Those of you working as makers of government policies probably know what I’m talking about. A large part of what we do, turns out to be sub par because… well, the reasons for doing it in the first place were faulty. Maybe there wasn’t a real problem. But a panicking politician ordered it, because of panicking media, because of an incident.
Or maybe there was a problem, but in hindsight yet another government policy wasn’t the solution.
Or maybe the policy was written because there was a department and it needed to stay busy and it decided that policy was needed because of an earlier policy that was an extension of yet an even older policy… well, you get the idea.*)
I’m looking for a short, practical book, probably from the field of management psychology or organization psychology, that describes this phenomenon. Ideally, it should point out how to spot such doomed and unneccessary endeavours before they have been brought to completion.
Thanks in advance !
*) For a large part, this is just how governments work. I often feel the workings of a government and an individual mind have a lot in common. Impulses, habits that may or may nog be functional, rational thought and subconscious processes all lead, in the end, to an outcome that sorta works and that everybody can sorta live with. But that is whole 'nuther story.
I don’t know how successful you will be with this. If a short, practical book could prevent this from happening, it probably wouldn’t happen so often.
That said, here are two books you might find informative:
*Equality and Efficiency * by Okun. This is a small, classic book in public administration that illuminates how government decisions are a balance of equality and efficiency. I find that a lot of the truly inefficient things about government result from efforts to provide a measure of equality.
*The Fifth Discipline * by Peter Senge. This is an organizational communication/psychology perspective of why organizations (not just government) behave how they do. It is good for providing a framework for understanding the needs of various stakeholders and how they interact. It’s a somewhat longer book and I found it needed to be studied and applied to cases rather than just read to be understood. To use a US example, it could be used to show the power of various stakeholders and how that results in plans to build something like the “bridge to nowhere” in Alaska.
Another you might try, it’s not so brief and I’ve only read excerpts, is *Bureaucracy * by James Q. Wilson.
you might also check out W. Edwards Demming, “New economics” and or “Out of the Crisis”
while not specific to government they both deal with the subject you are talking about (and the both pretty much go together, I would start with New Economics and if that is something you are interested in then grab Out of the Crisis)
they deal with they many ways business and government screw things up while trying to do the right thing in a state of ignorance.
Check out Parliament of Whores by P.J. O’Rourke - he points out that Americans have the government they asked for.