Tools for Innovators: Creative Strategies for Strengthening Public Sector Organizations

While many books hype the latest fad, here at last (!) is a?realist's' toolbox designed for public administrators who need toknow the costs as well as the benefits of managerial theories andtechnologies.
-- Mel Dubnick, Department of Public Administration at RutgersUniversity and former Managing Editor of the Public AdministrationReview

Today's public administrators must be more than the effectivemanagers of their agencies' internal operations. In order to managea complex set of interorganizational relationships spanninggovernments, nonprofit organizations and private firms in a complexglobal economy, they and their organizations must be capable ofgreat agility and change. Effectiveness is a necessary but notsufficient condition for success: Today's public managers mustreach beyond competence to be creative innovators and agents ofchange.

This book introduces public sector professionals to a set ofinnovation tools: Strategic Planning, Reengineering, Total QualityManagement, Benchmarking, Performance Measurement and Management,Team Management, Privatization. It shows how to understand them,use them and integrate them into any organization, and how theywill take public managers beyond competence to be creativeinnovators.

The creative public manager must continually look for new tools andnew approaches. Tools for Innovators will help in this search, andin meeting and surmounting the challenges of a changing publicsector.

STEVEN COHEN is Associate Dean of the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) and director of Columbia University's Graduate Program in Public Policy and Administration. WILLIAM EIMICKE is the director of the SIPA's Public Management Training Center and Program in Politics and Public Policy.