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Here is a new conceptual framework for organizational learning (OL) that applies to both planned reform and emergent change. It integrates strategic and operational, micro and macro perspectives. It has three parts: (a) a revised definition and typology of OL, (b) seven reform stories that define stages and tasks, (c) a management and assessment guide demarcating four areas of OL: (i) action learning within core operations; (ii) sharing learning and innovations across the organization; (iii) mission/s-beyond ambidexterity; (iv) integration-managing mission conflicts and other paradoxes, which ensure endogenous change. Dynamic capability is therefore intrinsic to this view of OL that is illustrated from two cases: NYPD and public school reforms.

Teacher education reform in the United States has been an ongoing theme over the past 100 years, particularly since A Nation at Risk in the 1980s, when education became increasingly politicized and less of a public good with which the American public did not tinker. These reforms have four different themes: (1) strengthening the clinical component of teacher education, (2) preparing educators with the tools needed for equity and social justice, (3) participating in heightened accountability demands, and (4) expanding alternative certification. This chapter explores these four strands of reform and concludes they are colliding forces in which the country pours time, resources, and energy. Ongoing collisions on the reform landscape produce increasingly negative consequences for teacher education, teacher recruitment, and retention and America's public schools.

Increased life expectancies and decreased birthrates have placed enormous financial pressure on the Social Security system. Because significant reforms are needed to ensure its financial solvency, our study examines the acceptability of proposals to reform the system. Given the potentially divergent views suggested by prior research, we selected participants from the following four groups (1) younger black taxpayers, (2) younger white taxpayers, (3) older black taxpayers, and (4) older white taxpayers. While there was agreement among the groups on several of the proposals, in general, the differences between the generations were more pronounced than the differences between the racial groups.

The purpose of this chapter is to develop a model of union reform that may help to revitalize the labor movement. Our model presents a path using democracy and militancy to overcome union oligarchy to build stronger unions and a stronger broader movement. We develop a new model of union revitalization by expanding the Voss and Sherman (2000) model from our own experiences and a review of past union revitalization efforts. Democratic and militant strategies are a key to successful reform efforts. Entrenched union leaders tend to oppose such efforts. Reformers must adequately overcome entrenched leader responses to succeed in reforming their unions. We have developed a new conceptual model of union revitalization. Our model should be tested further through in-depth case studies and analysis of reform efforts which have failed or succeeded. Our model presents strategies and tactics for labor activists to revitalize their unions and the labor movement. We present a new model of union revitalization that looks at both internal and external union revitalization. This chapter accumulates evidence across reform efforts throughout the modern history of unions. This comparative and contrasting analysis of the evidence from these efforts is a unique contribution to the field. Further, the resulting model from this review presents a unique focus on the strategies and tactics of reform efforts as well as the interaction between union reform efforts and entrenched leaders. This model provides a path for both future research and practical revitalization efforts.

In this chapter, we describe the formal features of recent reforms in Thailand's public administration. While it remains premature to attempt definitive assessments of the impact of those reforms, we deduce grounds for concern. In particular, we suggest that successful public management reforms must rest on a reasonable degree of congruence between the reforms' implicit assumptions on the one hand and Thai political and social conditions on the other. And we suggest that such a match is not evident in the case of Thailand's most recent administrative reforms.

The 2001 Russian tax reform reduced average tax rates for the personal income tax and the payroll or social tax. It also made the tax structure more regressive. Because individuals in the lower income bracket were for the most part not affected, it is possible to estimate the effects of the reform using a differences-in-differences approach. I study the effect of the reform on informal employment. Informality is defined using information on employment registration and self-employment. Applying parametric and semi-parametric techniques, I find evidence that the tax reform led to a significant reduction in the fraction of informal employees. Among the different forms of informality I study, the reform seems to have had the strongest effect on the prevalence of informal irregular activities. I also document stronger effects on individuals who benefited from the largest reductions in tax rates. The strong response to the tax reform is consistent with the emerging consensus in the literature on taxation that changes to the tax system lead to significant behavioral responses, although not necessarily in the form of a reduced labor supply.

Japan has had four periods of public sector reform since World War II. This chapter discusses the leadership for reform during the occupation period, the high economic growth period, the low economic growth period and the search for a ‘new’ Japan under various present difficulties. Reforms reflect the priorities of the time and interests of prime ministers, whose style of functioning also affects how public sector reforms are advanced. During the occupation period, the Administrative Management Agency was established in the Prime Minister’s Office and was responsible for the overall management of national government organizations. It was staffed by civil servants who were experts in their areas. Since the 1980s, furthering privatization, deregulation and reorganization, advisory councils for the prime minister were also used, involving influential business leaders and scholars.

This chapter shows that political leadership, especially that of the prime minister and minister in charge of administrative reform, is important in deciding on highly political issues, to persuade or direct politicians and administrators to follow the leadership, to inspire and get the support of the general public and to ensure the support or acceptance of those concerned. Where prime ministers are not directly involved, leadership is provided by professional administrators under the general support of the prime minister and the minister responsible for administrative reforms. It is also pointed out that reform sustainability occurs through institutionalization, incentives, management and producing meaningful results.

In the decades following Chile's 1990 return to democracy, successive governments adopted pioneering reforms aimed at modernizing the state and strengthening democratic governance. This chapter discusses the major developments within Chile's public sector since 1990, with an emphasis on reforms affecting the civil service and public sector management. The politics of the reform process was notable for successful consensus building and led to a more meritocratic, professionally managed public employment system. This chapter also provides an overview of initiatives to strengthen accountability through greater transparency and citizen participation in government, as well as the major public sector management reforms adopted during the last three decades.

This paper argues that structural and institutional reforms imposed by the military regime and accepted by the Concertación impose substantial impediments to collective action among Chile's popular sectors. In particular, labor market and social welfare policies exacerbate social stratification, deprive the public of vital resources, reinforce workers’ vulnerability to market forces and undermine social trust. These dynamics and the state structures that perpetuate them indicate the state's role in either facilitating or impeding collective action among subordinate segments of the population. They further suggest the negative impact neoliberalism has on the quality of democracy by constraining popular participation.