In this book, Verkuil uses his inside perspective on government to examine the increasing impact of private contractors on governance. Outsourcing of government functions is on the rise and is of concern to scholars and practitioners, and the reputation of the author will bring considerable attention to this book.

To be effective, government must be run by professional managers. When decisions that should be taken by government officials are delegated to private contractors without adequate oversight, the public interest is jeopardized. Verkuil uses his inside perspectives on government performance and accountability to examine the tendencies at both the federal and state levels to 'deprofessionalize' government. Viewing the turn to contractors and private sector solutions in ideological and functional terms, he acknowledges that the problem cannot be solved without meaningful civil service reforms that make it easier to hire, incent and, where necessary, fire career employees and officials. The indispensable goal is to revitalize bureaucracy so it can continue to competently deliver essential services. By highlighting the leadership that already exists in the career ranks, Verkuil senses a willingness, or even eagerness, to make government, like America, great again.

The end of bureaucracy has been anticipated many times throughout the history of management science, as well as in modern social and political theory. This book sets out to show why bureaucracy persists and what values it embodies and upholds. Thus the book seeks to show how and why bureaucratic forms of organization have played, and continue to play, a vital and productive role in ordering our political, social, economic, and cultural existence. The book also describes and analyzes the impact of contemporary programmes of organizational reform in the public and private sectors on bureaucratic structures, and seeks to highlight some of the costs of attempts to de-bureaucratize organizational life in business, government, and the third sector. Overall the volume highlights the values of bureaucracy and at the same time indicates why distinctively bureaucratic forms of organization should continue to be valued.

Reliance on the private military industry and the privatization of public functions has left our government less able to govern effectively. When decisions that should have been taken by government officials are delegated (wholly or in part) to private contractors without appropriate oversight, the public interest is jeopardized. Books on private military have described the problem well, but they have not offered prescriptions or solutions this book does.

Original and based on unique empirical research in the areas of organization theory and organizational behaviour, focusing on two major companies, this work makes an invaluable contribution to the literature on bureaucracy and innovation.

Publisher description

Author Ludwig von Mises was concerned with the spread of socialist ideals and the increasing bureaucratization of economic life. While he does not deny the necessity of certain bureaucratic structures for the smooth operation of any civilized state, he disagrees with the extent to which it has come to dominate the public life of European countries and the United States. The author's purpose is to demonstrate that the negative aspects of bureaucracy are not so much a result of bad policies or corruption as the public tends to think but are the bureaucratic structures due to the very tasks these structures have to deal with. The main body of the book is therefore devoted to a comparison between private enterprise on the one hand and bureaucratic agencies/public enterprise on the other.