Pragmatism and Reorganization

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.