The Effective Public Manager: Achieving Success in Government Organizations

By Steven Cohen, William Eimicke and Tanya Heikkila

The Effective Public Manager

Thoroughly revised and updated, the fifth edition of The Effective Public Manager offers public administrators and students a classic resource and a highly-accessible guide to the fundamentals of leading and managing public organizations. In this new edition the authors cover the key areas of the field and present in-depth analysis through the strategic use of fresh case studies and real-world examples. The book is designed to give real-world managers and aspiring managers the information and tools needed to meet the demands of their jobs directly rather than working around the constraints of government. The Effective Public Manager offers a proven approach to implementing efficient management tools in a dynamic political, organizational, economic, and technological context.

New to this edition

• Information on the transformation of media, both traditional and social
• An analysis of the changing nature of work and privatization trends
• An examination of national security and the current thinking regarding accountability, transparency, and crisis communication
• An online instructor's guide, which includes discussion questions and updated PowerPoint slides

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wiley
• Release date: Aug 6, 2013
• ISBN: 9781118573297

Book preview

Contents

Cover

Title

Copyright

Dedication

Preface

Acknowledgments

The Authors

Chapter One: The Perpetual Crisis in Public Management

The Current Crisis Defined

Government’s Response to the Crisis of Confidence

The National Performance Review

The Challenges of the Performance-Based Movement

Chapter Two: Defining Effective Public Management

The Bumbling Bureaucrat

Managing for Politicians

A Recipe for Failure

The Innovative, Effective Public Manager

Why Risk Taking Is Possible

The Need for Effective and Innovative Public Management

Chapter Three: How to Find and Keep Good People

Why Good People Are Hard to Hire

How to Find Good People

How to Hire the Good People You Have Found

How to Reward and Keep the Good People in Your Organization

How to Get Rid of Inadequate Staff Members

Effective Management and Staffing

Chapter Four: Developing Effective Working Relationships

How to Satisfy the Demands of Superiors, Peers, and Subordinates

How to Keep Your Boss Relatively Happy

How to Keep Your Staff Relatively Happy

Communicating in Partnerships and Networks

Chapter Five: Structuring Systems, Tasks, and Responsibilities

How the Organization’s Structure Can Help Managers Manage

What Reorganization Should Accomplish and When It Is Worth the Effort

How to Maintain Control Without Suffocating Staff Members

How to Break Down Projects into Manageable Tasks

How to Make Sure Task Assignments Are Fair and Reasonable

How to Ensure That Work Is Assigned to the Right People, Gets Done, and Gets Done Well

Chapter Six: Understanding and Applying Innovation Strategies in the Public Sector

The Concept of Public Sector Management Innovation

Techniques of Management Innovation

Integrating and Using Techniques of Public Management Innovation

Ensuring the Successful Adoption of Innovation Strategies

Chapter Seven: The Art and Craft of Contracting

Skills Needed to Manage Contracts and Contractors

Obtaining and Deploying the Skills Needed to Manage Contracts and Contractors

Implementing the Art and Craft of Contracting

Chapter Eight: Gathering, Organizing, and Using Information

How to Avoid Having Too Much of the Wrong Information and Not Enough of the Right Information

How to Project Information Needs

How to Influence the Flow of Information into Your Organization

How to Organize the Flow of Information Within Your Organization

How to Control and Improve the Description, Synthesis, and Analysis of Information

How to Control and Improve the Flow of Information from Your Organization

Chapter Nine: Mastering the Budgetary Process

The Role of Budgets in Innovative Management

How to Obtain Resources

Not Letting the Budget Process Box You In

How to Monitor the Use of Resources

How to Use the Budget to Influence Your Organization

Chapter Ten: Shaping Organizational Goals and Strategies

Why Strategy Is Important

How to Develop and Implement Strategy

How to Estimate What Your Organization Is Capable of Doing

The Role of Leadership in Strategy Implementation

How Strategy Can Help You Wake Up a Sleepy Organization

What to Do with the Work You Are Given

How to Ensure That Your Organization’s Work Is Ethical

Chapter Eleven: Communicating with the Media, Stakeholders, and the Public

Communication Resources You Should Have at Hand

How to Deal with Mass Media

How to Keep Legislatures, Overhead Agencies, and Interest Groups Satisfied

How to Stay in Touch and Out of Trouble with the Public

Chapter Twelve: Surviving and Thriving in Public Service

The Costs of Public Sector Careers

The Benefits of Public Sector Careers

Why Be a Risk-Taking Public Entrepreneur?

Can the Public Sector Succeed?

Concluding Thoughts: Toward a Profession of the Public Service

References

Additional Resources

Name Index

Subject Index

List of Tables

TABLE 6.1 COMPARISON OF INNOVATION TOOLS

Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Begin Reading

The Instructor’s Guide for the fifth edition of The Effective Public Manager is available for free online. If you would like to download and print out a copy of the guide, please visit: www.wiley.com/college/effectivepubmanager

Essential Texts for Public and Nonprofit Leadership and Management

The Handbook of Nonprofit Governance, by BoardSource

Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations, 4th Edition, by John M. Bryson

Handbook of Human Resources Management in Government, 3rd Edition, by Stephen E. Condrey (Ed.)

The Responsible Administrator, 6th Edition, by Terry L. Cooper

The Jossey-Bass Handbook of Nonprofit Leadership and Management, 3rd Edition, by David O. Renz, Robert D. Herman, and Associates (Eds.)

Benchmarking in the Public and Nonprofit Sectors, 2nd Edition, by Patricia Keehley et al.

The Ethics Challenge in Public Service, 3rd Edition, by Carol W. Lewis et al.

Managing Nonprofit Organizations, by Mary Tschirhart and Wolfgang Bielefeld

Social Media in the Public Sector: Participation, Collaboration and Transparency in the Networked World, by Ines Mergel

Meta-Analysis for Public Management and Policy, by Evan J. Ringquist

The Practitioner’s Guide to Governance as Leadership: Building High-Performing Nonprofit Boards, by Cathy A. Trower

Measuring Performance in Public and Nonprofit Organizations, by Theodore H. Poister

Human Resources Management for Public and Nonprofit Organizations: A Strategic Approach, 4th Edition, by Joan E. Pynes

Understanding and Managing Public Organizations, 4th Edition, by Hal G. Rainey

Fundraising Principles and Practice, by Adrian Sargeant, Jen Shang, and Associates

Hank Rosso’s Achieving Excellence in Fundraising, 3rd Edition, by Eugene R. Tempel, Timothy Seiler, and Eva Aldrich (Eds.)

Handbook of Practical Program Evaluation, 3rd Edition, by Joseph S. Wholey et al. (Eds.)

THE EFFECTIVE PUBLIC MANAGER

Achieving Success in Government Organizations

FIFTH EDITION

Steven Cohen

William Eimicke

Tanya Heikkila

Wiley Logo

Cover design by Michael Cook

Cover image © Aleksandar Velasevic

Copyright © 2013 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

Published by Jossey-Bass

A Wiley Brand

One Montgomery Street, Suite 1200, San Francisco, CA 94104-4594—www.josseybass.com

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400, fax [phone], or on the Web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, 201-748-6011, fax [phone], or online at www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages. Readers should be aware that Internet Web sites offered as citations and/or sources for further information may have changed or disappeared between the time this was written and when it is read.

Jossey-Bass books and products are available through most bookstores. To contact Jossey-Bass directly call our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 800-956-7739, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3986, or fax [phone].

Wiley publishes in a variety of print and electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-on-demand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at http://booksupport.wiley.com. For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cohen, Steven.

The effective public manager : achieving success in a changing government organizations/Steven Cohen, William Eimicke, and Tanya Heikkila. —Fifth edition.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-118-55593-4 (pbk.); ISBN 978-1-118-57328-0 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-57329-7 (ebk)

1. Public administration. I. Eimicke, William B. II. Heikkila, Tanya. III. Title.

JF1351.C574 2013

352.3—dc23

2013020773

FIFTH EDITION

To Donna, Karen, and Todd

PREFACE

The Need for a Fifth Edition

The first edition of The Effective Public Manager was published twenty-five years ago. It was, in part, a response to the relentless attack on government in the 1980s. The old adage that everything changes, but everything stays the same is an appropriate mantra for The Effective Public Manager. We have written a fifth edition of this book to focus on the current challenges that public managers face in the twenty-first century and the new tools available to meet those challenges.

In the third and fourth editions of this book, we pointed out that the pace of change in the twenty-first century requires effective public managers to be creative and innovative. Nevertheless, we are surprised by much of the change that has occurred since the start of the twenty-first century. In the face of numerous government procurement and contracting scandals, bungled responses to tragic natural disasters and terrorism threats, economic meltdowns, fiscal crises, election scandals, crumbling public infrastructure, a subprime mortgage debacle, and increasing environmental degradation, the public wants government to be more accountable and responsive.

The public wants more services and lower taxes, so governments must strive every day to be more efficient and effective. Many governments and public officials have taken on this challenge, and they are succeeding. Many of them have adopted performance-based and results-based management. These reforms are reflected in government budgets, personnel management, strategic plans, and how governments report information to the public. These changes have not caught hold everywhere, and where they have, they do not always work so well. We still have a lot to learn about how to manage the public sector in the twenty-first century.

Therefore, the fifth edition of this book builds on the ideas of innovation and entrepreneurship that we focused on in the third and fourth editions to help managers figure out how to adapt to rapidly changing dilemmas, crises, and expectations. It discusses how the trends in performance management have evolved from and are supported by the tools for innovation that were central to the third edition—tools such as strategic planning, reengineering, electronic government, and contracting out. It further expands on some of the opportunities and challenges that new information and communication technologies pose for effective public management. In particular, the growth of smartphone technology and social media has had a major, though poorly understood, impact on the public sector. Yet the fundamental elements of management presented in the first four editions remain the same.

As in previous editions, we remind ourselves that public managers who merely innovate can wind up ignoring the need to manage the core functions of public organizations. Those key functions have changed relatively little over the past hundred years. Take a look at the writings of classic scholarship on public management and administration such as Luther Gulick’s and Lyndall Urwick’s (1937) study on public administration (coining the acronym POSDCORB—Planning, Organizing, Staffing, Directing, Coordinating, Reporting, and Budgeting), Chester Barnard’s 1938 book The Functions of the Executive, Herbert Kaufman’s The Forest Ranger (1960), Herbert Simon’s 1947 book Administrative Behavior, or Philip Selznick’s Leadership in Administration ([1957] 1984). Effective public management always has involved motivating employees, working efficiently with resources and budgets, managing information, structuring tasks, and working with policymakers and the public.

Although we emphasize that the twenty-first-century context requires public managers to manage their organizations efficiently and simultaneously remain accountable to the public, this is also not a new challenge in public management (for example, see Goodnow, [1900] 1967). The difference is that now we have much more rapidly changing technologies, a more highly educated and technically trained workforce, and greater global interdependencies—all resulting in new patterns of interpersonal communication, an increasing reliance on organizational networks, and new tools at our fingertips to help us get our jobs done. The development of a global and interconnected economy, the challenge of environmental sustainability, the advances in the technology of destruction all have resulted in a new environment for today’s public managers. In our view, these trends create exciting new opportunities as well as significant dangers as we continue to address the classic challenges of public management.

A question from all previous editions of this book remains a driving force behind this fifth edition: Why does government seem to have so much difficulty managing its programs? Let us examine the premise. Is government any worse than private nonprofit and for-profit organizations in managing its own operations? What measures do we use? How do we compare the efficiency of these forms of organization? How do we compare the efficiency of organizations that make soda pop to those trying to prevent terrorism?

We believe that the premise is poorly constructed. Let us instead submit an alternative premise: Different types of functions are best organized with different forms of organizational governance. Some functions are best run by government, some by private organizations organized as nonprofits, and some by private profit-seeking organizations. We reject the premise that government is worse at managing its operations than other sectors are. For example, government certainly faces some challenges that private organizations do not confront. This book provides the reader with a clear understanding of those unique challenges.

The popular perception is that government is incompetent. In fact, our Constitution worked hard to limit government’s power and, indirectly, its capacity. Nevertheless, we need to go back to the mid-twentieth century to see a very different popular perception of government. After the stock market crash of 1929 and during the Great Depression of the 1930s, private industry could not do much right. In contrast, by the end of World War II, there was nothing that our government—the expression of the American collective community—could not achieve. Government was capable of organizing the mass mobilization that defeated totalitarianism during World War II and of rebuilding Europe in its aftermath. Government could accomplish anything. It is clear to us that without the actions of the Bush Administration in late 2008 and the Obama Administration in 2009, America could have easily slipped into something quite like the Great Depression. Government gets little credit for crises avoided, but effective public managers must understand these realities.

Today, with multiple threats of terrorism, we again look to government for the answers. As we write these words, President Barack Obama has made victory over the forces of terrorism a high priority of the U.S. government, and the death of Osama Bin Laden was considered one of the great accomplishments of President Obama’s first term. Should the U.S. government defeat terrorism, it could restore confidence in government to a level not known since the end of World War II.

Obviously, neither the predominantly positive nor the predominantly negative images of government are accurate. There is nothing inherently evil about organizing human enterprise to make a profit, nor is there anything inherently inefficient about government organizations.

Governments face unique challenges. Trying to solve the toughest problems while under intense scrutiny is a challenge common to government. It is difficult to succeed when you work in a fishbowl. More profound are government’s well-intentioned but often misguided efforts at self-regulation. The incredible array of rules governing hiring, incentives, promotions, firing, procurement, and work itself makes it difficult to create flexible, agile public organizations.

Finally, government has difficulty delivering programs because of the large size of public organizations and the dysfunctional Rube Goldberg contraptions created by imaginative managers to get around the system’s constraints. One reason government organizations tend to be large is that government cannot be selective about its market niches. Unlike, say, FedEx, government cannot simply pick the areas or customers it wishes to serve. Similarly, because government fraud robs the taxpayers of their money, we sometimes build regulatory safeguards that cost more money to construct and maintain than they can ever save or recover.

These patterns of large-scale bureaucracy and overregulation are not inevitable and can be avoided. Moreover, they must be overcome. Government is frequently characterized by large-scale, overly formal, overly hierarchical organizations. By contrast, since the end of the twentieth century, we have witnessed a downsizing and decentralizing trend throughout the private sector. This trend is accelerating in the twenty-first century. Huge vertically integrated companies have been broken up into smaller, more agile units. Much of the economic growth in the United States now takes place in small and midsize companies.

In many respects, large companies are now networks of smaller organizations. Companies throughout the world have radically reduced their internal administrative overhead and analytic staff. Corporate headquarters have cut staffs from thousands to hundreds and from hundreds to dozens. The information revolution and the growth of global communication have made it possible to knit together networks of organizations in many geographic locations working on a single production function.

Why is this happening? It is the result of fierce, global competitive pressure. How are these companies able to accomplish these staff reductions, decentralizations, and organizational reconfigurations? In part, such changes have been made on the backs of our white-collar workers. Several recent studies have documented the reduction in leisure time in the United States during the past quarter century. However, to answer this question fully, we believe we have to look at how technology has influenced organizational life.

If we look at the history of large American companies such as Ford Motor Company, we see a strategy of vertical integration in production, with the companies controlling every aspect of making their product. Ford owned iron and coal mines to make steel, and they owned steel mills, parts manufacturing plants, auto assembly plants—nearly everything it took to make, ship, and sell a car. Central control was needed to ensure adequate quality and quantity of the supplies that went into making a car. The strategy also assumed that profits would be maximized if they were all paid to the same company rather than to a variety of suppliers.

The theory worked for a while, but only so long as the vertically integrated companies had a head start on the competition and constituted a form of monopoly. Once a free market in steel was established, car companies found it cheaper to buy steel from steel companies than to make it themselves. Steel companies had the advantage of seeing steel as their area of distinctive competence. They focused their organizational effort and brainpower on making better, cheaper steel. The same could not be said about a car company’s steel division. In addition, because the in-house steel company had a single guaranteed customer, there was insufficient downward pressure on price and therefore less incentive for efficiency. After a while, the price of expensive steel and the cost of an overhead staff to coordinate steel and auto manufacturing added to the price of the car. If there is no competition, this does not matter. However, frequently there is competition and it does matter.

One reason competition can exist is that improved telecommunications and transportation technology allow a company to focus on its own area of distinctive competence, knowing that it can quickly elicit competitive bids for components through the Internet, telephone, and fax. It can also quickly receive the components by air or sea or by trucks traveling on interstate highways. The use of containers in shipping allows for supplies to be efficiently transported from ships to trains and from trains to trucks. If necessary, supplies can be delivered overnight by using companies such as FedEx. Why own all of these suppliers if they can be accessed so easily? Moreover, organizations that do not invest in an extensive in-house supplier infrastructure can rapidly take advantage of the new technologies and lower prices offered by competitive suppliers.

This simplistic description gives you an idea of what has happened to organizational management in the private sector. What about the public sector? How can those of us concerned with public sector management ensure that government benefits from the advantages of small-scale organizations and modern telecommunications and transportation technology?

We believe that management innovation strategies that started in the mid-1990s—including quality management, benchmarking, team management, privatization, and performance management—have positively transformed government operations and management. These tools are not the only path to improvement. Managers need better training and opportunities to exchange and share ideas about how to develop and deploy these tools. Fortunately, those opportunities are also increasing.

In 2001, the Ford Foundation made a $50 million endowment gift to institutionalize the Innovations in American Government project at the John F. Kennedy School of Government to provide a permanent source of reward and notice for government innovation. An international network of public management scholars has been established to exchange public management lessons across nations. A couple of years prior, PricewaterhouseCoopers established the Endowment for the Business of Government, which was later taken on by IBM, to promote new research and discussion on new ideas in government innovation and tools for effective management. In recent years other centers, alliances, institutes, and professional associations that promote similar goals have sprung up, such as the Alliance for Innovation, a partnership between the International City/County Management Association and Arizona State University. We need all the creativity we can generate. The public sector needs fresh thinking and innovation, and we need an innovative public sector because public management matters.

Public management matters because public policy matters. Only government has the legitimacy and ability to address most of the challenges facing our society. General Motors is not going to feed poor people, and Wal-Mart is not going to arrest criminals. Public management matters because public policy is not enough. It is not enough to aspire to do the right thing, and it is not enough to design a cost-effective solution in theory. We need to create the organizational capacity to deliver on our promises.

The existing framework does not work: large-scale bureaucracy, with its centralized rules and overregulation of government managers, has failed. It is expensive, it is wasteful, and it prevents us from solving our most pressing problems. All over the United States and all over the world, public management has become a political issue, and that makes this a critical moment. This is a time when we have the opportunity to clean up the accumulated mess of nearly a century of government growth. We have begun a long-overdue process of change, which we believe will, in the end, reinvent government.

The Goals of This Book

Public managers face a unique set of challenges in running governmental organizations. The complexities of modern, increasingly interdependent economies and societies increase the demands for governance. Terrorism, climate change, ecological health, crime, toxic waste, world hunger, crumbling infrastructure, racism, infectious diseases, and economic growth are only a few of the critical issues thrust on public managers. Although the problems faced by public managers continue to grow, many public managers are ill-equipped to deliver quality leadership. Many of today’s senior public managers are either untrained or poorly trained in management, leadership, and administration. In government, most promotions are based on either time-in-service or technical expertise. Scientists, lawyers, and engineers are promoted from staff to managerial positions without much consideration of the unique requirements of management. It is assumed that anyone can manage and that no learnable skills are involved.

The professionalization of public service and the growth of graduate study in public policy and management should begin to increase the number of trained managers in government. The Effective Public Manager is designed to provide practical help to those entering the ranks of public management and to those aspiring to become public managers. It is both a primer on public management and an essay that presents a vision of a new kind of public manager: an innovative and effective public manager, one who seeks to shape events rather than be shaped by them.

This book has several purposes. First, it describes the problems faced by public managers in managing an agency’s internal operations and in communicating with the outside world. Second, the book provides strategies for addressing these management problems. Third, it provides advice to the public manager on how to build and maintain a professional reputation and how to advance in the bureaucratic hierarchy.

Management is the science of the simple and the art of common sense. Therefore, some of the points raised in The Effective Public Manager may seem obvious, and some of the lessons may appear simplistic. But as simple as these lessons may be, most managers are unable to follow them. This book provides a core set of concepts that can guide the management of public organizations.

Overview of the Contents

The first chapter, The Perpetual Crisis in Public Management, provides an analysis of the crisis of confidence in contemporary public management that began when the United States appeared to have lost both the War on Poverty and the war in Vietnam. It discusses why this crisis emerged, what has been done to address it, and what additional work must still be undertaken. It focuses on the movement to reinvent and reinvigorate government, while also acknowledging the demands on public managers to remain accountable to public demands and to serve the public ethically and responsibly.

Chapter Two, Defining Effective Public Management, provides an operational definition of effective public management, looking at the opportunities for managers to respond to the challenges discussed in Chapter One. It starts with defining what effective public management isn’t—reminding us why the negative image of the public manager persists today. The chapter outlines a recipe for failure in the public sector and introduces a strategy for success.

Chapter Three, How to Find and Keep Good People, addresses the most important issue faced by public managers: How can I get and keep the best people? It also discusses why hiring and firing are so complicated in the public sector and outlines a number of strategies for obtaining and retaining excellent staff members.

One of the recurring themes of The Effective Public Manager is that management is largely the art of influencing people. Developing a sophisticated strategy on paper is a waste of time if no one is willing to carry it out. Chapter Four, Developing Effective Working Relationships, discusses how to deal with and effectively interact with colleagues at work. It provides advice on how to perform the mundane but essential task of keeping your boss and staff happy. It outlines the communication and listening skills that are essential to effective management and provides some practical tips on how to keep your organization functioning.

Assuming you have no choice and must retain most of your existing staff, what else can you do to improve an organization’s day-to-day operations? Chapter Five, Structuring Systems, Tasks, and Responsibilities, examines how to rearrange organizational structures, task assignments, and standard operating procedures to increase an organization’s effectiveness. Chapter Six, Understanding and Applying Innovation Strategies in the Public Sector, takes the discussion of organizational effectiveness one step further by presenting our hands-on, real-world-tested approach to management innovation and the bringing of fundamental change to organizations. Our approach is based on over two decades of consulting work in government and the nonprofit sector, and it reflects the hard lessons we have learned in trying to help organizations improve their performance.

Chapter Seven, The Art and Craft of Contracting, focuses on an underdeveloped management skill of most public managers—that of contract management. With outsourcing on the rise in the private sector and privatization so popular in the public sector, managers must become skilled at getting work done in organizations that they do not directly manage. If management now involves coordinating the efforts of networks of organizations, public managers must learn how to establish these networks, about their performance on specific contracted tasks, and how to influence their behavior.

Most managers are busy people who spend the majority of their time accumulating and digesting information. Organizing information and using it are increasingly recognized as critical management tasks. Chapter Eight, Gathering, Organizing, and Using Information, outlines the problems public managers usually face when trying to improve the quality of information they receive. The chapter also provides a simple approach to managing an organization’s information flow.

Chapter Nine, Mastering the Budgetary Process, poses the question: How can I use the budget to control my organization? Financial management is the most important—and most underrated—tool available to public managers. Certainly no activity can occur unless it is paid for. However, paying for something does not guarantee that you will receive it. This chapter details the uses and limitations of the budget as a means of influencing organizational behavior.

Chapter Ten, Shaping Organizational Goals and Strategies, is devoted to the issue of formulating and implementing an organizational strategy. Every organization is expected to perform certain functions. An organization takes orders from above and is subject to expectations from outside groups. In the private sector, an organization’s strategy is based on an estimate of market forces and organizational capability. In the public sector, political factors replace market forces, intensely complicating an organization’s strategic decisions. In the private sector, an organization must decide whether anyone will buy the proposed product and whether the organization has the capability to produce, market, and distribute the product. In the public sector, an organization must receive permission and gain resources from elected officials before a product or service can be marketed. A public organization’s strategy is highly constrained by political factors. This chapter provides advice for the public manager on how to interpret orders from above, read the signals sent by outside groups, and formulate a realistic operational strategy for the organization.

Public organizations operate in a fishbowl. The media, interest groups, overhead agencies, legislative bodies, and the public are all concerned about how public organizations behave, particularly because public organizations use their tax dollars to operate. Chapter Eleven, Communicating with the Media, Stakeholders, and the Public, summarizes the form and function of this often-torturous scrutiny and gives some helpful hints for dealing with the outside world.

The book concludes with an assessment of the costs and benefits of public sector careers and with our plea for more aggressive, risk-taking public management. We believe that public organizations can and must be made to perform more effectively. In Chapter Twelve, Surviving and Thriving in Public Service, we ask the question: Why should anyone want to become an effective public manager? This last question is not typically phrased this way; the more common question is: Why should anyone bother to stick his or her neck out? Our simple answer is that no one can succeed at public management without taking risks.

Many of us who have shuttled between government and academia bring to both arenas a set of images and perceptions about how government actually works and how we think it should work. This understanding is built on important theoretical works in organization theory, such as the writings of Chester Barnard and Philip Selznick, and on the work of political and policy scientists such as Herbert Kaufman, James Q. Wilson, Theodore Lowi, Arnold Meltsner, E. E. Schattschneider, Harold Seidman, and Aaron Wildavsky. While working in government, we used their concepts to make sense of an otherwise unexplainable environment. This book attempts to provide both the beginning manager and the student of public management with a description of the challenges of public management and the strategies we have seen used to successfully overcome those challenges. The Effective Public Manager is designed to be practical and to pull together disparate areas of knowledge. It is not comprehensive and, despite the assertive tone of the advice offered, it represents only a beginning. We hope that the answers to the management problems presented here will help to launch probing and innovative discussion among managers and policymakers in the public arena.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In the first edition, Steve Cohen acknowledged a number of people, all of whom we acknowledge in this edition, as this work has built on past editions. These people are Marc Tipermas, Steve’s professor at SUNY Buffalo and his boss at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and ICF Inc.; the late Lester Milbrath, professor emeritus at SUNY/Buffalo; Demetrios Caraley of Columbia University, Barnard College, and Political Science Quarterly; the late Harvey Picker along with Alfred Stepan, John Ruggie, and Lisa Anderson, former deans of Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs; Fred Thompson, formerly at Columbia University, now professor at Willamette University; and former EPA managers and consultants Ronald Brand, Michael Cook, Mary Anne Froehlich, Thomas Ingersoll, James Janis, and Andrew Mank. Steve acknowledges the support and encouragement of former Columbia University executive vice provost, Maxwell School graduate, and Arizona State University president Michael Crow, and he thanks his colleagues Howard Apsan, Larry Brown, Nancy Degnan, former New York City Mayor David Dinkins, Mel Dubnick, Ester Fuchs, Michael Gerrard, Lewis Gilbert, Don Hood, Sheldon Kamieniecki, Alison Miller, Dan O’Flaherty, Louise Rosen, Courtney Small, Roxie Smith, and Sara Tjossem for their excellent ideas, advice, and counsel. Steve also thanks all of his current bosses at Columbia University—Provost John Coatsworth and Earth Institute Director Jeffrey Sachs—for enabling him to combine the roles of teacher, administrator, and part-time scholar.

Bill Eimicke acknowledges Professor H. George Fredrickson of the University of Kansas, who helped start the reinvention movement twenty years ago with the New Public Administration; David Osborne, who created reinvention; Professor Bruce Gates of Willamette University; Donna Shalala, former Secretary of Health and Human Services and president of the University of Miami; former New York City Mayor, the late Ed Koch, and former New York Governor Mario Cuomo; New York Governor Andrew Cuomo; FDNY Commissioner Salvatore Cassano; and Columbia University Provost John Coatsworth.

Tanya Heikkila recognizes the guidance she has received from her graduate school mentors who opened her eyes to public policy and management, especially Edella Schlager, H. Brinton Milward, and Keith Provan at the University of Arizona and William Blomquist at Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis. Additionally, she acknowledges the inspiration and insights passed along from Elinor and Vincent Ostrom at Indiana University. She also thanks her former colleagues at Columbia University, especially Steve Cohen for his advice, direction, and support in the early years of her career, and her current colleagues at the University of Colorado Denver’s School of Public Affairs.

We also thank our research assistants who have helped on various editions of the book: Helen Eliassian, Kelly Christensen, Vanita Gowda, Binchen Hu, Misha Schubert, Courtney Small, Erin McNally, and London Hammar.

Most of all, we want to thank our families for their love and support. Steve thanks his wife, Donna Fishman; his wonderful daughters, Gabriella Rose and Ariel Mariah; his parents, Marvin and Shirley; his brother, Robby; and his sisters, Judith and Myra. Bill is grateful for the support and advice of his wife, Karen Murphy; his daughter, Annemarie; his dog, Balsam; and his horses, Clef, Just Foxy, and Golden Hare and donkey Paco. Tanya thanks her husband, Todd Ely, who is always available for free research assistance, and her children, Claire and Isaac, for keeping her grounded.

New York, New York

May 2013

Steven Cohen

William Eimicke

Tanya Heikkila

THE AUTHORS

Steven Cohen is the executive director and chief operating officer of the Earth Institute, and professor in the practice of public affairs at Columbia University. He is the director of the Master of Science in Sustainability Management Program at Columbia’s School of Continuing Education and director of the Master of Public Administration in Environmental Science and Policy Program at the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) also at Columbia University. From 2002 to 2006, he also directed the Office of Educational Programs at the Columbia Earth Institute. He served as the director of the Executive Master of Public Administration Program at SIPA from 2001 to 2005 and of Columbia’s Graduate Program in Public Policy and Administration from 1985 to 1998. From 1987 to 1998, he was associate dean for faculty at SIPA, and from 1998 to 2001, he was the school’s vice dean.

He is a 1970 graduate of James Madison High School in Brooklyn, New York (Education is the true foundation of civil liberty). Dr. Cohen received his B.A. (1974) in political science from Franklin College of Indiana and his M.A. (1977) and Ph.D. (1979) in political science from the State University of New York in Buffalo. Dr. Cohen served as a policy analyst in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (1977–1978 and 1980–1981) and as a consultant to the EPA (1981–1991, 1992–1997, and 2004–2007).

He is the author of Sustainability Management (2011), Understanding Environmental Policy (2006), and the first edition of The Effective Public Manager (1988). He has coauthored The Responsible Contract Manager (2008), three previous editions of The Effective Public Manager (1995, 2002, 2008), Environmental Regulation Through Strategic Planning (1991), Total Quality Management in Government (1993), Tools for Innovators (1998), and Strategic Planning in Environmental Regulation (2005). Dr. Cohen is also a regular contributor to Huffington Post.

William Eimicke is a professor in the Practice of International and Public Affairs and the founding director of the Picker Center for Executive Education at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, where he has taught numerous courses in public management, policy implementation, and government innovation, as well as run professional training programs in public management. Dr. Eimicke served as the deputy fire commissioner for Strategic Planning and Policy from 2007 through the spring of 2010. He led numerous innovations to reduce response time to fires, establish a computerized risk-based inspection program, and provide advanced management training for senior Fire and EMS officers (FOMI). The FDNY Officers Management Institute (FOMI) was designated as a Top 50 Innovations in American Government for 2008 and 2009 by the Kennedy School of Government.

He received his B.A. (1970) in political science, his M.P.A. (1971), and his Ph.D. (1973), also in political science, from Syracuse University. Dr. Eimicke was director of housing for the state of New York (1985–1988); deputy secretary to the governor of New York (1983–1985); deputy commissioner of the New York City

Reviews for The Effective Public Manager

[patuca789 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

good