Reform as Process - by Martin J Williams

About the Book

"Congratulations! You've just been appointed an advisor to the Head of the Civil Service. Your job is to make recommendations about how to improve the effectiveness of dozens of government ministries and departments, which are in turn responsible for delivering public services, building infrastructure, implementing regulations, and nearly everything else the economy and society depend on. But the civil service is widely perceived - by civil servants, politicians, and ordinary people alike - as dysfunctional and ineffective. You have very limited financial resources, and there are major political and legal constraints on your ability to hire or fire personnel. How do you advise the Head of Civil Service to go about designing and implementing reforms to improve the performance of the civil service? Building an effective civil service is crucial for public service delivery and good governance, but reforming bureaucratic institutions is notoriously difficult. In Implementing Civil Service Reform Martin J. Williams takes a fresh perspective on this challenge by documenting and analyzing the implementation of dozens of reforms initiated by Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Senegal, and Zambia in the last 30 years. Williams shows that these reforms have largely failed to achieve their goals because they have approached organizational change mainly as a matter of changing formal structures and processes through one-off projects. However, some reform efforts also contain the seeds of a more promising approach, which Williams develops into a novel theory of reform as catalyzing an ongoing process of continuous improvement. The book makes theoretical and empirical contributions to the understanding of government performance, public service delivery, and development, and discusses practical insights and strategies for reformers around the world to achieve change in practice"-- Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

Building an effective civil service is crucial for public service delivery and good governance, but reforming bureaucratic institutions is notoriously difficult. This book takes a fresh perspective on this challenge by documenting and analyzing the implementation of more than one hundred reforms initiated by six African countries over the last thirty years.

Martin J. Williams shows that these efforts largely fell short of their goals because they typically approached organizational change as a matter of changing formal structures and processes through one-off projects. Some did yield positive changes, however, when they were able to create opportunities for civil servants to discuss performance and how to improve it. Drawing on this evidence, Williams develops a new theory of how systemic reforms can lead to meaningful change--not by trying to force it through top-down interventions but by catalyzing an ongoing and decentralized process of continuous improvement.

Reform as Process makes theoretical and empirical contributions to research on organizational performance, civil service reform, and public service delivery, and it shares practical insights and strategies to help reformers around the world achieve meaningful change in their organizations.

About the Author

Martin J. Williams is associate professor of organizational studies and (by courtesy) political science at the University of Michigan, as well as associate faculty at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford.