Managing in the public sector entails an understanding of the interaction between three distinct dimensions—administrative structures and processes, organizations and their cultures, and the skills and values of individual managers. Public managers must produce results that citizens and their representatives expect from their government while balancing these concerns within a constitutional scheme of governance.

In Public Management, authors Carolyn J. Hill and Laurence E. Lynn, Jr. show that constructing critical analyses and persuasive arguments is the principal tool for effectively managing in three dimensions. Students learn how to analyze and explain managerial strategies and decisions, critically assessing real world case studies and building their own arguments.

Four unique features further the book’s approach and reinforce practical learning:

• Rule of Law boxes showcase how public managers are affected by statutes, regulations, and court decisions.
• Concepts in Action boxes show how sense-making, deliberation and decision making are common features in everday news stories, opinion pieces, and government reports.
• How the World Works boxes aptly illustrate how human nature creates conundrums, irony, and surprise in the practice of public management—a reminder that theory cannot fully explain the variety and complexity of human and organizational behavior.
• Analysis and Argument sections at the end of every chapter guide students in case analysis and help them build the elements of an argument (Claim, Reason, Evidence, Warrant, Acknowledgment and Response).

Rich with vivid, “ripped-from-the-headlines” examples of managerial situations as well as noteworthy scholarship, Public Management underlines the challenges and art of balancing structure, culture, and craft.

1. WHAT IS PUBLIC MANAGEMENT?
Introduction: Public Management’s Perfect Storm
The American Problem: Legitimizing the State
What is Public Management?
Where Do Public Managers Work?
What Do Public Managers Do?
What Kinds of Challenges do Public Managers Confront?
What Kind of People Become Public Managers?
Public and Private Management: Differences and Similarities
Public Management and Public Administration: A Distinction without a Difference?
Organization of This Book

2. PUBLIC MANAGEMENT’S THREE DIMENSIONS
Introduction: The Destruction of the Space Shuttle Columbia
What is Multi-Dimensional Public Management?
The Three-Dimensional Approach
Thinking in Three Dimensions

3. ANALYSIS AND ARGUMENT IN PUBLIC MANAGEMENT
Introduction
A Method of Argument
The Role of Analysis and Argument in Public Management
Arguments in Practice
Public Management as Analysis and Argument

4. PUBLIC MANAGEMENT’S BACKBONE: THE RULE OF LAW
Introduction
What is the Rule of Law?
Checks and Balances
A Logic of Constitutional Governance
Managing According to the Rule of Law

5. PUBLIC MANAGEMENT: THE STRUCTURAL DIMENSION
What is Structure?
Evolution of the Structural Perspective
Prominent Constraining Structures
Organizational Form
Structures and Political Rationality

6. PUBLIC MANAGEMENT: THE CULTURAL DIMENSION
What is Culture?
Culture in Historical Perspective
Individual Characteristics and Building Blocks of Culture
Structure and Culture
Craft and Culture
Culture Matters, In Theory and in Practice: Pay-for-Performance in Public Organizations

7. PUBLIC MANAGEMENT: THE CRAFT DIMENSION
What is Craft?
Evolution of the Craft Perspective
Typecasting Managers
Deliberation and Decision Making
How Public Managers Can Learn
Being Strategic
Leadership
Does Managerial Craftsmanship Matter?

8. ACCOUNTABILITY
What is Accountability?
Accountability in Historical Perspective
Accountability and the Structural Dimension
Accountability and the Cultural Dimension
Accountability and the Craft Dimension

9. PUBLIC MANAGEMENT REFORM
What is Public Management Reform?
Implementing American Democracy
Public Managers as Change Agents
Do Public Management Reforms Improve Government Performance?
A Case Study of Organizational Reform: CompStat
Reform as a Political Process

10. MANAGING IN THREE DIMENSIONS
Overlapping Dimensions
Managing in the Black
What’s in the Black? Conundrums of Three-Dimensional Management
Managing in the Black as Argument
Are Some Public Management Jobs Impossible?
A Manager in the Black: Paul Vallas

Carolyn J. Hill is associate professor of public policy at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute. Her research focuses on whether and why public programs are effective, and how they can be improved. Her work has been published in the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, the Review of Economics and Statistics, and other journals. With Laurence E. Lynn, Jr. and Carolyn J. Heinrich, Hill is the author of Improving Governance: A New Logic for Empirical Research.

Laurence E. Lynn, Jr. is Sydney Stein, Jr. Professor of Public Management Emeritus at the University of Chicago and Sid Richardson Research Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses on governance, public administration, and public management. His books include Public Management as Art, Science and Profession, Madison’s Managers: Public Admiinistration and the Constitution (with Anthony M. Bertelli), and Public Management: Old and New, and he is co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Public Management. He has received the John Gaus lectureship award from the American Political Science Association, the Dwight Waldo and Paul Van Riper awards from the American Society for Public Administration, and the H. George Frederickson Award from the Public Management Research Association.