Reinventing the Pentagon: How the New Public Management Can Bring Institutional Renewal (Jossey Bass Public Administration Series) [Hardcover]

Fred Thompson (Author), L. R. Jones (Author)

Book Description

Series: Jossey Bass Public Administration Series | Publication Date: August 8, 1994

As the Cold War winds to an And, cuts in the military budget are a certainty. This new fiscal reality presents a difficult, long-term, highly complex managerial challenge. It calls for solutions to serious problems of organization and control, managing relationships with suppliers, and choosing between alternative institutional designs. If defense spAnding is to be reduced without enfeebling the military, the Pentagon must make major changes in the way it does business--it must restructure, decentralize, and trim away the fat.

Reinventing the Pentagon provides the solutions to many of the restructuring problems the Department of Defense now faces. Fred Thompson and L. R. Jones take the key concepts of the new public management--streamlining controls; implementing mission-driven, results-oriented budgets; creating more flexible and responsive hiring systems; and more--and tell how to organize the Pentagon to make these reforms work.

Using specific applications of the new public management, the authors show how to:

• align the Department of Defense's organizational strategy with its structure
• redesign governance relationships between its mission centers and their suppliers
• adjust individual and organizational self-interest to the objectives of national defense
• implement responsibility budgets
• replace rules and regulations with incentives
• use competition and market mechanisms rather than administrative solutions, and more.

Reinventing the Pentagon outlines the changes in the Pentagon's personnel, accounting, and financial management practices--as well as in the congressional appropriations, authorization, and oversight process--that are needed to make mission-driven, results-oriented budgeting a reality.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

As the Cold War winds to an And, cuts in the military budget are a certainty. This new fiscal reality presents a difficult, long-term, highly complex managerial challenge. It calls for solutions to serious problems of organization and control, managing relationships with suppliers, and choosing between alternative institutional designs. If defense spAnding is to be reduced without enfeebling the military, the Pentagon must make major changes in the way it does business--it must restructure, decentralize, and trim away the fat.Reinventing the Pentagon provides the solutions to many of the restructuring problems the Department of Defense now faces. Fred Thompson and L. R. Jones take the key concepts of the new public management--streamlining controls; implementing mission-driven, results-oriented budgets; creating more flexible and responsive hiring systems; and more--and tell how to organize the Pentagon to make these reforms work.Using specific applications of the new public management, the authors show how to: * align the Department of Defense's organizational strategy with its structure * redesign governance relationships between its mission centers and their suppliers * adjust individual and organizational self-interest to the objectives of national defense * implement responsibility budgets * replace rules and regulations with incentives * use competition and market mechanisms rather than administrative solutions, and more.Reinventing the Pentagon outlines the changes in the Pentagon's personnel, accounting, and financial management practices--as well as in the congressional appropriations, authorization, and oversight process--that are needed to make mission-driven, results-oriented budgeting a reality.

From the Back Cover

Reinventing the Pentagon provides the solutions to many of the restructuring problems the Department of Defense now faces. Fred Thompson and L. R. Jones take the key concepts of the new public management--streamlining controls; implementing mission-driven, results-oriented budgets; creating more flexible and responsive hiring systems; and more--and tell how to organize the Pentagon to make these reforms work.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Jossey-Bass; 1st edition (August 8, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1555427103
• ISBN-13: 978-1555427108
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,207,202 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5.0 out of 5 stars an important insight into our military history, March 30, 2011

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Nazani (MidAtlantic) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Reinventing the Pentagon: How the New Public Management Can Bring Institutional Renewal (Jossey Bass Public Administration Series) (Hardcover)

This book was published in 1994- the year President Clinton launched the first White House website, the Cold War was petering out, and Pentagon budget cuts were considered certain. The authors - both professors of financial management and public management- offered a wide range of suggestions for making the Pentagon "leaner" and more effective. Did their solutions work in the 90s? Would some of their ideas work now? Both today's planners and historians will find this book interesting.
Topics include: procurement, working with the private sector,replacing regulations with incentives, public values and public property, cutting overhead, redesigning control systems, much more. Index, charts, 298 pages.