PREFACE

The editions of Understanding and Managing Public Organizations reviewed the literature on management and organization theory and suggested applications to the public sector grounded in evidence from research on public organizations and the people in them. The book has served as a text in graduate courses in public administration and public affairs programs. It has also served the needs of scholars, and it has a high number of citations in the Social Science Citation Index for a book of this type, in this field. The book's chapters describe concepts and insights from the organization and management literature that support leaders' and managers' efforts to think about the challenges they face and to take action to address those challenges.

The online instructor's guide (IG) includes a PowerPoint file for each chapter, lists of key terms and ideas, discussion questions, case studies, and exercises to aid instructors and to engage students. For this edition, the IG has been improved and updated. Additional case studies connect theory and research to management practice. The additions include a case focusing on Indiana's effort to retool its welfare system through a complex contract with an IBM-led group of cross-sector partners. In Part 1 of the case, students consider important techniques for instituting relational contracts and how competing institutional logics may affect collaboration success. In Part 2 of the case, students develop an appreciation for the challenges of developing and implementing a performance management system. A separate new case study engages students on the topic of implicit bias and its organizational and societal implications. After reviewing research on implicit bias, students consider how implicit bias could be a problem when using "big data" to make "democratic" decisions.

New coauthors provide the most significant change in this sixth edition. Professor Sergio Fernandez and Professor Deanna Malatesta, both of the O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University, bring major strengths to the improvement of this edition. Professor Fernandez, who is also Extraordinary Professor in the School of Public Management and Administration at University of Pretoria, South Africa, studies public sector management and leadership, with a focus on employee empowerment, representative bureaucracy, performance, and government outsourcing. Professor Malatesta's research focuses on governance, public-private distinctions, and contracts.

The first chapter provides a conceptual framework for the major topics in the book, and the remaining chapters develop these topics by reviewing theories, research, and practices in the field of organizational and managerial analysis. The field of public management and organization has developed rapidly since publication of the previous editions. For example, the number of quasi-governmental organizations (QUANGOs, or "hybrids") has grown rapidly in many nations; this edition considers their characteristics and implications for democracy. This edition also considers changes in social media and its implications for interaction among policy actors and managers as well as how it has influenced decision making. Chapters in this edition have been expanded to cover new material and new developments. This includes research on how public managers lead and behave, effective performance in government agencies, initiatives to promote employee engagement in public organizations, demographic representation and diversity in public organizations, differences between public and private managers' perceptions of the personnel systems with which they work, "public values," public service motivation and networks, collaboration in public service delivery, and public service motivation, which has been the subject of a wave of studies in numerous different nations.

This edition also expands coverage of recent developments in the study of work-related attitudes such as employee empowerment and employee engagement and positive organizational behavior, as well as recent developments in leadership concepts, including shared, authentic, and servant leadership. Coverage of collaborative forms of organization and governance, including networks, partnerships, and contracts, is more fully developed in this edition and now includes the theory of relational contracting. The chapters on the major topics of the book show that researchers have published a profusion of studies on these and other topics since the fifth edition appeared, thus raising a challenge for those who seek to review them all.

Previous editions of this book have analyzed, as does this one, the distinctions between public organizations and their members, on the one hand, and other types of organizations, leaders, and employees, such as those in the business sector, on the other. This edition adds two topics to this discussion that are particularly relevant to outsourcing and public-private partnerships: the US judiciary's approach to distinguishing between state actors and nonstate actors (The State Action Doctrine) and federal administrative policy recommendations (OMB Circular A-76) on inherently governmental services. Chapter Three presents a conceptual analysis of these distinctions, and what we mean when we refer to these different types of organizations and the people who work for them. Subsequent chapters describe research articles about public organizations and their people. Many studies of this type have appeared in recent years. Assembling these studies and describing them for the reader has posed a serious challenge, but a welcome one, because one of the book's objectives is to provide the most comprehensive compilation and review possible of such research-based analyses of public organizations.

Previous editions of the book covered classic works in management and organization theory. This edition continues to emphasize their theoretical relevance. Previous editions also covered important developments in the practice of general management and public management. The book provides such coverage, in part to make this edition useful for practicing managers and professionals and for students interested in such roles. It provides suggestions about managing relations with the media (Chapter Five), enhancing one's power and authority (Chapter Seven), managing for high performance (Chapter Six), conducting strategic decision-making processes (Chapter Seven), motivating employees (Chapter Ten), managing and leading organizational culture (Chapter Eleven), managing conflict (Chapter Twelve), leading organizational change (Chapter Thirteen), and effectively collaborating (Chapter Fourteen).

In addition, this book provides examples of how people in public organizations have put these ideas into practice. For instance, Chapter Eight describes a major structural reform that the US Internal Revenue Service undertook, and the structural changes made at a national laboratory in response to public concerns about its safety. Chapter Nine points out that many of the efforts to reform pay systems in government would have been much more effective if they had been informed by a clear understanding of a number of motivation theories. Chapter Thirteen shows how strategies for leading organizational change have led to successful large-scale change in government agencies, and how not applying such strategies has led to failure in other instances. Chapter Thirteen also provides a summary of points of expert consensus about successful management of large-scale organizational change. In covering these topics, this book pursues the theme that effective leadership involves the well-informed, integrative use of management concepts and ideas. Carl Von Clausewitz's classic treatise On War (1986, 1832) illustrates this theme. Clausewitz stated that he could not advise an individual commander on how to conduct a specific campaign because such situations are varied and contingent. Rather, he provided general insights on how to conceive of the nature of war. Even persons who loathe military force and military analogies should accept the point that people facing practical challenges often profit from general understanding and insight as much as from detailed prescriptions.

Audience

The audience for previous editions of Understanding and Managing Public Organizations included graduate students and scholars interested in public management and applications of organizational analysis to the public sector. Faculty colleagues at other universities have mentioned that their MPA and MPP students do not see the need for so many citations to academic research articles. Their doctoral students, however, value the reviews of academic literature and research and the citation of such work. Colleagues and anonymous reviewers have advised keeping the coverage of academic research. They insisted that this coverage represents a distinctive contribution and that we should avoid "dumbing down" the book. Even so, the publication of a vast number of books and journal articles since the previous editions make it impossible to cite and cover them all, even though so many of them deserve such attention. In this edition, we often rely on prominent examples and books and articles that provide summary reviews of major topics, because we simply cannot refer to all the valuable research that so many authors have published.

This edition also seeks to provide more examples and ideas pertaining to nations other than the US. The book draws heavily on information about the US, but evidence indicates its usefulness to readers in other...