The Reinvention Game

Evaluating the success or failure of the National Performance Review (NPR) on the basis of its proclaimed goal of making government "work better and cost less" is problematic. Whether the federal government works better than it did in 1993 is a question that is not easily subject to objective verification. Even estimates of cost savings from the initiative have varied widely. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the Phase I recommendations would save only 5 percent of the $5.9 billion proclaimed by NPR. Ascertaining the success or failure of the venture is further impeded by the conflicting nature of its objectives. In his evaluation of the NPR, Donald Kettl (1995; 14) acknowledged that "Assessing the NPR's more fundamental results is difficult because it has pursued radically different, indeed conflicting goals. " Kettl cites a disagreement among officials over whether the primary emphasis should be on making government cost less or on making it work better. Cutting costs implies a strategy of downsizing and program elimination; improving service suggests investments in personnel, training, and technology. Any evaluation is complicated by the heterogeneous nature of the recommendations included in the Report of the National Performance Review (1993). The General Accounting Office (GAO) (1994; 2) commented in its evaluation of the NPR that, Some of the recommendations were very broad (e.g., 'redefine and restructure OPM's functional responsibilities'); others were more specific (e.g., 'establish a hardrock mine reclamation fund'). Some recommendations cut to the core of how government operates (e.g., 'improve legislative-executive branch relationship'); others, while important, were on relatively tangential topics (e.g., 'establish federal firearms license user fees to cover costs'). In place of an overall assessment of the effort, the GAO reported on the implementation status of all 384 items in the NPR report. We sought to understand the NPR from an alternate perspective. Instead of assessing the NPR on the basis of its professed objectives, we investigated it as tactical exercise from the point of view of the actors involved. The tactics take place in multiple arenas. Most evident are those relating to the strategic political considerations of the Clinton administration. Also important, however, are the tactics related to implicit shifts in power between the executive and legislative branches and within the executive branch, both within and between agencies. Our primary focus was on the tactics employed by the NPR to foment change and innovation within agencies. We investigated a number of the reinvention laboratories established by the NPR that are designed to foment innovation by freeing managers from central controls. Our focus was on the organizational dynamics that accompany the process of change. Goal-Directed versus Political Models of Organizations The tactical perspective on change derives from the school of organization theory which regards organizations as political arenas in which individuals compete while striving for divergent objectives. This approach contrasts with "rational" models that portray organizations as highly integrated structures directed toward the achievement of a single set of mutually agreed upon goals. The concept of organizations as political arenas has been developed most fully by Crozier and Friedberg (1980). They argue (p. 19) that the key to understanding organizations is "the analysis of the different power games which indirectly structure the strategies of the actors involved" (p. 6). The political model has particular relevance to change processes in organizations. Change often implies a redistribution of rewards or a shift in priorities that can provoke contests between individuals and groups within the organization. The conclusion reached by Thoenig and Friedberg (1976; 314), based on their case study of change in the French Ministry of Public Works, Urban Affairs and Housing, highlights this point: organizational change is not. …