ABSTRACT
The increasing complexity of public problems is followed by increasingly complex governmental responses. Dynamic humanitarian disasters—Hurricane Katrina, the Southeast Asian tsunami, and even domestic terrorist attacks—test the skills of public administrators to work outside of traditional organizational boundaries. While the fact that such momentous events require unique responses is not surprising, public problems once considered to be traditional are now appreciated for their complex and dynamic nature. Issues of local economic development, education, and public safety require new tools in order to be solved. Both administrators and policy makers are increasingly turning to network forms of governance versus responses by hierarchical organization. The question that practitioners and theorists face is how to lead a networked organization specifically designed to cut across rule-bound hierarchies. How can administrators craft new rules of the game to address public problems that could not be answered by hierarchies?
