Managing for Results in an Impossible Job: Solution or Symbol? Abstract

Abstract

Recent years have been characterized by widespread adoption of reforms that called for governments to manage for results. This article tackles the question: what is the impact of results-based reforms in functions that the public management literature has defined as “impossible jobs?” The implementation of strategic planning and performance measurement in the Alabama Department of Corrections provides a case study of such a scenario. The explicit goals of results-based reforms suggest a solution to “impossible jobs” by achieving improved allocation, effectiveness, and efficiency. However, the case evidence suggests that their main use is as a symbol of rational governance, to be used by beleaguered agencies and governments in a bid to increase resources. Beyond this, the public manager in an impossible job finds little benefit from results-based reform, and seeks to devote as few resources as is necessary to comply with reform requirements.

Notes

2. Appleby, P.H. Big Democracy;A.A. Knopf: New York, 1945. For a more recent view, see Bozeman, B. All Organizations Are Public: Building Public and Private Organizational Theories;Jossey-Bass: San Francisco, 1987.

7. Evidence of the near universal adoption of executive or legislative requirements to create,diffuse and use performance information in state government can be found in: Melkers, J.E.; Willoughby, K. The State of the States: Performance-Based Budgeting Requirements in 47 out of 50. Public Administration Review 1996, 58 (1): 66–73.See also Moynihan, D.P. The State of the States in Managing for Results. Alan K. Campbell Public Affairs Institute Working Paper, 2001. Available online at http:// www.maxwell.syr.edu/gpp/pdfs/The_State_of_the_States_In_MFR.pdf (accessed May 2003).

9. Examples include Downs, G.W.; Larkey, P.D. The Search for Government Efficiency; Random House: New York, 1986.Radin, B.A. The Government Performance and Results Act and the Tradition of Federal Management Reform: Square Pegs in Round Holes. Journal of Public Administration and Research Theory 2000, 10 (1): 111–135; Wildavsky, A.A. The Politics of the Budgetary Process; Little, Brown: Boston, 1984.

10. Examples include Aristigueta, M.P. Managing for Results in State Government; University of Connecticut Press: Westport, 1999; Osborne, D.E.; Gaebler, T. Reinventing Government: How the Entrepreneurial Government is Transforming the Public Sector; Penguin: New York, 1992.

Aristigueta, Supra note 10; 1.

15. Siegleman, supra note 14, 5.

16. Moynihan, D.P.; Ingraham, P.W. Look for the Silver Lining: When Performance Based Accountability Systems Work. Forthcoming in Journal of Public Administration and Research Theory.

17. The data are provided by the American Correctional Association,2000 American Correctional Association Directory.

18. As more and more prisoners entered the system there was a failure to hire new staff, with one commissioner in the early 1990s closing down the DOC's training academy. At this point the Department has approximately the same number of staff that it had in 1991, but with about 10,000 additional prisoners. Even so, the DOC cannot fill all of its authorized positions, and had 11.5% of positions vacant in February 2001. Source: Alabama Department of Corrections.February 2001 Monthly Statistical Report.

19. DiIulio, supra note 12.

20. O’Leary has eloquently made this point in reference to another function wherein courts have become increasingly active: environmental protec-tion.See O’ Leary, R. Environmental Change: Federal Courts and the EPA;Temple University Press: Philadelphia, 1993. DiIulio documents how the courts have become more active in corrections, moving from a hands-off doctrine in the 1950s to a much more interventionist approach in the 1970s with regard to issues of crowding, food services, sanitation, health, inmate due process, and constitutional rights in DiIulio, J., Jr. Governing Prisons; Free Press: New York 1987.

22. Walters, J. Raising Alabama. Governing. October 2001

25. Siegelman, supra note 14; 3.

27.Alabama Department of Corrections. FY 2001 Performance Based Budget.