Interest groups also often focus on the declaration of policy via the enactment of laws, in the effort to resolve long-standing policy debates in their favor by statute. If the statutory commitment of the state to a goal can be established in principle, implementation can come later. Commissioners get caught up in the game of policy innovation as a means of keeping abreast of changing demands and competing with their peers. Leadership in policy innovation outranks the straightforward tasks of managing the bureaucracy to achieve predictable outcomes: Leadership outside means influence inside. Entrepreneurs mobilize the constituents of programs as one method of galvanizing middle levels of the bureaucracy to be responsive to the top.
A more mundane kind of management is reflected in the way the best public managers understand the realities of the routine work of their fields. A police commissioner cannot be effective without personal knowledge of what police do to enforce the law and of what people expect them to do. A welfare commissioner must understand the tasks of caseworkers and the pressures in the lives of their clients. As Dilulio demonstrates, in order to meet minimum goals, a corrections commissioner must build an effective corps of prison guards with a sense of mission and a dedication to duty. Their dedication must hold fast despite great temptation to exploit their charges or to conspire with them. The development of such strong commitment counteracts a continuing external neglect and disparagement of the guards-a social force that undermines the very spirit essential for effective operation. This is management. The tools of budgeting, personnel records, and statistical analyses serve as instruments of efficiency, but they are no substitute for personal knowledge of the tasks of day-to-day work.
Those who staff the bureaucracy are very likely to be allied with internal coalitions that reflect the idealistic, multiple, and conflicting purposes of the outside world. Indeed, Lynn points out in his speech on welfare that, given a crisis-avoiding, incident-defusing commissioner, subordinates seeking action often leak information to selected advocates in order to politicize an issue and create an exigency that demands response. Being able to cope successfully with the turbulent environment also requires successful coping with the in-house procedural systems, personal talents, conflicting coalitions, and internal symbols on purpose, commitment, and unity. One way to accomplish this is to take advantage of the hard boundaries around the components of bureaucracy and their limited communication and permit the various internal coalitions to go their own way, within tolerable limits. It may be possible for different constituencies to be linked to different internal coalitions and remain satisfied, so long as the implicit conflicts do not explode. A manufacturer may stabilize production by buffering the core technical factory from a changing environment, but a commissioner cannot: He or she must cope with strong linkage between internal workers and external constituents.
Another minimalist strategy is to seek marginal advances in output in order to claim that things are steadily improving. Commissioners may design improvements for their staffs that will motivate the employees to cooperate with one another and with the commissioner. Service to the underserved or success in attaining a particularly difficult objective can merit extra rewards. But carrots and sticks are not enough by themselves to create unity and coherence in a bureaucracy. There is also what Phillip Selznick called infusing the organization with value by articulating purpose and mission in a way that gives meaning to bureaucratic tasks performed throughout the organization.20 Gary Miller revealed how rewarding organization members solely by their self-interest will not produce optimum effort on their part. Further, as cited previously, a number of scholars have challenged Mancur Olson's view that only the allocation of private goods provides incentive for collective action. They have shown that organizational commitment to a public good is sometimes sufficient and often necessary to maintain member support. Although a commission is not the kind of collective action organization those scholars had in mind, it requires the same type of contribution of time and effort from its members and supporting constituents. Both the commissioner and his or her followers must transcend self-interest to some extent, if long-term optimal goals are to be attained.
Accordingly, at some point, commissioners must shift from inducements aimed at short-term self-interest to appeals that develop commitment to the long-term good of the whole commission. One way to foster unity is to create an atmosphere of cooperation, dedication, and trust within the bureaucracy. Commissioners may keep alive a "community of memory" by stories of past group-sacrifices. Cooperation requires that someone make an initial trial contribution and risk being exploited-if the contribution is used but not reciprocated, for example. Commitment is strengthened by clear evidence that co-workers freely choose to reciprocate and do their part, when they could have taken advantage of an opportunity to exploit the preferred contributions of others. "Most people are willing to sacrifice as long as they are not the only ones sacrificing." Repeated stories of such possible advantages foregone for the sake of organizational effectiveness builds dedication and strengthens trust.
There are many other ways in which a community of memory is articulated besides stories of reciprocated cooperation: for example, displayed records of the group successes of the commission; histories of the transcending of internal conflicts by allegiance to the super ordinate goals of the commission; accounts of the actions of past heroes and heroines and their persistence, sacrifices, and extraordinary efforts in pursuing the ideals of the commission; elaborations of current awards to the commission; and celebrations of current successes. A focus on the ideals of public goods rather than on private accomplishments is particularly important to the inspiration of a community of memory. Individual effort is celebrated because the end is to provide valuable public goods equally available to all. Commitment of this sort also transcends short-term shifts in focal concerns and provides long-term resolve and persistent action congruent with the resolve. In accordance with P. Brickman's extended analysis, it is the very tension between the strength of the resolve and the inducements of short-term rewards that brings out a sense of integrity in the members of the commission. As members forego exploitative, short-term rewards in the interest of their exceptionally worthy, long-term goals, their sense of integrity is affirmed. On the other hand, as the members grow rich on short-term rewards, their resolve erodes. Both phenomena are common enough.
The commissioner in an impossible job may reduce his or her vulnerability by choosing actions that maintain the long-term guiding myths of the commission (even weak myths) and also address the ever-changing, short-term focal concerns of the constituencies. In the course of mobilizing constituents to raise funds, the commissioner may dramatize true success stories to stimulate compassion and respect for the courage and persistence of his or her clients in overcoming their plight, as well as to activate the eternal human hope that even irresponsible, intractable people can be changed and induced to take action to overcome their situation.
