Perspectives on Management Capacity Building

Perspectives on Management Capacity Building provides a lively spectrum of views on the problems and prospects of improving the management and performance of municipal governments in the United States. Leading specialists in public administration probe the management needs of local governments and explore ways in which they can improve their capacity to manage. Today, state and local governments are caught in the transition between the expansionism of the post-World War II years and the retrenchment era of the late seventies and eighties. Improved management capacity has emerged as the most effective way for local governments to ride out the economic and political pressures confronting them.

This book first investigates the meaning of the term "management capacity." It then considers how management needs have changed in the post-war period and how these needs vary among large cities, suburbs, and rural communities. Two of the contributions explore the organizational politics of management improvement while others look at the functional areas of computers and financial management. The book also addresses human resource problems such as labor relations, management development, and training of municipal legislators, and concludes with several viewpoints on federal efforts to improve local management capacity.

Beth Walter Honadle is National Program Leader for Economic Development, Extension Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture. A specialist in state and local public finance and management, she is the author of Public Administration in Rural Areas and Small Jurisdictions. Arnold M. Howitt is Associate Director of the State, Local and Intergovernmental Center at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. The author of Managing Federalism, Dr. Howitt specializes in state and local public management and politics, and in intergovernmental relations.