Excellence in the Public Sector
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Topics
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 | Forces for Change |
| Resistance to Change |
| Managing Planned Change |
| Privatization |
| Total Quality Management (TQM) |
| Reinventing Government |
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Readings
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Lecture Notes
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Web Resources
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| You should also look through the issue
of Governing
magazine that grades the states in terms of their level of government
performance. |
| For information on the differences in management capacity among the
country's major cities see this recent
edition of Governing magazine. |
| National performance review? |
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Video Picks
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| There are several good movies
that illustrate the problems with enacting change in public sector
organizations. Two personal favorites that I highly recommend are: |
| Brubaker
(1980) staring Robert Redford, Jane Alexander, Wilford Brimley,
and Morgan Freeman: Based on the true-life story of a concerned warden
who takes on the dangerous job of correcting horrible abuses in an
Arkansas prison farm. It is an excellent illustration of the
challenges confronting a manager who seeks to make broad sweeping
changes when there is resistance from staff, customers (prisoners),
and the institutions that oversee the prison's operations.
The movie received an Academy Award nomination for Best (Original)
Screenplay. |
| Lean on Me (1989) staring Morgan Freeman
and Robert Guillaume: Based on the true story of Joe Clark, an
obsessed, disciplinarian of a principal who had a mandate to improve
school performance. This required turning a disaster of a high
school into a halfway civilized place of learning, populated by
passable students. It is another illustration of the problems
facing change agents and the wide variety of source of resistance to
the changes. It is also a good illustration of the difference
that leadership can make in improving organizational performance. |
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