Accountability and radical change in public organizations /

With several notable exceptions, this volume takes the usual "hats off to reinvention" stance that seems to be the uncritical norm. Chapters cover a wide spectrum of practical and theoretical concerns, including, inter alia, examples of ostensibly "reinventing" bureaus for public housing in Norfolk, several county functions in James City County (Virginia), the California Department of Corrections, and all of Latin America and Canada. Philosophical articles ask whether "business process reengineering" can successfully be transplanted to the public sector (an important question), including training and a "survival guide" for public managers, among others. The book covers new material, and its broad scope may appeal to many, but it suffers from uncritical acclaim. "Reinvention" has not created a literature setting exact standards or testable propositions for evaluating its success, and this volume generally follows this pattern. The article on the Norfolk public housing project is a notable exception. Bravo to this effort! It is now the task of academics to decide how much administrative "change" is possible or desirable and to create a framework to evaluate the evidence--just as the "power structure" debate led to some refined propositions in the 1960s and '70s. Upper-division undergraduates and above. E. Hayes; formerly, Ohio University