed to be in conflict with one another. Thus we should not be surprised when management fads to not solve our problems.

This does not mean that improvements cannot be made or that we should not do the best to overcome the management challenges that we face, but our expectations should be commensurate with the realities of public management.

III. The National Performance Review

The National Performance Review grew out of a commitment by the newly elected Clinton administration to improve government performance. Vice President Gore was put in charge of the effort, and he organized a staff of 250 people to work on it, most of them career civil servants. The premise of the effort was that the executive branch had grown too large and unwieldy and needed to be reoriented to reflect the new realities at the end of the 20^th century. The report of the NPR effort, From Red Tape to Results: Creating a Government That Works Better and Costs Less, argued that the progressive era had spawned rigid, hierarchical bureaucratic structures to combat the evils of corruption and the spoils system.^[29] The combination of the hierarchical structure and the growth of government during the New Deal and World War II led to what they argued is an overly rigid and unresponsive bureaucracy in the federal government.

Much of the reasoning behind the report was based on a book by David Osborne and Ted Gaebler, Reinventing Government, which brought together a series of success stories about creative management of public services in local governments.^[30] The authors argued that applying these techniques and principles in the federal government would result in a transformation of federal management. The techniques included careful attention to the government's "customers," the reduction of rules and red tape, an emphasis on results, empowering employees to take risks and be entrepreneurial in the design of government services. The report made 384 specific recommendations and was organized around the principles of 1: Cutting Red Tape, 2. Putting Customers First, 3. Empowering Employees, and 4. Cutting back to Basics.

The report was the basis for the most systematic reform effort ever attempted throughout the federal government. Reinvention Teams were established in each agency to implement the reform recommendations and to transform the bureaucratic culture of the government. While many of the principles of the NPR were departures from traditional public management principles, there were some similarities and continuities with past reform efforts.

Despite explicit statements in the report that government administration is different from business management, many of the reforms were based on a private sector model of management. Primary among the similarities with past efforts was the tenet that private sector principles could vastly improve government management. "Putting customers first" was one of the main refrains of the reinventers, and major efforts were made to determine who agency customers were and what their preferences were. Another principle was to try to set up competition among different providers of services and to use market mechanisms in the provision of services to encourage excellence. The plans called for the devolution of authority (delegation) and the empowerment of lower level employees to make decisions for the organization. The personnel functions of hiring and firing were to be decentralized to the agency level. Entrepreneurial practice was to be encouraged among government managers.

A major difference between the NPR and previous reforms was its rejection of the traditional principles of public administration that emphasize hierarchy and accountability. Most previous reforms (e.g. Taft, Brownlow, Hoover, CSRA) sought to increase the responsiveness of the government to its central directors and to enhance the control of the president over the executive branch. In contrast, the NPR sought to devolve power to lower levels in the bureaucratic hierarchy, to encourage risk taking, and to make agencies responsive to their customers rather than Congress or their executive branch superiors. Accountability was to be achieved by measuring the outcomes of policy rather than by the oversight of process or inputs to policy.

After four years of work, the NPR effort in the Vice President's office was able to point to a number of success stories throughout the executive branch. Administrative processes were redesigned to provide quicker service; agency teams became more responsive to their customers; and layers of hierarchy were eliminated. These successes were the result of new energy, creative ideas, and a new commitment to improve management that was spurred by the NPR efforts.

But one of the major political successes of the NPR undermined the progress that was being made on the management front. In the initial push to gain acceptance of the NPR effort, the Administration promised to cut 252,000 positions from the executive branch (later increased by Congress to 272,500). The argument was that with improvements in information processing technology and the expected redesign of administrative processes, the newly empowered workforce would no longer need many of the middle level staff personnel, such as personnel, budget, and accounting specialists.

The political reality of the situation, however, was that the new administration felt that it needed to respond to the popular anti-government mood in the country. The Democrats had to demonstrate that they could be tough managers, and the argument that they could reform of the government while reducing its size might protect programs from more drastic cuts that the Republicans were proposing. The downsizing also would help meet the budget savings promises of the NPR and deficit reduction targets of Clinton's budget policies. The administration could then claim credit for reform and downsizing at the same time.

The administration's downsizing efforts were successful. By end of 1996 the executive branch had shrunk by 254,800 workers, 11.6 per cent of total government employees (not counting the Post Office which was privatized in the early 1970s). A good portion of the downsizing came from the Defense Department whose civilian workforce will have dropped by 23 per cent by 1999. But other agencies also were reduced severely, with the Office of Personnel Management losing 38 per cent of its employees and the General Services Administration being cut by 23 percent by 1996.^[31] The downsizing was also aided by congressional authority for "buyouts" in which employees could be paid up to $25,000 to quit or retire early. While this helped to achieve the downsizing goals with firing fewer people, it also gave agency managers less control over the shape of their agencies' workforces.

One of the major problems with the downsizing efforts was that the uncertainty involved in making major cuts in agencies made management reform much more difficult. If workers are wondering whether their job will exist next month, they will be spending more creative energy trying to save their job or find a new one than in reforming management processes or accomplishing the agency mission. Thus one of the major claimed victories of the NPR also undercut its management reform efforts.

Several other problems are associated with the downsizing aspect of the NPR. Insofar as employees are cut without reducing the missions or programs of government agencies, governmental capacity to accomplish its goals may become hollowed out, despite NPR claims that better procedures will enable agencies to accomplish more with less. Also, to the extent that government employees are merely replaced by contract workers who do government work but who are technically employed by private businesses, the government may seem smaller, but if fact remain the same size or even grow. Finally, while the middle and lower ranks of agency employment have been cut, the number of political employees which have increased significantly in the past several decades, has remained the same, despite reformers' calls for reducing their number.

The NPR did succeed in that it unleashed a surge of creativity in many agencies throughout the government that improved government services. Some of the measures of success by the NPR office were process indicators, such as the number of agencies setting customer service standards (100) or the number of "reinvention labs that were established (135). But some of the success stories were improvements in service delivery, such as the electronic payment of benefits, reducing the time to respond to inquiries, or the simplification of procurement regulations.^[32]

Thus the NPR has not been an undisputed success nor has it been an unalloyed failure. In one sense, the NPR was bound to fail, but only because its scope was so sweeping and ambitious. It called for the transformation of bureaucratic culture throughout the executive branch. It promised to eliminate hundreds of thousands of workers and layers of staff and at the same time increase productivity. In its promise to decrease the number of government workers it certainly succeeded, but whether that meant the government was reduced in size (including contract workers) or that it was working more efficiently, was impossible to say.

But the NPR was bound to fail in one of its primary goals: increasing citizen trust in government. Good management and efficiency are difficult to project effectively to the public. But even if the public could be convinced that the government is operating more efficiently, the problem would not be solved because American citizens disagree about what the purpose and appropriate functions of government are. Management efficiency, even if convincingly achieved, will ot solve the problem of public confidence. Those who think that our national security establishment is too large will not be mollified by a more efficient military. Those who think that welfare programs do more harm than good will not change their minds if more efficient processes are developed for the administration of welfare. Until fundamental disagreements about the scope and functions of government are resolved, citizen trust in government will not significantly improve.

This does not mean that we should not pursue managerial efficiency, it merely means that we should not expect that managerial improvement will resolve fundamental political disagreements.^[33]

IV. Conclusion and Lessons Learned

Experience with administrative reforms shows that it takes considerable political capital to launch a large scale reform effort. But in order to put together the necessary coalition of support it often seems necessary to overstate the problems with the status quo and to exaggerate the expected benefits of reform.

Problems Overstated and Benefits Exaggerated

In the search for horror stories to illustrate the need for change the impression often given to citizens is of a government that is much worse that it actually is. In his campaign for the presidency Jimmy Carter called the federal government a horrible bureaucratic mess and promised to reduce the number of agencies from 1900 to 200. The Carter administration in campaigning for Civil Service Reform focussed on the difficulties in firing civil servants who were underperformers, illustrating their points with worst case scenarios. Vice President Gore and backers of the NPR exaggerated the problems in the federal government, arguing that "It is almost as if federal programs were designed not to work." President Clinton said that the government too often "...costs too much or is to slow or too arrogant or too unresponsive."^[34] The Volcker Commission had a delicate task in trying not to portray federal management as a disaster zone but nevertheless in sufficiently bad shape as to need significant management improvement.

There is also a tendency to overstate the benefits of reform. The Hoover Commissions promised that their reforms would save billions of dollars. The Grace Commission estimated savings of $90 billions; claims that were challenged by the General Accounting Office examination of the proposed changes in policy and management. The claimed savings of more than $100 billion projected by the NPR were also challenged by critics as being too optimistic.

One of the temptations of reformers is to become so enthusiastic about the latest technique that they want everybody to adopt it. One of the problems with PPBS was that, while it was often useful in defense analysis where it was developed, it was much less useful in dealing with social programs. MBO and ZBB were also introduced across the board. NPR initiatives were introduced in all agencies, but at least they were formulated by agnecy "reinvention teams" specifically for each agency. On the other hand, the customer service directive of the NPR was implemented by executive order for all agencies in a rigid step-by-step manner.^[35]

The Failures of Management Reform

The implementation of management reforms is subject to several predictable impediments. First, cynicism must be overcome. Federal employees have seen management fads come and go over the years, and are tempted to just hunker down until the latest one passes or when the next administration comes to power. This cynicism must be dealt with by the quality of the reform efforts; they must seem doable and reasonable. Resources, staff support, high level support, and follow-through are crucial in the early stages of reform, or the initiatives will be ignored in the bureaucracy.

The opposite danger is that the reforms will be readily embraced by the bureaucracy, but they will be implemented in a pro forma manner, and the effort will become a "paper exercise." Many agencies felt that PPBS was a paper exercise, though they could not get BOB to explain it to them. ZBB was implemented relatively easily, but it did not have much impact on budget priorities, which was sits alleged purpose. CSRA mandated performance appraisal in all agencies, but many agencies went through the motions without seriously using the system to evaluate performance.

One of the pitfalls of new management systems is that they may imply changes in power relationships that are not acknowledged and which may defeat the intended purpose. For instance PPBS assumed that the rational/analytical results of the analyses would be primary factors in budgetary decision making. But congressional appropriations are often determined by political factors having little to do with cost-benefit ratios. The Senior Executive Service that was created by the CSRA of 1978 was set up to make it easier for career executives to move into presidential appointments (PAS) and back to career SES slots after another election, but presidents seldom chose to use these provisions. The SES was supposed to promote mobility of individuals among different agencies, but the reality is that career executives are more often rewarded for loyalty to one agency than for jumping among several agencies, as the law had envisioned.

Reorganizations are often presented as solutions to problems of politics and policy. Politicians promise that consolidating operations or shifting agencies will save money and lead to more efficient programs. The problem is that reorganizations create so much disruption within the agencies being affected that they are often very costly in the short run. In so far as they are well designed, longer term benefits may result, but most likely long after the initiators are gone. That is, reorganization is much more like gardening than like architecture; the hard work comes immediately, but the payoff comes much later.^[36][cite tsp, Szanton]

What can we learn from the failures of management reform efforts? They are often dismissed as President Clinton dismissed reform efforts previous to the NPR. "This performance review will not produce another report just to gather dust in some warehouse. We have enough of them already."^[37] In the short term, large scale reform efforts often do fail. The Taft Commission on Economy and Efficiency did not result in any immedate changes. The Brownlow Committee Report was rejected by Congress as a grab for power by FDR. The Second Hoover Commission did not cause much change. The CSRA created the Office of Personnel Management, but it did not play the role its creators had envisioned, nor did the SES, merit pay, or performance appraisal provisions of CSRA. Several years after its passage personnel powers were being recentralized, and within two decades OPM was reduced to a shell of the Civil Service Commission it replaced.

Management fads don't fare much better. PPBS, implemented across the board by LBJ in 1965, was abandoned soon after President Nixon took office. Nixon replaced it by MBO, which was discarded by President Carter. Carter established ZBB, but the incoming Reagan administration ignored it in favor of deep budget cuts. Organization Development was replaced by Total Quality Management, which was soon overshadowed by the NPR initiatives and the mandates of the Government Performance and Results Act.

One of the problems with these changes is that it takes good managers to implement them. Good management can make them work. But good management is the precondition for the success of systems that are often expected to create good management. The aphorism that management systems to not constitute management is correct.^[38] Good systems can help good managers to perform better, but they cannot create good managers. Management reforms also take sustained effort over long periods of time to perform as expected, when often the purpose for their adoption is the hope for a quick fix.

The Successes of Management Reform

A reasonable question then is, why do these idealistic reform efforts persist, despite all of these evident failures? Why do reasonably intelligent and experienced managers continue to sign on to these seemingly quixotic reform efforts?

Part of the answer is entropy. The second law of thermodynamics holds that all systems will gradually lose organization and move toward randomness unless energy continues to flow into the system. The bio systems of the earth would all break down were it not for the influx of energy from the sun. Human systems are also subject to entropy. People get tired and stale; they get burned out by working too hard; and after a while they may go through the motions without conviction. Unless there is an influx of new energy into the system, it will tend to run down and lose its organizing purpose. Thus management systems need revitalization by new people and new ideas. Management fads perform this useful function.

One of the criticisms of management fads is that some of them merely seem to be codified common sense. Thus MBO mandates that bosses discuss performance expectations with their subordinates. Performance appraisal systems mandate that performance expectations be expicit and performance formally evaluated. PPBS and GPRA mandate that organizational goals be made explicit and empirical indicators of success be developed. Merit pay mandates that good performance be rewarded and poor performance be punished. CSRA suggests that agency managers ought to have a major say in who they hire and that they ought to be able to fire nonperformers without too much trouble. But the reason for these recognized management principles being made the focus of major reforms is that they are often lost sight of over the years.

In addition, like many political phenomena, management trends go in cycles, e.g. from an emphasis on neutral merit to responsiveness to political leadership to representativeness.[cite Kaufman] Too much political discretion in the spoils era led to severe constraints on personnel decisions in the mid-twentieth century. Centralized personnel control in the Civil Service Commission led to the 1978 effort to give agency managers more discretion. This new direction was reversed in the Reagan Administration, only to be reemphasized by the Clinton administration's NPR. The quantification emphasized in Frederick Taylor in scientific management was softened by the human relations approach to managment but was reintroduced in the government by the productivity movement and the Government Performance and Results Act.

Another reason that management fads are useful is the "Hawthorne Effect," which takes its name from the social science experiments conducted by Elton Mayo at the Hawthorne plant of Western Electric near Chicago in the late 1920s. In this classic experiment Mayo found that the mere introduction of management change in a work group, regardless of its content, would produce improvements in productivity. The reason was that workers felt that they were engaged in something important to management and worked harder as a result of the attention they received rather than because of any changes in their working conditions.

Another reason that management fads are useful, despite their evident failure, is that long after the abandonment of official mandates, the useful aspects of the techniques remain a part of management practice. Managers take those things that help them in their jobs and continue using them. Learning is cumulative at the micro-level. There are many elements of PPBS, MBO, ZBB, OD, and TQM still in use around the federal government even after the formal systems have been abandoned.

Even those elements of reform recommendations that seem to be failures or rejected by the political system may be important in helping set the agenda for future reform. The most important contribution of reform proposals may not be their immediate impact, in laws passed, or dollars saved. Setting the stage for future reform may be the most important contribution. For example, reformers had be denouncing the spoils system for decades before the Pendleton Act established the merit system.

The Brownlow Committee Report was rejected outright by Congress as a power grab by Franklin Roosevelt, yet its logic and rhetoric provided a reasoned basis for the future role of the White House staff. Its ideals live on, even if they are often honored only in the breech. The Brownlow proposals also set the stage for presidential reorganization authority, which was granted by Congress to FDR in 1939 and with which he created the Executive Office of the President, the institutional basis for the modern presidency.^[39]

The Brownlow Committee also recommended the creation of a personnel agency that would report directly to the president to replace the Civil Service Commission. The Office of Personnel Management was finally created in 1978. The second Hoover Commission in 1955 proposed the creation of an elite corps of senior executives in the civil service to enhance managerial effectiveness. Its recommendation was not realized until the creation of the SES in the CSRA of 1978.

Similarly, a number of commissions and management reform efforts have echoed the recommendation of the Volcker Commission to reduce the number of political appointees in the executive branch.^[40] Some critics have dismissed these recommendations as politically naive and hopeless. Why would a president willingly give up political plums that can be distributed to political supporters, even if management reformers can make a good case that the present large numbers are counteproductive to good presidential management.? The justification of all of these efforts is that well reasoned arguments help set the agenda for management change in the future.

Thus new management fads should not be dismissed out of hand by scholars ("we've seen these before") or bureaucrats ("we'll just hunker down and they'll go away"). New approaches to management are necessary, even if they are reiterations of what has been tried before or seem to advocate common sense. This rejection of cynicism does not mean that the "new" ideas should be accepted on face value without subjecting them to scrutiny. Careful analysis is necessary and healthy, but it should be offered in a positive sense. The critical perspective should be: how can be best accomplish the goals of the proposed reforms, not how can we undermine this latest fad.

Thus we should expect new management fads in the future by new management gurus and new administrations eager to make their mark on federal programs. But scholars and practitioners alike should remember that management renewal is necessary and significant accomplishment depends upon enthusiasm. But enthusiastic advocates of reform should remember that only good management and hard work will lead to successful management improvement and that there are no quick fixes or panaceas in the management world.

Endnotes