If you are in a state with a new governor, you may have
already heard news about restructuring, reorganizing, consolidating, privatizing
government. Reorganization happens in
large nonprofits and cities, too, but it is not quite as apparent. The problem with reorganizing, no matter what
word used is that there are few ways to measure success. Research doesn’t tell what
the best way to reorganize is.
Three reasons pop up for why your agency might be reorganizing
1) to improve efficiency, 2) to improve program effectiveness, 3) to serve a tactical
or symbolic end. Most reorganizations
profess to improve efficiency. We’d need
to measure costs now and after the reorganization takes place to know whether
that is true. The same is true of
program effectiveness. Did the reorganization
improve the ability of th agency to serve its clients? You may remember that Homeland Security was
created by merging agencies under this new umbrella. Is it doing better at preventing or halting
terrorism? Prevention by its very nature
is difficult to measure. The last one is
tactical. Agencies might be reorganized
to show that a new boss is taking an interest, wants work to be done
differently than in the past. This
reason may get a bad rap, but it’s not very different than the others since the
result is unlikely to be measured.
I’d say there is one more reason. It’s purely pragmatic. You’ve lost a crucial staff member; you’ve
lost a space to work or added a space. Two
communities near me are sharing a police chief and calls. It occurred after one
police chief left. Yes, it may improve efficiency
and effectiveness. It may save money in
the long run, but the time was right.
Here’s another purely pragmatic one, a urologist and an orthopedist sharing
an office. I bet that was
pragmatic. The schedules worked well
enough that they could share an AA, and office space was right.
