Publicizing Organizational Performance Goals: Self-Embarrassment as a Management Strategy

¹ My thanks to Robert Mandel for his comments on this article.

² Spiegel's use of publicity is incidental to his main points in the article, so he gives but two sentences of defense: "It succeeded in building our credibility, both inside the agency and out, and put personal egos on the line against results. Moreover it brought the agency out of its defensive posture, created a `can do' atmosphere among staff, and made accountability a real issue." Thus his main defense tends to be a morale one, and it seems to be case-specific. This paper attempts to explore more generalizable gains and losses in the strategy.

³ A House committee report (1979, p. 32) confirmed this, reporting: "At the very least, the program spurred establishment of an operation quality control system in every state. And, the very existence of that system, and the publicity surrounding its findings of high error rates, produced favorable results" (my emphasis). The AFDC performance reporting system had efficiency and effectiveness as important goals, and that is the emphasis of this paper as well. Its other, hidden agenda items (possibly including a decrease in even deserving welfare cases) are explored in Randall (1979).

⁴ An account of Presidential MBO history is: Rose (1976).

⁵ For example, there were many uses of this strategy on the local level, with Spiegel only one example. In the early and mid '70s, to cite just one other case, Dubuque's performance system emphasized public participation at every stage (Chavenelle, 1974).

⁶ One useful attempt to categorize the public by attentiveness and participation is Verba (1972).

Chavenelle, Gilbert D. "Dubuque Fiscal Information System." Public Management 56 (June 1974): 20-22.

Hayes, Frederick O'R. "City and County Productivity Programs." Public Administration Review 38 (January/February 1978).

House of Representatives, Committee on Government Operations . Administration of the AFDC Program. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979.

Randall, Ronald . "Presidential Power Versus Bureaucratic Intransigence: The Influence of the Nixon Administration on Welfare Policy." American Political Science Review 73 (September 1979): 795-810.

Rose, Richard . Managing Presidential Objectives. New York: Free Press, 1976.

Schelling, Thomas C. The Strategy of Conflict. London: Oxford University Press, 1960.

Spiegel, Arthur H. III . "How Outsiders Overhauled a Public Agency." Harvard Business Review (January/February 1975): 116-124.

Verba, Sidney and Norman Nie . Participation in America. New York: Harper and Row, 1972.