Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses the effectiveness of governmental and nonprofit entities. The main purpose is to learn from actual failure and success stories why public-management principles and practices are important. The book offers guidance about how to improve public and nonprofit management. It presents the standard public-management and organizational-behavior texts to identify principal managerial functions and concepts. The functions selected for discussion are performance management, financial management, human-resource management, procurement management, policymaking, capital management, and information-technology management. The organizational concepts discussed are organizational structure and organizational culture. The book aims to teach students and practitioners best management practices by example. To summarize, the 100 failure stories are cautionary tales. Some failures could have been easily prevented. The book examines how failures happened, how they could have been prevented, and how to replicate successes in other jurisdictions.