Power Imperative, The: Working With Congress
Government agencies depend on Congress for their very existence, but Congress can do little more than give the bureaucracy general instructions as it concentrates on its own legislative agenda. Members of Congress do expect agencies to respond to th...
Power Imperative, The: One Job; Many Masters
A manager in the private sector has a single constituency to serve, the stockholders, but a manager in the public sector has multiple sets of constituencies: the legislature and the executive at the federal level; state and local governments; and or...
Power Imperative, The: Running the Show
Bureaucrats are often stereotyped as unaccountable because they are not easy to reach. Accountability, however, is much more subtle. It means being responsible to a number of constituencies beginning with the President and heads of the executive dep...
Federal Workplace, The: Pervasiveness of the Federal Bureaucracy, The
It is almost impossible to go through an hour of the day without coming into contact with some aspect of the federal bureaucracy. The government's enormous administrative capacity makes it possible for the United States to have an ambitious array of...
Federal Workplace, The: Civil Service Reforms
The Civil Service Reform Act, a Democratic initiative, created a senior executive service and a performance appraisal system that ties pay to performance. It created a means to enforce the laws and write the regulations that govern the hiring, firin...
Federal Workplace, The: Bureaucracy in Perspective, The
The positive experiences people have in dealing one-on-one with federal agencies is sometimes subverted when they think of bureaucracy in broader terms. The bureaucracy poses a political problem because it embodies the tension between creating purpo...
Federal Workplace, The: Bureaucracy in Historical Framework, The
The federal bureaucracy is not defined in the Constitution; it is a creature of laws. What was originally a small, elite corps of socially prominent men in 1789 became, with the inauguration of Andrew Jackson, a group of ordinary citizens who served...
Federal Workplace, The: Balancing Act, A
The federal bureaucracy is a product of law and regulation. Congress specifies the tasks the U. S. government will undertake and delegates those tasks to the president and his subordinates. When a president is elected by a substantial margin, public...
Federal Workplace, The: Well-intentioned Red Tape Impedes Efficiency
When there is a problem in the federal workplace, Congress or the regulatory apparatus of the bureaucracy itself will add a new law or rule. The result is thousands of pages of regulations that grind work to a halt. Requirements related to due proce...