How do you figure out what to do in a job? How do you get it done? How should you deal with demanding bosses? How can you get the most out of subordinates? What should you do to get along with difficult colleagues and handle powerful interest groups and the media? Just how can you succeed in a world where persuasion rather than direct command is the rule? Using a compass as his operating metaphor--your boss is north of you, your staff is south, colleagues are east and so on--Richard Haass provides clear, practical guidelines for setting goals and translating goals into results. The result is a lively, useful book for the tens of millions of Americans working in complex and unruly organizations of every sort and for students of both public administration and business. The Bureaucratic Entrepreneur is a new and updated edition of Haass's 1994 book, The Power to Persuade.

Seizing opportunities, inventing new products, transforming markets--entrepreneurs are an important and well-documented part of the private sector landscape. Do they have counterparts in the public sphere? The authors argue that they do, and test their argument by focusing on agents of dynamic political change in suburbs across the United States, where much of the entrepreneurial activity in American politics occurs. The public entrepreneurs they identify are most often mayors, city managers, or individual citizens. These entrepreneurs develop innovative ideas and implement new service and tax arrangements where existing administrative practices and budgetary allocations prove inadequate to meet a range of problems, from economic development to the racial transition of neighborhoods. How do public entrepreneurs emerge? How much does the future of urban development depend on them? This book answers these questions, using data from over 1,000 local governments. The emergence of public entrepreneurs depends on a set of familiar cost-benefit calculations. Like private sector risk-takers, public entrepreneurs exploit opportunities emerging from imperfect markets for public goods, from collective-action problems that impede private solutions, and from situations where information is costly and the supply of services is uneven. The authors augment their quantitative analysis with ten case studies and show that bottom-up change driven by politicians, public managers, and other local agents obeys regular and predictable rules.

Smart guidelines for building flexible, innovative companies Beat the System is a follow-up to Robert MacDonald's controversial but successful first book, Cheat to Win. Packed with proven, real-life advice, Beat the System shows readers how to deal with the bureaucracy that can smother the creativity and entrepreneurship essential to long-range business success. Beat the System teaches readers how to beat the bureaucratic system by building entrepreneurial cultures in their businesses, their departments, or even their individual jobs. MacDonald skillfully describes how business cultures develop, how bureaucratic procedures and processes seep into them, and how to build an entrepreneurial culture even as we live in a bureaucratic world. At the heart of his system are practical steps that create a sense of ownership among employees, invites their participation, creates a common mission, fosters an entrepreneurial atmosphere, and shares the rewards with all. Robert W. MacDonald (Wayzata, MN) is a true visionary in the financial services industry who rose from a door-to-door insurance salesman to the CEO of Allianz Life of North America. He was also the founder, CEO, and chairman of LifeUSA.

Winner of the Herbert A. Simon Book Award of the American Political Science Association, American Society for Public Administration Book Award of the American Society for Public Administration Political scientists and public administration scholars have long recognized that innovation in public agencies is contingent on entrepreneurial bureaucratic executives. But unlike their commercial counterparts, public administration “entrepreneurs” do not profit from their innovations. What motivates enterprising public executives? How are they created? Manuel P. Teodoro’s theory of bureaucratic executive ambition explains why pioneering leaders aren not the result of serendipity, but rather arise out of predictable institutional design. Teodoro explains the systems that foster or frustrate entrepreneurship among public executives. Through case studies and quantitative analysis of original data, he shows how psychological motives and career opportunities shape administrators’ decisions, and he reveals the consequences these choices have for innovation and democratic governance. Tracing the career paths and political behavior of agency executives, Teodoro finds that, when advancement involves moving across agencies, ambitious bureaucrats have strong incentives for entrepreneurship. Where career advancement occurs vertically within a single organization, ambitious bureaucrats have less incentive for innovation, but perhaps greater accountability. This research introduces valuable empirical methods and has already generated additional studies. A powerful argument for the art of the possible, Bureaucratic Ambition advances a flexible theory of politics and public administration. Its lessons will enrich debate among scholars and inform policymakers and career administrators.

The era of globalization saw China emerge as the world's manufacturing titan. However, the "made in China" model—with its reliance on cheap labor and thin profits—has begun to wane. Beginning in the 2000s, the Chinese state shifted from attracting foreign investment to promoting the technological competitiveness of domestic firms. This shift caused tensions between winners and losers, leading local bureaucrats to compete for resources in government budget, funding, and tax breaks. While bureaucrats successfully built coalitions to motivate businesses to upgrade in some cities, in others, vested interests within the government deprived businesses of developmental resources and left them in a desperate race to the bottom. In Manipulating Globalization, Ling Chen argues that the roots of coalitional variation lie in the type of foreign firms with which local governments forged alliances. Cities that initially attracted large global firms with a significant share of exports were more likely to experience manipulation from vested interests down the road compared to those that attracted smaller foreign firms. The book develops the argument with in-depth interviews and tests it with quantitative data across hundreds of Chinese cities and thousands of firms. Chen advances a new theory of economic policies in authoritarian regimes and informs debates about the nature of Chinese capitalism. Her findings shed light on state-led development and coalition formation in other emerging economies that comprise the new "globalized" generation.