Public Management: Organizations, Governance, and Performance

How effective are public managers as they seek to influence how public organizations deliver policy results? How, and how much, is management related to the performance of public programs? What aspects of management can be distinguished? Can their separable contributions to performance be estimated? The fate of public policies in today's world lies in the hands of public organizations, which in turn are often intertwined with others in latticed patterns of governance. Collectively, these organizations are expected to generate performance in terms of policy outputs and outcomes. In this book, two award-winning researchers investigate the effectiveness of management in the public sector. Firstly, they develop a systematic theory on how effective public managers are in shaping policy results. The rest of the book then tests this theory against a wide range of evidence, including a data set of 1,000 public organizations.

Table of Contents:
List of figures; List of tables; Preface; 1. Public management and performance: an evidence-based perspective; 2. A model of public management and a source of evidence; 3. Public management in interdependent settings: networks, managerial networking and performance; 4. Managerial quality and performance; 5. Internal management and performance: stability, human resources and decision making; 6. Nonlinearities in public management: the role of managerial capacity and organizational buffering; 7. Public management in intergovernmental networks: matching structural networks and managerial networking; 8. Public management and performance: what we know, and what we need to know; Glossary; References; Index.

About the Author :
Laurence J. O'Toole, Jr is the Margaret Hughes and Robert T. Golembiewski Professor of Public Administration and Distinguished Research Professor at the University of Georgia. He also holds an academic appointment as professor in the Faculty of Management and Governance at Twente University in the Netherlands. Kenneth J. Meier is the Charles H. Gregory Chair in Liberal Arts at Texas A&M University. He is also Professor of Public Management at Cardiff Business School.

Review :
'This is an excellent book by two of the world's leading public management scholars. They integrate their own research with leading-edge work by others in the field, and provide important new insights into the impact of public management on organizational performance. Both academics and policy makers will find the book essential reading for understanding contemporary problems such as networking, managerial quality, and personnel stability in public organizations.' George Boyne, Dean and Professor of Public Sector Management, Cardiff Business School 'This is a must-read book for public management scholars and policy designers across the globe. The authors make the most of simplicity in their formal modeling and use of large-N longitudinal data sets to carefully explicate what managers do to affect performance - and it turns out managers can make quite a significant positive difference. The book is a stunning intellectual achievement and the fact that it is clearly and accessibly written makes it even more impressive.' John M. Bryson, McKnight Presidential Professor of Planning and Public Affairs, University of Minnesota, and author of Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations 'Building on more than a decade of state-of-the-art research, O'Toole and Meier's new book sets high standards for the evidence-based study of public management. Providing a highly accessible, yet deep and profound understanding of the complex relation between management and performance, this work is exceptionally valuable for scholars, students, and practitioners in the field.' René Torenvlied, Professor of Sociology, University of Groningen and Utrecht University