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A seminal figure in the field of public
management, Mark Moore presents his summation of fifteen
years of research, observation, and teaching about what
public sector executives should do to improve the performance
of public enterprise. Useful for both practicing public
executives and those who teach them, this book explicates
some of the richest of several hundred cases used at Harvard's
Kennedy School and illuminates their broader lessons for
government managers. Moore addresses four questions that
have long bedeviled public administration: What should citizens
and their representatives expect and demand from public
executives? What sources can public managers consult to
learn what is valuable for them to produce? How should public
managers cope with inconsistent and fickle political mandates?
How can public managers find room to innovate?
Moore's answers respond to the well-understood
difficulties of managing public enterprises in modern society
by recommending specific, concrete changes in the practices
of individual public managers: how they envision what is
valuable to produce; how they engage their political overseers;
how they deliver services and fulfill their obligations
to clients. Following Moore's cases, we witness dilemmas
faced by a cross section of public managers -- William Ruckelshaus
and the Environmental Protection Agency, Jerome Miller and
the Department of Youth Services, Miles Mahoney and the
Park Plaza Redevelopment Project, David Sencer and the swine
flu scare, Lee Brown and the Houston Police Department,
Harry Spence and the Boston Housing Authority. Their work,
together with Moore's analysis, reveals how public managers
can achieve their true goal of producing public value.
Mark H. Moore is Daniel and Florence
Guggenheim Professor at the Kennedy School of Government,
Harvard University, and a coauthor of Dangerous Offenders:
The Elusive Target of Justice (Harvard).
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