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This chapter examines a ten-year effort to reform the furniture manufacturing sector of Cyprus, according to the industrial model of flexible specialization. The reform initiative involved the setting up of information services and the development of information systems to strengthen the management of the furniture manufacturing SMEs and their consortia. However, little innovation took place and the whole reform experiment was abandoned in the mid-1990s. The analysis of the case examines how the theory of flexible specialization considered information systems innovation as a prerequisite of good management. It is argued that management and formal information processing and communication were alien and threatening to the owners of the small production firms, whose life values and entrepreneurial competencies could not be stretched to enable the promotion of export-oriented business.

This chapter studies the efforts of Pemex, the Mexican oil corporation, to develop effective information systems over the past four decades. The information systems innovation processes are discussed in association with the broader struggles for reform in Pemex. To make sense of the significance attached to information systems innovation in the organization, the difficulties faced, and controversies that arise, this case study describes the links of Pemex with its national context, the international oil industry, and the international financial and political institutions. The analysis shows that the information systems innovation efforts in this company have reflected the struggle over its complex role: simultaneously an actor in a competitive market and the most significant asset for the country’s socio-economic development. Information systems innovation, aligned with the managerial efforts which increasingly saw the company as a free-market-driven business organization, was often in conflict with the powerful alternative rationality of its national role.

This chapter begins with a discussion of decline in British Rail's financial performance between 1974 and 1979. It then discusses the impetus for organizational reform, the new organization of 1977, the subsidiary businesses, British Rail's strained relationship with the government, and the white paper on Nationalized Industries of March 1978.

This chapter establishes considerable movement in the expansion of the leadership selectorate in recent decades. At the starting point of this study (1965), the large majority of parties restricted participation in the leadership choice to their parliamentarians. Today this is true in a decreasing minority of parties. Many now either share the authority between their parliamentary and grassroots members or select their leaders through a membership plebiscite. This is particularly the case for parties in Canada, Ireland, and the United Kingdom. Several factors are identified as explaining when and why parties expand their leadership selectorate. This chapter also notes that there has been less change in this regard in parties in Australia and New Zealand where the leadership franchise remains typically restricted to parliamentarians. Institutional arrangements such as the electoral system and the length of the parliamentary cycle are identified as reasons for this difference.

This chapter discusses the book’s main themes. The book is intended to contribute to the literature on change in general and organizational reform in particular. It is also intended as a contribution to the discussion within the so-called institutional analysis of how and why certain organizational forms are adopted by organizations in a variety of fields and in geographically dispersed areas. This book is based on numerous empirical studies of reforms in companies and in public administration. In addition, it relies upon an extensive literature on public sector reform that has evolved since the 1980s and has produced a great deal of empirical data that speak to the more general literature on reforms. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

This chapter argues that organizational reforms are driven by problems to be addressed, by solutions to be applied, and by forgetfulness. The greater the supply of any of these factors, the more likely it is that reforms will occur. Without problems, reforms are difficult to justify; without solutions they cannot be formulated; and without forgetfulness there is a risk that people will be discouraged by the fact that similar reforms have been tried and have failed in the past. In contemporary large organizations, problems tend to be easily found. Those interested in selling solutions often try to supply problems as well — problems that can be solved by their solutions. Forgetfulness can be promoted by the use of consultants with limited experience of the implementation and long-term effects of reforms. Reforms are also self-referential; they tend to cause new reforms. Thus, reforms can be considered as routines: they are likely to be repeated over and over again.

This chapter elucidates the considerable restructuring, streamlining, and change in the People's Liberation Army (PLA) in recent years. This process has not been easy, as it has resulted in the forced retirement of large numbers of officers and the demobilization of approximately one-third of the PLA rank and file. Significant organizational and financial interests have also been infringed upon, as the general headquarters have been revamped and the PLA has been forced to divest itself of its commercial interests. Meanwhile, the geographic purview of military regions has been expanded, while the structure of the ground forces is shrinking from divisions to brigades. Professional military education has been enhanced, and the reserves, militia, and paramilitary People's Armed Police have been expanded. The organizational reform of the PLA is a work in progress. To be sure, it has had its jarring effects, mainly because so many reforms are being implemented simultaneously.

The essential idea behind organizational reform is that reformers are powerful — that they can freely choose and create new forms that improve operations and lead to better results. Drawing on observations in previous chapters, this chapter examines the extent to which this idea is a realistic one. It begins by examining the assumption of the reformers’ power over organizational forms and operations, discussing the causes of reforms, their contents, and their consequences. It then considers the role of reforms in image building, and questions the assumption that reforms are primarily a matter of change. It is argued that reformers have limited power in reform processes. Reforms are initiated by other processes than by the intervention of reformers. The content of reforms is decided by institutionalized belief systems and by standards produced by external experts rather than by reformers.

This chapter discusses the social construction of organizations and the way in which this is influenced by the theoretical concept of organization. It considers examples from recent publicsector reforms in several European countries, including Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, and Sweden, as well as in Australia and New Zealand. Constructing organizations involves the setting up or changing of entities in such a way that they come to resemble the general and abstract concept of organization. It is argued that traditional public services in many countries have lacked some of the key aspects of organization. They can be described, at the most, as conspicuously ‘incomplete’ organizations.

This chapter considers whether the findings thus far have applicability outside the Westminster cases. Specifically, this chapter reviews the available evidence on who selects party leaders in two non-Westminster countries with very different institutional arrangements: Belgium and the United States. In both cases, one a consociational democracy and the other a presidential system, a similar expansion of the leadership selectorate is found. In fact, parties in both countries are found to have moved earlier and further in this regard than have the Westminster parties. Notwithstanding this, similar patterns are found across these systems suggesting that the findings in the earlier chapters may largely be generalizable beyond the five countries examined.

Complementing Chapter three, this chapter moves on from the increasingly professional ethos that characterized those who chose to forge their careers in NGOs, and looks to the organizational reforms that supported this change. Exemplified by the dramatic expansion of the environmental sector at the end of the 1980s, this process was characterized by the focused, professional pursuit of fundraising, marketing and advertising, reaching a point whereby NGOs have themselves become products that people support However, by taking a path of direct-mail recruitment, corporate sponsorship, and mass-market appeal, NGOs have ended up—in organizational terms—looking very similar to their peers in the corporate world.

This chapter describes what happened to the positive cases in this study over the longer term. By examining the outcomes observed in the selected cases, the chapter sheds some speculative light on whether the bureaucratic ethos can survive the departure of the niche founder, and sketches a range of possible outcomes for whether niches can scale up or possibly even diffuse more broadly. However, because the cases studied so far in this work have been selected instead of being randomly sampled, they cannot definitively show what will happen or even what is likely to happen as pockets of effectiveness within the state mature. They do however, sketch a range of future outcomes that are possible, laying a foundation for future research to analyze the conditions under which particular long-term outcomes do or do not emerge. The cases collectively illuminate some of the promise and pitfalls of interstitiality as a force for organizational reform more broadly throughout the state.

This chapter continues to analyze the relationship between decision and action using a case study on Swedish Rail (Statens Järnvägar, SJ). In February 1987, the board of directors of SJ met to consider a plan drawn up by an international consultancy company to implement a radical reform, the ‘New SJ’. The basic idea was to make the company more businesslike. SJ was to be run as a company and not as a government service, and its corporate aim was to be a profitable business. The chapter addresses the question of why reforms may be difficult to implement. It suggests that there are certain fundamental and common characteristics of administrative reforms which make them difficult to implement by nature.

This chapter discusses the difference between beliefs and practice within institutions, and investigates the effects of this difference on the frequency of reforms. It argues that even when beliefs are poor descriptions of practice, they can still have important, although more indirect, practical effects. One such effect is the production of reforms. This thesis is illustrated by referring to institutionalized beliefs about the organizations, comparing it with the institutions of the market and the individual. It highlights three effects of institutional beliefs: their effect on responsibility allocation, on legitimacy, and on reform. Differences between beliefs about organizations and beliefs about markets lead to differences in the way responsibility is allocated within these institutions.

This chapter describes the significance of regional variation in the analysis of the rural economy’s soundness and the influences of organizational and policy reforms to micro-level participants such as individuals, households, production groups, and small communities. The transfer of collective properties to private enterprises, as well as the increasing role of township and village governments in the community’s rural development, is also included. With the heterogeneous characteristic of the local inhabitants of China, no domestic research can completely stand for the country in order to generalize results. But the author provides the representativeness and scope of the volume’s main case: the northern town of Hebei, Dahe. Here, regional variation can be measured through economic differentiation varying in regions, sub regions, and provinces.

This chapter provides some examples of ‘mechanisms of hope’ that prevent people from relinquishing their ideals — that keep them hopeful and encourage them to continue reforming even when they experience great difficulty in implementing their reforms. Mechanisms of hope are necessary ingredients in a world in which we are expected to believe in lofty ideas, in a world in which practical experience is not allowed to play an overly important role in forming our ideas, and where we are able to try repeatedly to reform our practice to conform with these ideas, even if such reforms constantly fail. In short, hope is a fundamental, cultural factor in explaining the production and reproduction of reform.

This chapter examines the reform of the Council of Europe. It suggests that the reform process should be able to address a number of generic and administrative issues, including its visibility and its specific niche or identity. It contends that the administrative side of the reform should include consolidation of existing structures and procedures to be able to address increasing challenges placed on regional organizations.