The political economy of results-oriented management in the "neoadministrative state" - Lessons from the MCDHHS experience

To comply with the precepts of today's neoadministrative slate, public mana gers are routinely pressed by elected officials to become results-oriented, customer-focused, and partnership-seeking service deliverers. The magnitud e of the cultural change involved has frequently proved daunting at all lev els of government in the United States. Although much remains unclear about the prudence and prospects of such cultural-reform efforts, researchers ar e gradually discerning the political economy of the efforts and challenges they pose to effectiveness and to public accountability. In the process, th ey are finding how critical the approaches taken in the early stages of cul tural reform are to their ultimate success or failure, To advance practice and research on this topic, this article chronicles and analyzes the first 3 years of a critical case study of results-driven, customer-focused and pa rtnership-oriented cultural change in the Department of Health and Human Se rvices in Montgomery County, Maryland. Identified are nine critical choices made during those years that sorely complicated progress, the flaws in und erlying causal theories that spawned these problems, and the challenges to, and opportunities for advancing, accountability that reformers can expect and that researchers can profitably pursue.