The Reinvention Game

Abstract

Evaluating success or failure of National Performance Review (NPR) on basis of its proclaimed goal of making government better and cost is problematic. Whether federal government works better than it did in 1993 is a question that is not easily subject to objective verification. Even estimates of cost savings from initiative have varied widely. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that Phase I recommendations would save only 5 percent of $5.9 billion proclaimed by NPR. Ascertaining success or failure of venture is further impeded by conflicting nature of its objectives. In his evaluation of NPR, Donald Kettl (1995; 14) acknowledged that Assessing NPR's more fundamental results is difficult because it has pursued radically different, indeed conflicting Kettl cites a disagreement among officials over whether primary emphasis should be on making government cost less or on making it work better. Cutting costs implies a strategy of downsizing and program elimination; improving service suggests investments in personnel, training, and technology. Any evaluation is complicated by heterogeneous nature of recommendations included in Report of National Performance Review (1993). The General Accounting Office (GAO) (1994; 2) commented in its evaluation of NPR that, Some of recommendations were very broad (e.g., 'redefine and restructure OPM's functional responsibilities'); others were more specific (e.g., 'establish a hardrock mine reclamation fund'). Some recommendations cut to core of how government operates (e.g., 'improve legislative-executive branch relationship'); others, while important, were on relatively tangential topics (e.g., 'establish federal firearms license user fees to cover costs'). In place of an overall assessment of effort, GAO reported on implementation status of all 384 items in NPR report. We sought to understand NPR from an alternate perspective. Instead of assessing NPR on basis of its professed objectives, we investigated it as tactical exercise from point of view of actors involved. The tactics take place in multiple arenas. Most evident are those relating to strategic political considerations of Clinton administration. Also important, however, are tactics related to implicit shifts in power between executive and legislative branches and within executive branch, both within and between agencies. Our primary focus was on tactics employed by NPR to foment change and innovation within agencies. We investigated a number of reinvention laboratories established by NPR that are designed to foment innovation by freeing managers from central controls. Our focus was on organizational dynamics that accompany process of change. Goal-Directed versus Political Models of Organizations The tactical perspective on change derives from school of organization theory which regards organizations as political arenas in which individuals compete while striving for divergent objectives. This approach contrasts with rational models that portray organizations as highly integrated structures directed toward achievement of a single set of mutually agreed upon goals. The concept of organizations as political arenas has been developed most fully by Crozier and Friedberg (1980). They argue (p. 19) that key to understanding organizations is the analysis of different power games which indirectly structure strategies of actors involved (p. 6). The political model has particular relevance to change processes in organizations. Change often implies a redistribution of rewards or a shift in priorities that can provoke contests between individuals and groups within organization. The conclusion reached by Thoenig and Friedberg (1976; 314), based on their case study of change in French Ministry of Public Works, Urban Affairs and Housing, highlights this point: organizational change is not. …