Government Performance: Why Management Matters / Edition 1

by Patricia W. Ingraham, Philip G. Joyce, Amy Kneedler Donahue

Overview

Scholars and practitioners of public management have stressed the importance of such varied concepts as efficiency, process, systems, and capacity as key to running effective government programs. While acknowledging the usefulness of each of these criteria, the authors of Government Performance argue that one quality above all is crucial to the overall performance of government: effective management. Examining government performance at the federal, state, and local levels, the authors present analyses of public management systems in all fifty states, the thirty-five largest cities, forty large counties, and a number of federal agencies. They examine systems for financial management, human resources management, information technology management, capital management, and systems for managing results. While acknowledging the political context of all public administration systems, they argue that effective management of these systems nevertheless provides the key to good government performance.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801872280
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	09/19/2003
Series:	Johns Hopkins Studies in Governance and Public Management
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.46(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Patricia W. Ingraham is Founding Dean at the College of Community and Public Affairs, Binghamton University. She is the author of The Foundation of Merit: Public Service in American Democracy and coauthor of Government Performance: Why Management Matters, both published by Johns Hopkins.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Management, Capacity, and Performance
Chapter 2. Dissecting Management
Chapter 3. Assessing Management
Chapter 4. Research Methodology
Chapter 5. State and Local Findings
Chapter 6. Federal Results
Chapter 7. The Big Lessons
Chapter 8. Next Steps

What People are Saying About This

Barbara S. Romzek

The book's theme is an important and timely one: that management matters and that management reform would be most fruitfully approached as a long-term building of competencies and components necessary to effect change. The qualitative and quantitative data have been used to craft one of the more comprehensive and integrated pictures of management available in the field. In undertaking such a project, and succeeding as they have, the authors have done an enormous service to the field.

G. Calvin Mackenzie

Taking the ambitious and unique approach of using empirical analysis to identify the key linkages between public management and effective policy performance, this book offers students a larger and more reliable set of empirical guideposts and prescriptions than have ever before been available. This is a bold project that goes beyond any earlier effort to define and measure the qualities of government that yield effective public policy, and there is much for all of us to learn here.

From the Publisher

Taking the ambitious and unique approach of using empirical analysis to identify the key linkages between public management and effective policy performance, this book offers students a larger and more reliable set of empirical guideposts and prescriptions than have ever before been available. This is a bold project that goes beyond any earlier effort to define and measure the qualities of government that yield effective public policy, and there is much for all of us to learn here.
—G. Calvin Mackenzie, Goldfarb Family Distinguished Professor of Government, Colby College

The book's theme is an important and timely one: that management matters and that management reform would be most fruitfully approached as a long-term building of competencies and components necessary to effect change. The qualitative and quantitative data have been used to craft one of the more comprehensive and integrated pictures of management available in the field. In undertaking such a project, and succeeding as they have, the authors have done an enormous service to the field.
—Barbara S. Romzek, Associate Dean, University of Kansas

Reading Group Guide

Taking the ambitious and unique approach of using empirical analysis to identify the key linkages between public management and effective policy performance, this book offers students a larger and more reliable set of empirical guideposts and prescriptions than have ever before been available. This is a bold project that goes beyond any earlier effort to define and measure the qualities of government that yield effective public policy, and there is much for all of us to learn here.

Editorial Reviews

"This slim volume, a seminal study, provides a positive picture of public managers eager to learn and to create management capacity, which is posited as the key to governmental performance... A must read for students of public management."

Choice

An ambitious and well-publicized attempt to define criteria for measuring government performance... Well argued and rich in material.

— Sandford Borins

Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory

This slim volume, a seminal study, provides a positive picture of public managers eager to learn and to create management capacity, which is posited as the key to governmental performance . . . A must read for students of public management.
—Choice

The authors of this volume argue that one quality above all is crucial to the overall performance of government: effective management.
—International Review of Administrative Sciences

An ambitious and well-publicized attempt to define criteria for measuring government performance . . . Well argued and rich in material.
—Sandford Borins, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory

From the Publisher

An ambitious and well-publicized attempt to define criteria for measuring government performance . . . Well argued and rich in material.

Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory - Sandford Borins

The authors of this volume argue that one quality above all is crucial to the overall performance of government: effective management.

International Review of Administrative Sciences