Debunking the 'people resist change' Myth.

• Author: Michelotti, Lindsay
• Position: The Bookshelf

As a self-described "career academic and part-time practitioner," Steven Kelman gives an enlightening account of an outsider's view of the inside of governmental bureaucracy in his book Unleashing Change. A Study of Organizational Renewal in Government. Although Kelman at times writes with an air of gratitude that his appointment as the senior procurement policy official in a poorly managed and inefficient federal agency was a temporary one, his genuine desire to effect positive change within the system is evident. While the book addresses change in a large federal agency, Kelman's empirical research on public employees' attitudes toward change and his leadership, management, and motivational strategies are readily transferable to local or state government settings.

In 1990, as a professor of public management at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, Kelman published Procurement and Public Management. The Fear of Discretion and the Quality of Government Performance, a book criticizing U.S. procurement management and proposing reforms. The Clinton administration picked up on his expertise and appointed him administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy in the Office of Management and Budget, his title being the most unmistakable sign of the bureaucracy he was signing on to deconstruct.

Kelman's recommendations shadow an analogy to a social change movement or political revolution in that they often begin with a group of discontented individuals lacking the leadership and collective action required to actively pursue change. Kelman places the responsibility for providing these enablers squarely on the shoulders of management, which he says must recognize when the organization has fallen into the rut of following rules and regulations without considering how those policies affect its ability to achieve its mission and objectives.

Although seemingly naive and overly optimistic at times, Kelman's prescriptions for effecting change in bureaucracies by combining front-line initiative with management support are heavily supported by empirical research. Many of his conclusions are based on two surveys, including questionnaires and interviews, of contracting employees at 19 buying offices. Kelman uses the results of these surveys to refute traditional organizational theory claims that front-line employees must be bullied into buying into change or that lower-level employees only want more autonomy so that they can slack on the job. He...