Managing Organizational Retrenchament

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
This article presents a discussion of the preconditions necessary for managing a contraction. It examines the constraints operative in the public sector which exclude or limit the availability of the prerequisites for public managers to effectively manage retrenchment. Then it describes how a public organization without these prerequisites behaves under conditions of fiscal stress by using a multistage model of public sector contraction that includes several political dimensions as well as organizational factors. Several of the model's components are taken from the experience of New York City's government since its fiscal crisis of 1973-1974. The article concludes that retrenchment forces public organizations into a position of excessive oversight which stifles initiative and encourages errors. Therefore, over the long run, retrenchment may make public organizations even less effective and less capable of dealing with their problems.

This publication has 13 references indexed in Scilit: