focus on organizational culture. She defines this as “a shared set of norms and behavioral expectations characterizing a corporate identity” and uses case studies from five high-performing public institutions in developing countries to illustrate its dimensions. According to Grindle, the idea that organizational culture can stimulate good performance goes against popular models of bureaucratic behavior. Rational choice and principal-agent models assume self-serving behavior on the part of public officials and their workers and are good at explaining why things go wrong. But they are less effective at explaining why in some organizations, things go right—and why workers in these organizations conform to the public interest model of “principled” agents working in the public interest. As Stiglitz (1999) points out, The problem is that the wrong lessons have been drawn out of those empirical and case studies showing the failures of government programs in the past. Yes, government programs _may_ not work and they may fail to deliver services to the very poor, but this does not necessarily mean that government programs _cannot_ work. The objective should have been to inquire into what caused the failures and to ask how those failures can be averted. Only if one could be convinced that there was something inherent about public provision that made failure inevitable—and that this failure was worse than the market failures being addressed—should one lose hope. Too often, the public failures can be easily traced to inadequate incentives; governments need to recognize that incentives apply to them too, and not just to markets.

Grindle (1997) identifies four factors consistently associated with good performance in public organizations: a sense of organizational mission, defined as a widely held sense of purpose within the organization; management styles that encourage participation, flexibility, teamwork, problem-solving and equity; clear performance expectations for staff; and managerial autonomy, particularly in personnel matters.

_Organizational mission and mystique_ . Organizational “mystique” arises when workers feel that they acquire prestige and a good reputation by working for their organization, and when their organization has a reputation for competence, respect and social contribution. Health staff in Bolivia reported a high degree of pride in their organization and a personal commitment to maintaining its good reputation by contributing to the quality of services delivered (Grindle 1997). Key elements of this “mission and mystique” factor included a strong sense of service among staff; identification with norms and values that were thought to have universal validity such as honesty and political non-involvement; a sense that the organization and its employees were somehow unique, whether in their practice or the nature of their mission; a sense that staff selection was based on competence or skill (and thus, a sense of pride in being part of the organization); and absorption of the organization’s mission by staff, making it a personal mission as well as an organizational one. These factors were found to be independent of salary scales or other remuneration. Promoting the emergence of these factors requires committed leadership and explicit action, since they seldom arise _de novo._ In an example from Brazil, Tendler and Freedheim (1994) summarize the use of public information campaigns by provincial government to improve the public perception and status of first-level health workers. The campaigns had a twofold purpose: they helped health workers feel good about their jobs by conveying a positive impression to the community, and they also helped overcome resistance and political capture by 14