Senior government executives make many decisions, not-infrequently difficult ones. Cognitive limitations and biases preclude individuals from making fully value-maximizing choices. And the “groupthink” tradition has highlighted ways group-aided decision-making can fail to live up to its...

The literature on the use of performance measurement in government has featured prominent attention to hypothesized unintended dysfunctional consequences such measurement may produce. We conceptualize these dysfunctional consequences as involving either effort substitution (reducing effort on...

We analyze a model in which incentives in one period on one task can affect output more broadly through learning. If agents can invest in human or organizational capital, then output will increase both before and after short-term incentives. We develop a model of these effects, and then we...

Over the last decade there has been a dramatic expansion in use of performance measurement and performance management in government - using measures as a tool to improve performance along dimensions measured. Using this potentially powerful tool to try to remedy underperformance in government,...

The need for government organizations to change how they work is a major theme among practitioners and observers of government, discussed informally and repeated constantly at conferences for practitioners. The need for organizational change is also a preoccupying theme in the business world....

After the 2014 uprising against widespread corruption under former Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych, a group of civic activists and data experts decided to overhaul government procurement. Their efforts produced an open-source e-procurement system, ProZorro (“transparency” in...

How are senior government executives who attempt to execute an ambitious vision requiring significant strategic change in their organizations able to succeed? How do they go about formulating a strategy in the first place? What managerial and leadership techniques do they use to execute their...

Compared with other societies, the United States makes unusually extensive use of adversary institutions for resolving public conflicts-that is, institutions where the job of advocates is to present for a third party the strongest possible case for their own point of view and where...