Mission Driven Bureaucrats: Empowering People to Help Government Do Better

This book argues that the performance of our governments can be transformed by managing bureaucrats for their empowerment rather than compliance. Aimed at public sector workers, leaders, academics, and citizens alike, it contends that public sectors too often rely on a managerial approach which seeks to tightly monitor and control employees, and thus demotivates and repels the mission motivated. Mission Driven Bureaucrats suggests that better performance can in many cases come from a more empowerment-oriented managerial approach, which allows autonomy, cultivates feelings of competence, and creates connection to peers and purpose. This enables the mission motivated to thrive.

Arguing against conventional wisdom, Honig asserts that compliance often thwarts public value and that we can often get less corruption and malfeasance with less monitoring. He provides a handbook of strategies for managers to introduce empowerment-oriented strategies into their agency and describes what everyday citizens can do to support the empowerment of bureaucrats in their governments. Interspersed throughout this book are featured profiles of real-life mission driven bureaucrats, who exemplify the dedication and motivation which is typical of many civil servants. Drawing on original empirical data from several countries and the prior work of other scholars from around the globe, Mission Driven Bureaucrats argues that empowerment-oriented management will cultivate, support, attract, and retain mission driven bureaucrats and should have a larger place in our thinking and practice.

Dan Honig is an associate professor at Georgetown University McCourt School & University College London School of Public Policy, where his work focuses on the organizational bits of government’s role in enhancing citizens’ welfare--particularly management practice, organizational structure, and relations between citizens and the state. Amongst other affiliations he’s a non-resident fellow at the Center for Global Development; a fellow of Harvard’s Building State Capability Program; and an affiliate of Johns Hopkins’ SNF Agora Institute. He has been included in lists of the 100 most influential academics in government and 50 most influential researchers shaping 21st century politicians.