Product Description
While many books hype the latest fad, here at last (!) is a ?realist's' toolbox designed for public administrators who need to know the costs as well as the benefits of managerial theories and technologies.
-- Mel Dubnick, Department of Public Administration at Rutgers University and former Managing Editor of the Public Administration Review Today's public administrators must be more than the effective managers of their agencies' internal operations. In order to manage a complex set of interorganizational relationships spanning governments, nonprofit organizations and private firms in a complex global economy, they and their organizations must be capable of great agility and change. Effectiveness is a necessary but not sufficient condition for success: Today's public managers must reach beyond competence to be creative innovators and agents of change.
This book introduces public sector professionals to a set of innovation tools: Strategic Planning, Reengineering, Total Quality Management, Benchmarking, Performance Measurement and Management, Team Management, Privatization. It shows how to understand them, use them and integrate them into any organization, and how they will take public managers beyond competence to be creative innovators.
The creative public manager must continually look for new tools and new approaches. Tools for Innovators will help in this search, and in meeting and surmounting the challenges of a changing public sector.
Average Customer Review:
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
nothing new, 2002-07-04
Using the over-used word "creative" as a shield, "Tools for Innovators" rehashes common-sense and stale ideas as exciting new methods for public managers. Current and aspiring managers should avoid this platitude-ridden guide: It will not improve your managerial skills, only waste time.
1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Creative Popular Tools, 2000-09-29
This book sums up the some popular management tools to be used in public organizations with the intent of helping them to meet citizens demands of highest quality service. Including Strategic Planning, Total Quality Management, Re-Engineering, Benchmarking, Outsourcing, many approachments (or tools) that can be useful in restructuring public organizations are told in this valuable book. Readers who want to understand the basic principles of popular management tools developed for private sector organizations (but can be applied to public sector)should read this book. One of the obvious weaknesses of the book is its cases which were not well-developed. Overall, I recommend Cohen's book to readers who have spare time.