The session of the October 1987 Research Conference of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management entitled Delivering Services, Producing Results proceeded in the usual fashion: five authors presented their independently-produced ideas to a curious, appreciative audience. Mary Jo Bane was defining an issue in public management: Should participation in work and training programs be voluntary or mandatory for various categories of welfare recipients? She concluded that either a mandatory or a voluntary approach could be effective in accomplishing program goals. What matters, she argued, is good management and how to achieve it. The other authors-Michael O'Hare and Robert Leone, Leslie H. Garner, and Stephen R. Rosenthal-were advancing particular perspectives on what constitutes good public management, though they did not address her issue. An observer could perceive a latent opportunity in the proceedings. Would the authors of these diverse perspectives on public management be willing to address explicitly the question posed by Professor Bane and show what conclusions follow from their distinctive forms of reasoning? If so, we might be able to compare the power and relevance of their ideas, ferret out hidden assumptions, perhaps forge a synthesis which would be an even more powerful generator of ideas about effective public management. Fortunately, all participants in the session were willing to engage in such an exercise. The result is the that follows. My goal in organizing this symposium without walls has been to further stimulate a cumulative and dynamic learning process in the field of public management, a field perhaps too enamoured of clever heuristics and glib inductive generalizations, too little disposed to put specific ideas and