BOOK REVIEWS
JPART19:681–687 Innovation’s Three Rs
Sandford F.Borins,ed.2008.Innovations in Government:Rearch,Recognition,and Replication.
Washington:Brookings Institution Press.231pp.
I began my review of this book with great anticipation.As a professor/practitioner of public management and teacher of a cour on management innovation,I am always looking for a fresh,new book about helping organizations change for the better.This collection of articles,edited by Sanford Borins,is particularly interesting to me becau it focus on the Innovations in American Government Awards Program at the Harvard University Kennedy School’s Ash Institute.The program makes a substantial contribution to improv-ing the performance and reputation of government and public rvants in the United States and more recently in Brazil,Chile,China,Kenya,Mexico,Peru,the Philippines,and South Africa.The book is definitely worth reading—some of the articles are truly excellent.
In the editor’s own words,the book is very much a Festschrift,a tribute volume to the Innovations pro
gram and its proud and productive23-year history.The introduction prents the requisite academic criticism of best-practice rearch—lf-reported claims are not verified,success today can fail tomorrow,and best-practice looks only at the best and does not compare it to the worst.As Borins correctly notes,the Kennedy Innovations program deals with such criticisms effectively,with its rigorous application and indepen-dent site visitor verification process,requiring applicants to prent afive-year track of success,and requiring applicants to describe the obstacles they had to overcome to achieve success.According to Borins,the unanswered questions are whether the innovations are replicable,how,why,and why not.The authors ek to answer the questions from a va-riety of different perspectives—historical,academic,purpo,international,personal,and looking forward.Sometimes the authors are successful.Sometimes they are not.
鼓励学习The collection starts on a high note with an enthralling history of the Innovation pro-gram by Jonathan Walters,an expert on performance management and columnist for Gov-erning magazine.Walters es the program as a respon to the anti-government rhetoric of Ronald Reagan,shaped from a vision formed at the Ford Foundation and hammered into a practical,sustainable institution by Graham Allison,Pete Zimmerman,Mark Moore,and Walter Broadnax at the Kennedy School.Walters charts the development of the program from its early,mode
st profile through the fateful decision in the early1990s to ek to attract a much larger applicant pool and to recognize programs with‘‘a little more imme-diate heft.’’(p.22)Awards to Wisconsin’s welfare-to-work initiative,New York City’s Compstat crimefighting system,and Vermont’s Restorative Justice early alternative n-tencing program connected the Innovations Award to breakthrough programs that were reinventing American government.But even after curing endowments from the Ford Foundation and Roy L.Ash,Walters argues some obrvers in academia,and government are disappointed that the program is not more broadly recognized.He suggests that this shortfall in recognition and replication could be connected to the lack of resources for academic rearch on the award winners.
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682Journal of Public Administration Rearch and Theory
The cond article,by Steven Kelman,explores this perceived rearch gap.Kelman credits the Kennedy School and its scholars with achieving a high profile in innovation rearch,particularly through the work of Mark Moore and Michael Barzelay.Yet he criticizes the‘‘Kennedy School of Rearch’’on innovation as being‘‘remarkably lf-referential.’’(p.34)The author then proceeds to examine the modern literature on innovation, organizational change,and performance in American government without discussing or referencing E.S.Savas and the privatization movement or David Osborne and the reinvent-ing government movement.Kelman also touches on public entrepreneurship without ref-erencing H.George Frederickson and concludes by referencing his own work(p.49).
Tho who decide to read on are rewarded with an excellent article by Archon Fung focud on innovations that‘‘build bridges between governments and the citizens they rve.’’(p.52)Fung identifies veral important methods of public participation including social cooperation,communication and understanding,and civic mobilization.He then connects the methods to some extraordinarily successful innovation award winners: the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department Resolve to Stop the Violence Program;the Washington,DC,Police Department’s Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit;and the Grassroots Conrvation Program of the US Fish and Wildlife Serv
ice.Fung establishes that the truly innovative public manager can improve performance and deepen democracy at the same time.
Three chapters provide interesting ca studies—one on the innovation program in Brazil;another looks at Beacon Scheme,a UK governance awards program;and the third examines the culture of innovation at the US Department of Labor under the leadership of Secretary of Labor Robert B.Reich.For US professors eking to bring an international aspect to their management cours,the article by Marta Ferreira,Santos Farah and Peter Spink provides an excellent introduction to state and local government innovation in South America’s largest economy,whereas Jean Hartley’s article asss innovation as a means to improve public rvice in the United Kingdom.Hartley also provides a uful compar-ative analysis of the UK’s Beacon Scheme and the Kennedy School’s American awards program.John Donahue’s look at Reich’s commitment to innovation at the Labor Depart-ment during the Clinton Administration is a very uful study of the role of leadership in the innovation process.
An article by Bob Behn analyzes replication on a conceptual level.It should really be the concluding chapter of the book.Behn helps the reader understand how innovation hap-pens and what an innovator needs to do when attempting to transport an effective new methodology to a different cultu
re or rvice area.He illustrates the challenge beautifully, comparing the many successful replications of New York City’s Compstat crimefighting system with less successful attempts to replicate Baltimore’s Citistat innovation(itlf
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膏车秣马Chapters by editor Sandford Borins bookend the volume.The introduction simply summarizes the contents,whereas thefinal chapter celebrates what the Innovations pro-gram has accomplished and then lays out a rearch agenda for the future.A chapter by Eugene Bardach on interagency collaborative capacity is interesting but only remotely connected to other chapters.Gowher Rizvi,director of the Ash Institute which hous the awards program,focus his chapter on the contributions of the awards program and the Ash Institute.He concludes that government innovation is uful only to the extent that it enhances the quality of life,justice,and democracy for the citizens being rved.
Eimicke Innovation’s Three Rs683 This book certainly has value as a supplemental text for a graduate cour on public management or management innovation.The three ca chapters could be ud as class assignments or to stimulate class discussions on replicability,organizational culture,cul-
tural context,accountability,performance versus participation,and the challenge of orga-nizational change.The articles by Bob Behn and Archon Fung help put the cas in perspective and would aid the students in drawing lessons from the cas.
The chapters by Walters,Rizvi,and Borins tell a story of the Innovations in American Government Awards that graduate students of public policy and management should know. Popular literature on government is overwhelmingly negative.Many of the textbooks ud
in public policy and administration cours focus on the constraints facing public managers
and offer little encouragement for innovation or change for the better.The Kennedy awards process reprents one of the few opportunities for effective public managers to attract
some positive public attention and,it is good for public policy students to know about this
very important program.
What is disappointing about the book is that it pays so little attention to the reinventing government movement and the important writings of David Osborne and H.George Frederickson.Reinventing Government(Osborne and Gaebler1992)inspired President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore to
launch the National Performance Review,one of the
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few federal government reform initiatives to produce sustainable,positive changes in gov-ernment agencies through doing more,not just spending less.Reinventing Government’s
follow-up,Banishing Bureaucracy(Osborne and Plastrik1998),helped encourage and sus-
tain innovators around the world,including former Mayor Stephen Goldsmith in Indian-
apolis and Mayor Rudy Giuliani in New York City.The high-profile reinvention era Innovations Award winners propelled the award program from relative obscurity to its cur-
rent high profile,as Jonathan Walters describes in his chapter(22–4).
Not every application of the reinvention tool kit produced positive outcomes.
H.George Frederickson(1997)most eloquently voiced its dangers in The Spirit of Public Administration.Public entrepreneurship,trying to run government like a business,can lead
public agencies to ignore due process,equal access,public participation,and negative externalities.The apparent efficiencies of lf-certification and lf-regulation can lead
to credit default swaps and catastrophic disruptions in the housing,banking,and credit markets,as we have en.
There is nothing wrong with government innovators eking to adapt best practices
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from the private ctor to more efficiently meet the needs of their public ctor customers. However,as Frederickson points out,public ctor customers are also citizens and public agencies must do more than provide customer rvice.Mayor Goldsmith’s initial commit-
ment to privatization transformed into an award winning competition program as he came
to better understand the complexities of public rvices and the constraints facing truly committed and talented public rvants.In fact,it could be argued that Goldsmith’s inno-
vation had as much to do with creative labor relations and performance incentives as it did
with using the market to improve public rvices.
The reinvention model incorporates market principles such as competition,leverage
and earning rather than spending and customer focus;however,the majority of the10core strategies involve innovations accomplished by government workers working more effec-
tively and efficiently,often by working more cloly with communities and individuals
they rve.As Don Kettl es it:
684Journal of Public Administration Rearch and Theory
Management reform for the twenty-first century will require the instinct for reform to become
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hardwired into the practice of government.Ultimately,this strategy means coupling the reform
impul with governance—government’s increasingly important relationship with civil society
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and the institutions that shape modern life.(2005,90)
When you read the chapter by Gowher Rizvi about the future of the Kennedy Innovations program,he ems to be channeling Kettl.Couple this strategy with a board that currently includes skilled practitioner/thinkers such as David Gergen,Kathleen Kennedy Townnd, David Osborne,and
Ellen Schall and we have good reason to be optimistic about the future of the Innovations in American Government Awards program.If you agree with me that the program plays an important role in encouraging innovative public managers,then you should read Innovations in Government:Rearch,Recognition and Replication.
REFERENCES
Frederickson,H.George.1997.The spirit of public administration.San Francisco,CA:Josy-Bass.
Kettl,Donald F.2005.The global public management revolution.2nd ed.Washington,DC:Brookings Institution Press.
Osborne,David,and Ted Gaebler.1992.Reinventing government:How the entrepreneurial spirit is trans-forming the public ctor.Reading,MA:Addison-Wesley.
Osborne,David,and Peter Plastrik.1998.Banishing bureaucracy:Thefive strategies for reinventing government.New York:Plume.
William Eimicke
Columbia University1刻翠裁红
1Currently on public rvice leave to rve as Deputy Fire Commissioner for Strategic Planning and Management, New York City Fire Department.
