ABSTRACT
In this fast-paced era of connectivity, social networks, organized boundary spanning, and rapid innovation, what will happen to the modern form of organizing public programs so familiar to all of us, bureaucratic or hierarchical structure? Will it be structurally displaced by post-modern flexible and permeable variations Clegg 1990: 181)? Will hierarchies succumb in public influence to the push of collaborative structures such as networks and partnerships (McGuire and Agranoff 2010)? Will the public movement toward externalization, for example in complex contracting for direct services (Brown et al. 2009), reduce the role of public agencies to mere pass-throughs? Clearly no one knows the precise future of public organization structure (Fernandez and Rainey 2006). One certainty, however, is that bureaucratic structure is unlikely to completely disappear, as is its hierarchical apparatus. Indeed, as Radin (2012: 41) observes, ‘too many US public management scholars and practitioners have failed to appreciate the importance of structure in determining how management reform efforts have played out.’
