The LGMP experience: Guidelines for organizational change in local government

PART II: REGULAR FEATURES 0093M1X/78/1201-0493 $02.00/0

GowmmenlPubli~tiom Review, Vol. 5. No. 4,~~s 493 -497 0 Patrmon Press Ltd. 1978. Printed in Great Britain

BOOK REVIEWS Book Review Editor:

“A Cross-National

Examination

ARNE RICHARDS Documents Librarian Kansas State University Manhattan, KS 66506, U.S.A.

A BOOK REVIEW ESSAY: of Emerging Practices in Local Government Management”

The LGMP Experience: Guidelines for Organizational Change in Local Government by the Local Government Management Project Team (a joint project of The Ministry of Treasury, Economics and Intergovernmental Affairs, Province of Ontario; The Cities of London, Ottawa, and St. Catharines and the Regional City of Niagara; and The School of Business, Queen’s University at Kingston: Crown Copyright Reserved, April 1977) 1973 pp.; $4.50. Management by Objectives and Results in the Public Sector by George L. Morrisey (ReadingMA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., Inc., 1976) 278 pp. People, Performance . . . Results: A Guide to Increasing the Effectiveness of Local Government Employees by Katherine C. Janka, with Robert A. Luke and Charles A. Morrison. (National Training and Development Service Press, 5028 Wisconsin Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20016) 159 pp. The needs of local governments are many. Most important are those dealing with money and manpower and the effective allocation of these resources to community services. Increasingly, local governmental officials (and those in higher levels of government) are looking for ways to improve the capabilities of municipal governments in these regards. A wide variety of experiments and pilot projects have been undertaken to assess various means. Most prominent are experiments with new techniques of budgeting, with management information systems, with management by objectives, and with organizational development. Because any such change efforts often involve frills and fads, as well as potentially useful innovations, it is important to assess publications which report on change efforts. The three books subject to this review are ones which describe such undertakings. Moreover, the authors indicate that both municipal officials and external change

agents (e.g. academic professionals and students; consultants) are the target audience. These books compliment one another in important ways. And, they demonstrate, as a set, the commonality among local government management problems across two countries - Canada and the United States. Each of the books place a heavy emphasis on goal setting and management by objectives (MBO). MB0 has been a standard bearer of good management practices in the private sector since the middle fifties when Peter Drucker coined the term. Unfortunately, the term means different things to different people depending upon their view of the world. The MB0 approach employed in any management setting is one which focuses attention on the following questions: Where arp we now? Where do we want to be in the future? How do we get there as a collective enterprise? And, how do we know if and when we have got to where we said we wanted to go? Although each book deals with these questions, there are differences in perspective. The LGMP team offers the widest focus looking at MB0 as a critical element in an intensive long term process as organizational change toward corporate management in local government. Morrisey is content to provide a carefully delimited treatment of MB0 in theory and experience as it has been translated from the private to the public sector. Finally, Janka employs MB0 in terms of the contribution it might make to the development of more content and better utilized local employees. With these initial comparisons, we can proceed to examine the contribution of each work. The study by the LGMP team reports on an experimental project conducted in four large municipalities in Ontario designed to test methods for improving local government management. The present publication is only one among many produced by the LGMP Team which focuses on 493

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the management improvement experience. This one, however, is primarily intended in presentation and sequencing of materials to serve municipal officials, consultants, and academic staffs who might be interested in undertaking similar efforts in local government management improvement and organizational change. The book is very well organized, making it possible for the practitioner and the academic to gain both an appreciation of the project itself, of the factors which need to be considered in organization change, and of interrelated steps which may be taken toward management improvement. Because it is well organized, the busy specialist can turn directly to individual sections of management information systems, budgetary processes, or goals and objective setting to get a useful overview of how the particular topic fits into the larger picture of local governmental change. Each of the topics, then, is not treated in a vacuum; instead, each is carefully related to the other and to the more comprehensive perspective on organizational change. What happens to be a strength is also something of a weakness. The LGMP team may have anticipated that readers might sample only two or three chapters and therefore attempted to ensure that each chapter or section could stand on its own. But for those who read the work in its entirety there is some degree of redundancy which can contribute to frustration. This is somewhat troublesome because the primary strength of the work is in its introduction and good summary treatment of the multiple elements to be considered in local government change. It is impossible to adequately treat each of the chapters in the space provided. Instead, the reviewers will concentrate attention on those chapters which would appear to contribute the most to the intended audience and to a few chapters which might have been stronger. Chapters 2 and 3 are particularly useful to both academics and practitioners interested in local government change. Chapter 2 sets out very clearly some of the requisites for successful change efforts. A few of these include: the existence of internal or external pressure on top municipal decision makers to make improvements; introduction of change efforts by the top administrative level with the active support of most top administrators; both internal and external change agents should be involved; and an ability of all concerned to combine long-term change efforts with responsiveness to immediate needs. The presentation of such requisites is important if those interested in change are going to have any probability of success and not waste valuable resources of time and effort in settings for which the LGMP voluntary-cooperative process is ill-

suited. Chapter 3 is especially useful in providing a summary overview of major changes attempted in improving local government management. A concise and brief description of each of the following subjects is provided: goal setting, performance measurement, management information systems, systems analysis, financial resource management, organizational development and human resource management, labor relations, restructuring and reorganization, community data base, and the planning process. Although both of these chapters are well done, the reader receives the clear impression that they were largely designed for the practitioner over the academic. This conclusion emerges from the fact that no bibliographic references are provided which point the direction to any of the more important works developing each of the subjects introduced. Although other publications advertised at the end of the present book apparently do provide such bibliographic references, this publication, with the exception of one or two chapters, does not do so. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 should be of use to consultants and university-based trainers. They provide a good description of workshops employed and selection and training of internal and external advisers for setting the state for organizational change. The LGMP team does a good job in outlining goals and objective setting while providing very useful samples of the actual products which might emerge from such a process. Similarly, their discussion of municipal information systems and the relative utility of different types of information for management and decision making is well done. The major weakness of the book is found in the chapters on budgeting and reorganization. These weaknesses would seem to be related in large part to the overriding perspective of the LGMP team - the corporate management perspective. They write: “Corporate management refers to the process of developing, executing and controlling a corporate strategy plan. A corporate strategy plan is a ‘grand design’ for action which is developed from the senior managers’ interpretation of the mission or purpose of the organization.” (p. 156) In the chapters on corporate management and in those on budgeting and reorganization insufficient attention is paid to both the internal and external political realities of local government structures and processes. Although the LGMP point to a variety of purposes associated with the budget, predominant perspective seems to be on the budget as a

BOOK REVIEWS management tool. Little attention is paid to the building of political alliances or impact of existing ones which, respectively, would seem to be essential for significant reorganization or would account for the resistance to change efforts. The roles of functionally specific agencies at higher levels of government, of public employee bargaining units, of citizens and local interests groups are not sufficiently treated. The heavy emphasis on the discovery of common corporate goals via a cooperative process simply does not give sufficient weight to conflict and to the contributions of such conflict to the dynamics of change. Without attending to the role of conflict it is doubtful that significant change will occur. The corporate management perspective accounts in large part for the emphasis given to program budgeting and PPBS in the treatment of budgeting. The emphasis of these two budgetary approaches on goal setting and planning fits well with the corporate perspective. Although it is not dealt with in this work, one could argue that zerobased budgeting with an emphasis on efficiency fits with the same perspective. Numerous evaluations of each of these techniques in municipal government suggest that few significant changes in expenditures or organization in governments can be traced to the employment of such budgetary methods. Without adequate attention to the conflict dimensions associated with agency resource acquisitiveness, political alliances, political mobilization, creative uses of conflict, it is doubtful that significant examination of goals or reorganization will occur. What may be as important is that a corporate management based “change” process may contribute to as much alienation and frustration among managers, administrators, and employees as a political conflict based process, but produce little in the way of real change. The same criticism might be applied to all three works reviewed here. Nevertheless, each of them makes an important contribution to understand‘ing municipal administrative dynamics and how they might be refocused toward improved management. Morrisey’s book focuses on what MB0 might do for managers and organizations as well as what it should not do. The 1976 edition is a revised and expanded version of his 1970 book and employs “hands-on” experience in MB0 utilization in the field. A book pitched at practitioners, it deals with some fundamental issues which often thwart attempts to manage by objectives. For example, it deals with the concepts of roles and missions from a management perspective and begins to put them into public sector terminology (e.g. county

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assessor’s office, fire department); it gives guidelines for determining key results and establishing criteria (indicators); and it lays out a step-by-step process in not only setting objectives but writing objective statements. The LGMP team’s Canadian study shares these strengths. How many top managers have been thwarted in their attempts to install an MB0 system because subordinate managers did not know how to define a decent objective? And, of course, the writing of “decent” objectives statements does not an MB0 system make. It takes rigorous action steps, programming, scheduling, budgeting, and evaluation to truly manage by objectives rather than write about it. Morrisey does a good job of dealing with the allimportant followthrough to the initial step of framing objectives. One of the most important aspects of the Morrisey book is the emphasis on communications as a catalytic process for effective management by objectives. A score of other books can be found which deal with the rational - almost mechanical - processes of MBO, while Morrisey, is adamant about his approach being a human process - not an elaborate administrative procedure or system. It is the behavioral aspects of MB0 which make it both challenging and worthwhile from a management perspective. All of the emerging emphasis on industrial/organizational democracy makes the mechanical approach to MB0 just that much more vulnerable as an alternative for organization efficiency and effectiveness. The author’s attention to communications is laudatory, if brief. Just as important is the process of learning which must accompany a management system such as MBO. More about this dimension would have been welcomed. A second important feature of the book is its attempt to spell out special concerns in public sector application and how to deal with them. Most MB0 books never admit that the public and private sector are different, let alone provide helpful hints in dealing with the uniqueness of the public sector. Morrisey raises a number of key issues which permeate public sector management. For practitioners who are getting into MB0 (or thinking about it), the Morrisey book is a good introduction. For those who are currently engaged in an MB0 process, it represents an opportunity to critique their own efforts against some practical and well written guidelines. If one is to fault the book, it would be around his MOR (management by objectives and results) variation of MBO. On the whole, the world could stand a bit less jargon. Finally, he is obviously a fan of the approach and may find it a bit difficult to balance his enthusiasm for MB0 or MOR with the reality of all those efforts in the public sector

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to manage by objectives which have stagnated. MB0 works but only if the manager and the management team works at making it work. Morrisey, at least, gives good clues about how to make it work. Katherine Janka’s People, Performance . . . Results is an attempt to “boil down” several tall stacks of research documentation on manpower effectiveness into something usable for practitioners. The National Science Foundation, which funded the book, was interested in getting some of its esoteric research into the market place. The book is very clearly written and is loaded with many “here’s how they do it in Xtown” type examples. This is often what the practitioner is looking for in selling a new approach to either the elected policy body or the management team. While the previous two books reviewed have their management focus on MBO, the Janka book is clearly complementary with its emphasis on Organization Development or organization effectiveness and with employee motivation and participation as central themes. The author is interested in stimulating employee effectiveness as an integral aspect of management and suggest that there are three roads to success, the organization, the job and the individual employee. Success, according to Janka, is largely predicated upon the following set of conditions; commitment for the top, employee involvement, clear objectives, a comprehensive approach, commitment of resources, and finally, measurement of results. These conditions are not unlike those suggested by Morrisey or the Canadian case study in their own approaches to organizational effectiveness through management by objectives. The similarity becomes even more poignant when one looks at the action steps recommended by Janka in achieving employee effectiveness diagnose the situation, identify problems and opportunities, plan for action and implementation. Perhaps the strength of this book vi.+ci-vis the others is in the emphasis on diagnosis and participation as prerequisites for effective objective or goal setting. The final third of the book is taken up by a review of research efforts and case studies of what is happening in both academic (broadly defined) and public agencies regarding employee effectiveness. The cases will, no doubt, warm the hearts of the practitioner since innovation often needs company in the public sector. Nevertheless, the reviews might have been better integrated or subjected to comparative analysis to surface important factors in change efforts. Although this book is directed toward individual effectiveness, it could be a valuable addition to the manager’s book shelf. This is particularly true for those who are interested in mov-

ing in the direction of participatory management. Like the MB0 book by Morrisey, the Janka book represents a good balance of the human dimensions and the techniques by which one can manage more effectively. Both of the latter books, especially Janka’s offer good bibliographies. Combining the strengths of the.Morrisey book and the LGMP experience in setting objectives and developing plans for implementation and evaluation with the Janka work on the human dimension of effective management provides a good balance for those who are interested in developing more rigor in the accomplishment of organizational activities. In summary, these three books offer both insight into emerging practices in public management and pragmatic steps that can be taken to manage both tasks and human resources more effectively.

Chariman,

LARRY GAMM Center for Community Research The Pennsylvania State University

FRED FISHER Head, Community Consultation Laboratory The Pennsylvania State University Guide to United Nations Organization, Documentation & Publishing for Students, Researchers, Librarians by Peter I. Hajnal. Dobbs Ferry, New York: Oceana, 1978. 450 pp. $35.00 (ISBN o-379-20257-8). Peter Hajnal, currently the head of the Government Publications Section at the University of Toronto and a former associate librarian at the Dag Hammarskjold Library, obviously knows the problems encountered by researchers and by librarians who must deal with United Nations publications. Sixteen years have passed since Oceana published Brenda Brimmer’s Guide to the Use of United Nations Documents and an updated handbook for users of U.N. publications has been needed. This book serves as a revision and as an expansion of Brimmer to include information current through July 22, 1977. Hajnal’s Guide consists of five parts. Part I describes the structure, function and evolution of the United Nations and its six principle organs. At least one chapter covers each organ and gives the important information about that body. For instance, Hajnal includes a list of the committees and subsidiary bodies and a list of the special and emergency sessions in his chapter on the General Assembly. Three chapters are devoted to the myriad functions and responsibilities of the Economic and Social Council, including a thirtyfour page list of all the non-governmental organizations with which it is in consultative status. His chapter on recent changes in the