Bill's Notebook

As the first decade of the 21st Century ends, I hope that the economic events of the last thirty-five years finally loosen the hold that neoclassical economics has on public policy.  It is widely recognized that the accepted economic models that governments use to shape policy are just not empirically valid.  Today’s economies are vastly different from the industrial revolution economies that shaped neoclassical economic theory.  Yet, these theories are the basis for setting interest rates, regulating the stock market, determining the level of environmental protection, almost every aspect of government regulation (Smith 2010, p. 65).  It is time to modernize the economic theories that are used to guide government and economic policies.

The case against neoclassical economics has been growing in recent years.  As Yves Smith (2010) details in her book:
1)  Economics is not a real science because it is difficult to do the empirical evidence to validate the models economist develop from their assumptions (pp. 20-21).
2)  Many of the core assumptions of neoclassicism (people are totally rational, have complete information, only act to maximize utility, etc.) have been disproved by experiments in behavioral economics (pp. 94-97).
3)  Despite the fact that they are working with faulty assumptions, economists claim that the implications derived from the assumptions are still valid because they are good approximations of reality (p. 41 and pp. 47-48).
4)  Hard sciences also use simplified models to explain phenomena but the crucial difference is that economists add unrealistic properties to validate their models.  For example, economists add the property of perfect information to make supply and demand models work (pp. 48-49).

Some economists counter by admitting that neoclassical economics has these problems but the cure is to do more empirical research.  But with more empirical research, the neoclassical assumptions are giving way to a new economic theory – complexity economics.

Eric Beinhocker (2007) surveys the rise of complexity economics in which researchers apply complexity and network theory concepts to economic activities.  The main advantage of complexity economics is that its assumptions can be empirically validated and that its findings apply to modern economic phenomena.  Thus, this is a better basis upon which to base policy decisions.

Beinhocker’s  (2007) core argument is easy to understand.  Businesses use a mixture (business plan) of physical technologies and social technologies to compete with other businesses.  The businesses that have more fit business plans out-compete businesses with less-fit business plans.  Based on this model Beinhocker details several implications for policy makers:
1)  The role of markets is to process the immense amount of information from buyers and sellers into the most coordinated and effective manner while also determining how fit a business is.  Thus free and open markets must be maintained by regulations that do not impede the flow of information available to all parties (p. 423).
2)  Government’s role is to provide and preserve the vast array of social technologies that make it possible for businesses and markets to exist.  Social technologies such as contract law, antitrust enforcement, and securities regulation (p. 425).  Therefore, government plays an important role in shaping the fitness determination role of markets (pp. 426-427).
3)  Behavioral economics indicates what kind of social programs will be more readily accepted and politically-supported.  People will support aid programs that have strong reciprocity – programs designed to help people become functionally independent (pp. 418-421).
4)  Countries that score higher on measures of societal trust also have higher economic performance than countries with lower societal trust scores (pp. 432-433).  Thus, an important role for American government is to build up social capital in the U.S. (pp. 439-440).

As the above demonstrates, government has a vital role in preserving and strengthening the U.S. economy.  The argument of neoclassical economics that government should have little or no role in market economies is a false one and has led to extreme reactions from the Left and the Right.  With a clearer understanding of government’s actual role in the U.S. economy policy makers can craft effective policies that preserve the best features of the market system while building up the necessary social capital to strengthen the economy and serve the U.S. people.  We just need to move beyond the false answers given by neoclassical economics to the insights of complexity economics.

References:
Beinhocker, E.D. (2007). The origin of wealth: The radical remaking of economics and what it means for business and society. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Press.

Smith, Y. (2010). Econned: How unenlightened self interest undermined democracy and corrupted capitialism. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.

Further Reading:
Berreby, D. (2005). Us & Them: The science of identity. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Cassidy, J. (2009). How markets fail: The logic of economic calamities. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.

Lehrer, J. (2009). How we decide. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Pfaff, D.W. (2007). The neuroscience of fair play: Why we usually follow the golden rule. New York: Dana Press.

Schelling, T.C. (2006). Micromotives and macrobehaviors. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

Shermer, M. (2008). The mind of the market: Compassionate apes, competitive humans, and other tales from evolutionary economics. New York: Times Books.

Stiglitz, J.E. (2010). Freefall: America, free markets, and the sinking of the world economy. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

Thaler, R.H., & Sunstein, C.R. (2009). Nudge: Improving decisions about health, wealth, and happiness. New York: Penguin Books.

Ubel, P.A. (2009). Free-market madness: Why human nature is at odds with economics – and why it matters. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Press.

A book that I constantly recommend is Beinhocker’s The Origin of Wealth for two reasons. First, Beinhocker demonstrates how traditional economics is inadequate for explaining today’s economic systems. Second, he introduces complexity economics which is still developing but does a much better job in describing how real-world economies work and how people behave economically. To illustrate, let me give a simplified description of his core theory.

You start with a business plan. A business plan is a description of how you will meld physical technologies and social technologies to create a business that competes in an economy. Physical technologies (PT) are “methods and designs for transforming matter, energy, and information from one state into another in pursuit of a goal or goals.” Social technologies (ST) are the “methods and designs for organizing people in pursuit of a goal or goals.” Your business then competes with other businesses on the economic fitness landscape.

The best way to think of a fitness landscape is to imagine a square piece of land with hills and valleys. Businesses want to climb as high as they can on the highest hills because the higher you are up on a fitness landscape the more successful you are. Conversely, if you are in a deep valley you are failing in being fit on that landscape. Various factors determine fitness such as profitability, customer relations, and so on.

So, what does this have to do with Gov 2.0 or government in general? Replace business plan with plan and business with either project or program. You still have PT and ST but instead of building a business to compete on an economic fitness landscape, you are building a project or program to compete in government agency fitness landscape or policy area fitness landscape. This may seem rather abstract but this new perspective helps to consider fundamental questions about your Gov 2.0 project.

1. What are the factors that determine fitness in your landscape? Is it citizen engagement, cost-efficiency, and ease of implementation? Or is it increased collaboration and knowledge generation? Understanding what constitutes success will help to determine what the goal or goals should be for your Gov 2.0 project.
2. What PT an ST will the project need? How will these technologies blend together? Are there barriers to a good blending? Will the proposed blend fulfill the fitness factors more effectively than other blends?
3. How do I know if the Gov 2.0 project is climbing hills in the fitness landscape? How do I find the highest peaks in the fitness landscape and keep the Gov 2.0 project from being stranded on a smaller peak? How do I keep the Gov 2.0 project out of the valleys?
4. What do I do if the fitness landscape shifts? How do I determine when the fitness landscape shifts and what can I do to move the Gov 2.0 project so it stays on the peaks?

Another concept from Beinhocker that is also useful to government agencies is the idea of social architecture. Social architecture determines how adaptable an organization is and is composed of three factors:
1. Behaviors of individuals in the organization (Mental Models)
2. Structures and processes that align people and resources in pursuit of the organization’s goals.
3. The emergent culture that arises from people’s interactions with each other and their environment.
A robust social architecture gives the organization better abilities to determine the shifts in the fitness landscape and to better adapt to the shifts.

The advantages of the fitness landscape perspective is that it starts the dialogue on what the goals of the the Gov 2.0 project are and how the current environment will help or hinder reaching those goals. It also requires an honest assessment of the agency’s abilities to understand their current environment and to adapt when the environment changes. Beinhocker’s book is dense with ideas but he writes in a approachable style and his last chapter is especially vital in understanding government’s role in complexity economics.

Reference:

Beinhocker, E.D. (2006). The origin of wealth: The radical remaking of economics and what it means for business and society. Boston: Harvard Business Press.

Take a moment and look around your personal office space. Now look at your computer and notice what your desktop icons are and what programs you have open. According to Richard Ogle, the books, documents, computer programs, and other work aids are parts of our extended mind. We create documents, spreadsheets, whatever to offload our intellectual task load so that we can function better in our tasks.

In doing so we have made our tools more intelligent so that they could do some thinking on their own. Think of a spreadsheet you created. Building it took concentrated intellectual effort on your part. But now, you just open the spreadsheet, enter a few numbers, and it does the thinking for you. The spreadsheet has embedded intelligence. Embedded intelligence can also exist in organizational procedures, processes, documents, and even culture. Put enough of these embedded intelligences together and you have an Idea Space.

So what does this have to do with innovation? It is through exploring different Idea Spaces and using analogical thinking that many innovation breakthroughs were achieved. Ogle gives the example of Frances and Crick’s discovery of the structure of DNA. Frances and Crick succeeded where other researchers failed because they were able to apply concepts from other fields and applied it to their problem. Instead of analytical thinking where they reduced the problem to its component parts they used analogies to view their problem from different perspectives and discover a solution.

This happens all of the time. You are working on a problem and then you think of something similar you did on another project. You apply the solution you created before and, with a little tinkering, it works just as well for the new problem. Real innovation occurs when you can apply a seemingly dissimilar analogy and make a truly creative breakthrough.

What all this means for you and your agency is that Idea Spaces follow the common laws of networks. Richard Ogle posits nine such laws such as the “fit get fitter” and “tipping points.” These laws boil down to two: Idea Spaces self-organize into networks and creative leaps occur by connecting Idea Spaces through analogical thinking.

Go look at your colleagues offices. What is their extended mind like? Think of your agency procedures and practices. What Idea Spaces exist there? How would you characterize the network of Idea Spaces? Is it easy to navigate? Can your apply analogical thinking from your colleagues’ Idea Spaces? What barriers exist in agency policies that prevent navigation and analogical thinking?

Nick Charney wrote in a recent blog posting about what is the goal of collaboration. He is correct in that just getting together to talk is not enough. I suggest that the goal of collaboration is to share our Idea Spaces and help others navigate the Idea Spaces so that we can apply analogical thinking to solve our collective problems. We should map our Idea Spaces, help the network of Idea Spaces grow, and clear away the underbrush and barriers to navigation. That is the return on investing in collaboration.

This is why Gov 2.0 and Open Gov are so important. They are not ends in themselves but they make the Idea Spaces network stronger and easier to navigate because the Gov 2.0 tools make it easier to embed intelligence while Open Gov encourages more collaboration. As you go about your work try to see your agency as a collection of Idea Spaces. Is the network strong or does it need help? What barriers are preventing you from applying analogical thinking in your work? Can Gov 2.0 and Open Gov help your agency create a better Idea Spaces network?

Reference:

Ogle, R. (2007). Smart world: Breakthrough creativity and the new science of ideas. Harvard Business School Press.

Appendix A – Formal Definition of Idea Space: “a domain or world viewed from the perspective of the intelligence embedded in it, intelligence that we can use – consciously or not – both to solve our everyday problems and to make the creative leaps that lead to breakthrough” (p. 13).

I believe that the best argument made by Eggers and O’Leary in If We Can Put a Man on the Moon was the need for lawmakers to consider how their proposals will be implemented when the programs are passed to the agencies. I was thinking about this when I was visiting the Woodrow Wilson Center’s electronic archives for the (now defunct) Office of Technology Assessment.

For those not familiar with OTA, it was an agency that performed deep technical analysis of current science and technology topics. Founded in 1972, it produced reports on the impact of the supersonic transports, how to best prepare citizens for disasters, and the benefits of early childhood health programs. OTA provided objective and succinct guidance to Congress on technology issues until it was shut down in 1995. The science community has continually called for OTA’s reestablishment and in 2008, GAO was tasked with producing technical assessment reports.

This year, the Woodrow Wilson Center argued [PDF] for creating a network of nonpartisan organizations to provide objective technical assessments (Expert & Citizen Assessment of Science & Technology – ECAST Network). This is a great idea but I think it should be taken one step further: a nonpartisan network of scholars and practitioners to provide analysis and strategies for implementing major legislation.

Now, your first response is probably that we already have more than enough organizations that provide detailed advice on how to implement almost every bill before Congress. Very true but the problem with their advice is that it is often politically-motivated and rarely deals with the realities of how the agencies will make the programs work effectively and efficiently. Also, I’ve yet to see these proposals consider how their strategies will impact other program and government operations as a whole.

We have a unique community of practitioners and scholars from all levels of American government on GovLoop. I envision developing some type of online structure that could tap into the expertise and practical knowledge that this community possesses and channel it into implementation strategies for such topics like health care, emergency preparedness, and similar topics. We already have tools for collecting ideas, judging those ideas, and crowdsourcing innovations and best practices.

I’m just tossing this idea out there to see if anyone would be interested in discussing it further. I have a few concepts for next steps but I really want to just start the dialogue. This could also serve as a general conversation on creating virtual agencies and better citizen engagement through crowdsourcing (like Beth Noveck’s concepts in Wiki Government).

“Greetings, my friend. We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember, my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future.”
(From the opening of Plan Nine from Outer Space)

The idea for this posting came from a remark by a participant at the OpenGov Summit at NASA. It was a great event with some wonderful ideas for OpenGov and Gov 2.0. I was in a session where we discussed applying social network analysis to knowledge management when one person stated that agencies have to implement Gov 2.0 or it will be forced on them.

A rather provocative statement! I thought about this as I took the afternoon off to wander around the Air and Space Museum. Being a student of scenario planning, I thought of four scenarios where the government takes the lead in Gov 2.0 or misses the Gov 2.0 change. Now the idea behind scenario planning is not to predict the future but to use the scenarios to understand the potentials and challenges of current trends. A good example of this is Business 2.0’s 2006 scenarios concerning the future of Google.

I offer the following to set the stage for a discussion on Gov 2.0’s future. Please feel free to agree, disagree, or come up with your own scenario. We have some amazing thinkers out in the Gov 2.0 community and I am eager to hear your ideas so, please do respond!

First Scenario – SteamGov
Borrowing from the steampunk genre, this scenario describes a future where government attempts to implement Gov 2.0 but the rest of the world has already moved on to Web 3.0 or even Web 4.0. Government IT is still a generation behind the current technology available to citizens thus limiting the amount of engagement offered by the agencies. Large, centralized IT architectures dominate the agencies and employees are continually frustrated by the underpowered workstations they have to deal with especially when their own personal technology is much more powerful. There are small pockets of innovation and pilot projects but organizational cultures prevent scaling up these innovations to the agency as a whole.

Second Scenario – Google.Gov
Following a Supreme Court ruling that greatly narrows the definition of inherently governmental, almost all government functions are outsourced to the private and nonprofit sectors. A Google-like company consolidates most of the outsourcing contractors into one large contracting firm that applies the latest technology and business practices to delivering a diverse range of government services. The Executive Branch now consists of the White House staff and a larger GAO. The new GAO administers the megacontract that governs the quality and accountability of government services provided by the large contracting firm.

Third Scenario – LabGov
Still suffering under crushing budget constraints and frustrated by the continuing number of programs forced onto the states by the Federal government, state governments see Gov 2.0 as the way out of their fiscal mess. Fully living up to Justice Brandeis’ metaphor as “laboratories of democracy,” the various state governments experiment with the latest open-source technologies, agile project management, and any other IT or management innovations that promise greater efficiency at lower costs and higher citizen satisfaction. Citizens respond with enthusiasm and petition to have more federal programs (and funds) transferred to the states because they can manage services better, faster, and cheaper than the federal government. States form into regional and programmatic associations that shift the federal-state balance-of-power from the national government to regional governmental organizations (As an example, see Utah’s Laboratory of Democracy Act of 2010).

Fourth Scenario – InnoGov
In 2011 the civilian equivalent of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration is established. Its mandate is to be the project management office for Gov 2.0 and the office seeks out innovative Gov 2.0 projects, funds the development of these projects, and helps other agencies to copy the innovations. New radical management techniques are introduced and organizational cultures become more collaborative and innovative as a result. By 2014 the federal government is the leading innovator in IT and management practices and helps to revitalize the private and non-profit sectors with its technology/best practices transfer programs. Citizen engagement and trust in government begins to rise while the cost-savings and greater efficiencies bring about an era of budget surpluses.

What exactly is the nature of the Gov 2.0 challenge? This question was inspired by Andrew Krzmarzick’s post (“What Gov 2.0 Needs Now: Managers, Money and Models”) and Christina Morrison’s post (“What is Gov 2.0? A survey of Government IT pros”) on the recent GovLoop survey about Gov 2.0. As Andrew and Christina argued, the survey demonstrates many differing perspectives on Gov 2.0 in terms of what it actually means and how to implement Gov 2.0. To me, this suggests that Gov 2.0 is the classic wicked problem.

Wicked problems were originally an IT concept but it has spread to other fields as we confront more complex challenges. Definitions of wicked problems vary but the Rittel and Weber’s definition is the most cited:
“ 1. There is no definitive formulation of a wicked problem (defining wicked problems is a problem).
2. Wicked problems have no stopping rule.
3. Solutions to wicked problems are not true-or-false, but better or worse.
4. There is no immediate and no ultimate test of a solution to a wicked problem.
5. Every solution to a wicked problem is a “one-shot operation”; because there is no opportunity to learn by trial-and-error, every attempt counts significantly.
6. Wicked problems do not have an enumerable (or an exhaustively describable) set of potential solutions, nor is there a well-described set of permissible operations that may be incorporated into the plan.
7. Every wicked problem is essentially unique.
8. Every wicked problem can be considered to be a symptom of another problem.
9. The existence of a discrepancy representing a wicked problem can be explained in numerous ways. The choice of explanation determines the nature of the problem’s resolution.
10. The planner has no right to be wrong (planners are liable for the consequences of the actions they generate).”

Gov 2.0 seems to fit nine of the ten criteria (I have my doubts about point five) but I think the better definition is Conklin’s incorporation of social complexity into wicked problems because of the great number of stakeholders , the multitude of solutions, and the multiple perspectives of Gov 2.0. I believe Mark Drapeau’s diagram of Gov 2.0 best captures this complexity.

So, why should it matter if we determine that Gov 2.0 is a wicked problem? Well, once we know the kind of challenge we face, we can determine the best strategies to confront it. If Gov 2.0 were a tame problem then we know that our standard toolkit of problem solving methods and data analysis are adequate for creating solutions. The tame problem does not change as we attempt to analyze it and we can model the interactions as simple cause and effect relationships. The definition of a tame problem can be easily agreed to as also the solution.

But if we establish that Gov 2.0 is a wicked problem, then we know that even defining the problem will be difficult much less knowing what the solution will be. In fact, with most wicked problems, you don’t solve the problem as much as manage it (climate change is a good example of this). Much of the work is in building consensus among the stakeholders on the wicked problem and developing innovative methods to manage the problem. There is also a substantial amount of work in identifying and containing undesirable effects stemming from the management of the wicked problem.

In dealing with a wicked problem, we need collaboration across government organizations while helping to build up skills for innovation among the employees. Beinecke (2009) argues for a new type of leadership that is transformational rather than transactional. We also have to develop a new perspective on risk management as Krigsman (2010) argues in his article. The Australian Government has produced a great manual on how to deal with wicked problems in government management that is excellent guidance for current Gov 2.0 activities.

Establishing Gov 2.0 as a wicked problem may seem discouraging but the good news is that there is many tools to help us understand and manage wicked problems that emphasizes the benefits of our solutions while minimizing the undesired effects. It also confirms the need for more openness, collaboration, and innovation in government.

References:
Australian Government. (2007). Tackling Wicked Problems: A Public Policy Perspective. http://www.apsc.gov.au/publications07/wickedproblems.pdf

Beinecke, R.H. (2009). Introduction: Leadership for Wicked Problems. The Innovation Journal: The Public Sector Innovation Journal, 14:1. http://www.innovation.cc/scholarly-style/beinecke1.pdf

Conklin, J. (2008). Wicked Problems & Social Complexity. http://cognexus.org/wpf/wickedproblems.pdf

Drapeau, M. (May 24, 2010). What does Government 2.0 look like? http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/05/what-does-government-20-look-l.html

Krigsman, M. (May 7, 2010). ‘Wicked problems’: collaboration, risk, and failure. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/projectfailures/wicked-problems-collabora…

Science Daily. (December 5, 2007). Complex ‘Wicked’ Problems Better Solved Individually Than Through Internet Groups. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071130172937.htm

Wicked Problem. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem

Wicked Problems, May 2002. http://www.poppendieck.com/wicked.htm

I was going to post more about Process Intelligence and the Adaptive Project Framework last Monday but I was snowed under at work. Good thing because John Kamensky posted a great comment on President Obama’s Accountable Government Initiative. As I read the snapshots of the six initiatives, I was struck by how the success of each initiative depends on good project management and good business process management. There was a good discussion recently about the role technology plays in Gov 2.0 but I personally think the key to successful Gov 2.0 and OpenGov are the management methods. We need new methods for managing projects and for continuously improving Gov 2.0 processes.

Traditional project management is still useful. Thanks to TPM, the US Government built Trident submarines, nuclear aircraft carriers, and landed men on the Moon. Much of what made TPM so effective are the innovations pioneered by the Federal project managers such as Earned Value Management and Program Evaluation and Review Technique. But, for TPM to be effective, the goal and the solution must be known in advance and change must be minimized as much as possible.

In the Gov 2.0 reality, change is paramount and rapid while the goal may be well-defined but the solution to achieve the goal is often vague. Timelines are extremely short and so are resources and budgets. Using TPM to manage Gov 2.0 projects is just inviting failure (as the numerous examples in the IT Project Failures blog will attest). For Gov 2.0 and OpenGov to succeed we need new methods to manage these projects and their implementation. That is why I advocate the Adaptive Project Framework.

The APF was created by Dr. Robert Wysocki during his 40+ years as a project manager. He wanted a project management method that could better handle change and allowed for exploring a way to a solution while minimizing wasted time and resources. The best feature of APF is that the project scope is variable and that is what makes it perfect for Gov2.0 projects.

Scope in a project is what work needs to be done during the project (Project Scope) and what features the project product will have(Product Scope). In TPM, both Project Scope and Product Scope is fixed as early as possible. All planning, scheduling, and resource requirements are anchored to the scope and this is why change is so disruptive to the TPM project.

APF uses Cycle Plans and Cycle Builds to incorporate change into the project management process. In the initial planning, the project manager and project customer(s) create a high-level document that defines the project goal and conditions of satisfaction. Then a Requirements Breakdown Structure is built that captures the project product requirements at that time. A Cycle Plan is created that details what requirements will be created during the Cycle Build. The Cycle Build is time-boxed which means that it is a short duration (two weeks to a month).

During the Cycle Build you can have two streams of work. In one stream, some team members explore new features to include in the final project product while the other stream integrates proven features together into the product. As new ideas emerge they are added to the Scope Bank to be part of future Cycle Builds. Any features that are not completed within the Cycle Build are added to the next Cycle Plan. The Cycle Build can also be terminated early if the features are not working or if the current solution no longer fulfills the project goal.

To illustrate the difference, let’s use an example from recent events. Suppose you are working on a project to apply Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies to your agency website. You are halfway through the project when Google launches Google Instant. Then Twitter launches a redesigned search service. This requires a major change in your SEO strategies. Now what do you do?

Under TPM you could continue on with the project but your project product will be outdated and ineffective by the time you deliver it. Or you could cancel the TPM project and start all over again. You have wasted time and resources while incurring the additional costs of a new project. This will not look good on the IT Dashboard.

Under APF, the most you have to do is modify the Conditions of Satisfaction document and the Project Overview Statement. You can cancel the current Cycle Build and begin a new Cycle Plan to incorporate the new technologies and techniques into the final project product. Waste and loss of time are minimized while the current project can continue on toward the original goal but with an improved solution.

In my next posting, I will go into detail about Process Intelligence and how that can help address the issues raised by William Eggers and John O’Leary in If We Can Put a Man on the Moon… Getting Big Things Done in Government. I have also added two new pages devoted to collecting resources about Process Intelligence and Project Intelligence to my personal blog.

Nancy Dixon (author of one of the best books on communities of practice – CompanyCommand) has a great blog post about how NASA used conversation to capture knowledge gained from currently canceled Constellation program.  She describes how she helped NASA develop a knowledge capture strategy by working with NASA employees and other thought leaders in knowledge management.  Some excellent stuff here and I hope she formalizes the process into a book.

I’ve launched a new wiki based on my dissertation research. The purpose of the research was to examine a possible link between mental models, change visions, and organizational alignment.

As of 2006, there were over 1 million articles on organizational change and a multitude of change models in the literature. But, surprisingly, these change models were prescriptive rather than descriptive of actual change processes. I knew from my project management experience that most organizational change efforts fail or are only partly successful. What I wanted to do was develop a research method to collect empirical data on change efforts.

The entire dissertation is available on Scribd any you are welcome to download a copy. With the wiki, I have summarized the dissertation chapters and will update the research as new articles are published and I review other organizational change efforts.

I appreciate any comments or suggestions that any readers have and I am also looking for any agencies that are interested in being research subjects. Thank you.

“An examination by The New York Times highlights the chasm between the oil industry’s assertions about the reliability of its blowout preventers and a more complex reality. It reveals that the federal agency charged with regulating offshore drilling, the Minerals Management Service, repeatedly declined to act on advice from its own experts on how it could minimize the risk of a blind shear ram failure.”

This is going in my book on organizational failure.