Unleashing Change: A Study of Organizational Renewal in Government

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Please take a look at all of our shipping options. For US customers standard shipping is Media mail typically which takes business days for customers living in the continental US. Customers that upgrade to priority mail can expect delivery within business days. A Study of Organizational Renewal A Study of Organizational Drawing on the experience of procurement reform in the Reinventing Government initiative of the s, as well as organization theory and psychology, this book presents a comprehensive approach to improving performance in big public sector organizationsthat addresses both theory and practice--Provided by publisher.

This is a hopeful account of the potential for organizational change and improvement within government. Despite the mantra that "people resist change," it is possible to effect meaningful reform in a large bureaucracy. In Unleashing Change, public management expert Steven Kelman presents a blueprint for accomplishing such improvements, based on his experience orchestrating procurement reform in the s.

Unleashing Change

Kelman's focuses on making change happen on the front lines, not just getting it announced by senior policymakers. He argues that frequently there will be a constituency for change within government organizations. The role for leaders is not to force change on the unwilling but to unleash the willing, and to persist long enough for the change to become institutionalized. Drawing on the author's own personal experience and extensive research among frontline civil servants, as well as literature in organization theory and psychology, Unleashing Change presents an approach for improving agency performance from soup to nuts --mixing theory with practice.

Its analysis is innovative and empirically rich. Kelman's conclusions challenge conventional notions about achieving reform in large organizations and mark a major advance in theories of organizational change. Open Preview See a Problem? Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. Preview — Unleashing Change by Steven Kelman.

This is a hopeful account of the potential for organizational change and improvement within government.

Unleashing Change: A Study of Organizational Renewal in Government by Kelman,… | eBay

Despite the mantra that "people resist change," it is possible to effect meaningful reform in a large bureaucracy. In Unleashing Change , public management expert Steven Kelman presents a blueprint for accomplishing such improvements, based on his experience orchestrating This is a hopeful account of the potential for organizational change and improvement within government. In Unleashing Change , public management expert Steven Kelman presents a blueprint for accomplishing such improvements, based on his experience orchestrating procurement reform in the s.

See a Problem?

Kelman's focuses on making change happen on the front lines, not just getting it announced by senior policymakers. He argues that frequently there will be a constituency for change within government organizations. The role for leaders is not to force change on the unwilling but to unleash the willing, and to persist long enough for the change to become institutionalized.

Drawing on the author's own personal experience and extensive research among frontline civil servants, as well as literature in organization theory and psychology, Un leashing Change p resents an approach for improving agency performance from soup to nuts—mixing theory with practice. Its analysis is innovative and empirically rich.

Kelman's conclusions challenge conventional notions about achieving reform in large organizations and mark a major advance in theories of organizational change. His lessons will be of interest not only to scholars interested in improving the performance of the public sector, but for anyone struggling to manage a large organization. Paperback , pages. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

To ask other readers questions about Unleashing Change , please sign up. Lists with This Book.

This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Jul 22, Frank Stein rated it liked it. This book is a perfect example of how good insights and a decent narrative can be ruined by half-hearted attempts at social science. The Fear of Discretion and the Quality of Government Performance," when the newly elected team of Clinton and Gore, committed to their "Reinventing Government" initiative, asked him to come be the administrator of the Office of Fede This book is a perfect example of how good insights and a decent narrative can be ruined by half-hearted attempts at social science.

Unleashing Change: A Study of Organizational Renewal in Government

The Fear of Discretion and the Quality of Government Performance," when the newly elected team of Clinton and Gore, committed to their "Reinventing Government" initiative, asked him to come be the administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, the agency in charge of contracts and purchases for the entire federal government. For Kelman, it was his chance to implement some of the ideas he had already articulated, on breaking down strict rules and allowing more personal purchasing discretion.

This is the story of how he put those ideas into practice. The previous contracting habits of the government are easy targets for Kelman, and he makes great sport of them. The military had detailed "milspecs" for everything from jeeps to cookies, which were so complicated that no typical commercial firms could meet them, and that left only one or two firms who made bad products for which they overcharged.

The government was also not allowed to consider past performance by bidders, so contractors would low-ball contract prices, perform horribly, and place infinite "change orders" that increased costs, confident that in the next bidding process this would by regulation have to be forgotten.

Buying offices of different departments would be entirely separate from those who used the products purchased, for fear that talking to, say, an office manager would "corrupt" the purchaser, so of course the products bought had little relation to those needed. The best part of this book is Kelman simply explaining how he tried to go about changing the bureaucracy without a clear change in laws. His best idea was to gather up groups of procurement executives and have them take collective "pledges" to say, use past performance as a partial guidepost in making contracts, and this collective and public effort would give them all "cover" for going beyond the limits of the previous law.

He then took took to traveling around to local offices, holding "town meetings" where he would subtly push the conversation, using the participatory discussion tactics of the famous social psychologist Kurt Lewin, to get them to endorse changes. The quotes here show that many, led by some "change vanguards," usually in the middle of the hierarchy, became exhilarated by the new strategies, and found new meaning in a job that required real thought and effort.

There are lots of nuggets of insights here, such as Kelman's argument, taken in part from James Q. Wilson, that multiple goals lead to more hierarchy, and focusing on only one goal allows one to decentralize decision-making, since it allows lower-level workers to be more accountable. He also shows that the importance of "early wins" and snowballing successes are real and help move change along.

His successful reforms led to two new laws in and that somewhat loosened restrictions and then led to even more reforms on the ground. So far, though, I'm leaving out what even Kelman admits is the real meat of the book, a detailed survey of thousands of procurement professionals. An absurd amount of the text then is taken up finding correlations between different attitudes, say between "openness to change" and "trust," and the results demonstrate that, for instance, younger people liked more change, and other such truisms.

The findings are hardly revelatory or even interesting. If Kelman had just stuck to his own story, he would have had a great memoir of a fascinating time spent changing the federal bureaucracy. Jun 21, Elizabeth marked it as to-read. Feb 01, Lindsey Orlando marked it as to-read Shelves: How to Change Things when Change is Hard: If you're looking for a change book that's rigorous and full of data, check out this one. Mar 31, Steve marked it as to-read.

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