Efforts By Public Sector Leaders To Reform Bureaucracies

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Efforts by Public Sector Leaders to Reform Bureaucracies Considerable dispute exists concerning the efficacy of efforts by public sector leaders to reform bureaucracies. To be sure, a wide variety of experience and analysis can be gathered for the sake of determining the central role played by executive leadership within the context of public sector reform efforts. There is no doubt that effort involving “reforms from the top” can sometimes generate beneficent outcomes. One example that has often been cited in the political science literature involves the reforms that were put into place in the former Soviet Under by Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1980s. It was these reforms that paved the way to the opening of the Soviet system, and the dissolution …show more content…

However, public sector efforts at reform by means of executive leadership involve certain challenges, as well as variables, that may be absent within the context of other kinds of institutional settings. For example, a major impetus and motivating factor towards reform in the private sector is often the ambition of achieving a greater degree of profitability. While financial considerations are certainly present within the context of the public sector given the budgetary constraints that are involved, the economic dimensions of public sector reform initiatives also assume a different character in multiple ways (Wilson, …show more content…

Johnson. The Nixon administration actually oversaw the implementation of regulatory reforms that were often landmark in nature. Among these were the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, which was oriented towards more effective regulation and control of environmental pollution, and the creation of the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, which enforced regulations regarding workplace safety. Likewise, the Nixon administration imposed wage and price controls in order to control inflation, and greatly expanded the role of the federal government in the enforcement of drug laws through the creation of the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the implementation of the “war on drugs” that would later become a common feature of American political life (Thomas,