Administrative reform doesn't work. At least such is the conclusion drawn by a number of scholars in reviewing the history of attempts to reorganize and reform the federal executive establishment. Their verdict is based on their observations, first, of Congress's reluctance to accede in presidential proposals for reconfiguring the bureaucracy and, second, of a general failure of those proposals that have gained congressional approval to achieve their objectives. Based on past patterns, failure might be anticipated of the most recent manifestation of reform, the National Performance Review (NPR). However, various features of the NPR proposals and the strategy that has been employed to implement them, as well as the context in which they have been introduced, warrant caution in using the past as a guide in this instance. Among the important distinctions between the National Performance Review and previous reforms are the following: 1. NPR is less a reorganization than an attempt to change service delivery methods. 2. The primary targets for change are rank-and-file federal employees rather than political appointees or high ranking members of the career service. 3. Implementation of the NPR recommendations is not wholly, or even substantially, dependent on congressional approval; many of the changes being wrought are within the control of executive branch officials. These differences have important implications for evaluating NPR as a reform initiative. Rather than attending to the outcomes of legislative battles or to the durability of various changes to government-wide management systems, an investigation of how reform has affected the day-to-day activities of front-line federal employees is warranted. This article presents the results of such an investigation and finds that NPR generally, and the reinvention lab program specifically, has had substantial impact at this level. These results, when contrasted with past analyses, allow a useful opportunity to reexamine the construct of administrative reform and how it is appropriately understood and evaluated. The Futility of Reform Prominent among the reasons given for past failures of attempts at administrative reform is the hostility that members of Congress have shown towards a disruption of the bureaucratic status quo. Various forces appear to be at work. Members of Congress often seek to preserve their institutional role in overseeing the bureaucracy and to preclude an enhancement of presidential control (March and Olson, 1983). Congressional resistance may also stem from the demands of groups whose privileges are threatened by proposed changes (Seidman, 1980). One interpretation of why resistance so often emerges from Congress is that the very structure of government, the classic [bureaucratic] formula of hierarchy, specialization, professionalism, and written rules and regulations (Knott and Miller, 1987, 173), serves the interest of legislators. Their benefit from the service delivery capacity that bureaucratic structures allow, while, at the same time, they can take credit for remedying the complaints of constituents who will feel the bureaucracy's impersonal, bureaucratic routines have generated an inappropriate response in their unique (Knott and Miller, 1987, 199). The attention to bureaucratic dysfunction as a reform issue presages the National Performance Review. The need to revise obsolete practices associated with the bureaucratic model is a founding principle of the reinventing government movement. The nature of the changes being recommended under NPR and the history of past reforms, however, imply that failure is likely. Rosenbloom (1993) presents the case for such a failure. He argues that reform generally needs to be examined in a political context and that key actors, members of Congress in particular, have disincentives to change the traditional organizational model in ways that are congruent with reinvention principles. …