ABSTRACT
General managers face two basic challenges in leading and managing their public bureaus. They are expected to strive for both organizational efficiency and organizational effectiveness. Webster’s Third (1971, 725) defines efficiency as the “capacity to produce results with the minimum expenditure of energy, time, money, or materials” and effectiveness as “productive of results” (1971, 724). To achieve efficiencies, managers focus on doing things well. They attend to the internal organization and center their energies on routinizing, refining, formalizing, and elaborating on existing knowledge, and on making short-run improvements. “Efficiency thrives on focus, precision, repetition, analysis, sanity, discipline, and control” (March, 1995, 5). On the other hand, to achieve effectiveness, managers must be concerned with doing the right things. Knowing what to do typically comes from an understanding and interpretation of the external environment as it signals what ongoing adaptations are required in organizational technology, knowledge, strategy, and values. “Adaptation thrives on serendipity, experimentation, novelty, free association, madness, loose discipline, and relaxed control” (March, 1995, 5). 1
