Tomorrow's City Management: Guides for Avoiding Success-Becoming-Failure

Tomorrow's City Management: Guides for Avoiding Success-Becoming-FailureAuthor(s): Robert T. Golembiewski and Gerald GabrisSource: Public Administration Review, Vol. 55, No. 3 (May - Jun., 1995), pp. 240-246Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Society for Public AdministrationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3110242 .

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TomorrowsCityranagement: Guides for Avoiding Suces-Be onng-Failure

Robert T. Golembiewski, University of Georgia Gerald Gabris, Northern Illinois University

What can be done to reorient tomorrow's city management? Robert T Golembiewski and Gerald Gabris complete the work begun in the November/December 1994 issue ofPublic Admin- istration Review. It was in that issue that the companion piece to this article appeared. Titled 'Today's City Managers, "it has dual thrusts. It sketches several major ideas that led city managers to earlier successes, but which today and especially tomorrow are beside the point of emerging developments, if not roadblocks to them.

What can be done to reorient tomorrows city management? The authors suggest the following seven high-pri- ority remedies or palliatives for city managers. 1. an elaboration of a volatile and mixed politics/adminis-

tration zone, 2. a new blend of fact H value, 3. an emphasis on effectiveness as the guide for city man-

agement, along with a deemphasis on efficiency and economy,

4. a focus on continuous improvement as a guiding metaphor

5. various ways of enhancing the emphasis on the city management team,

6. greater regenerative interaction, and 7. a new balance in manager/council relations.

Toward Elaborating Politics/Administration Consider, first, retaining the conventional dichotomy

at each extreme, but with a kind of two-way intermediate zone. This refines such long-standing pronouncements as "the city manager's job is political" (Bosworth, 1958).

This intermediate politics/administration zone is seen as shifting and even mercurial, but nonetheless amenable to greater definition and specification that can lead to mutual learning and change-by city council as well as city management, or city manager and staff. As long-time city manager Mendonsa explains:

The problems and issues are much too complex and difficult for councils to work in the policy arenas without a fidi understanding of the administrative issues. More- over... the councils need and expect the advice, information, and assistance the manager can provide.... Equally important, many administrative issues are much too politically sensitive for the manager to proceed without keeping council fully informed. Much experience and theory motivate such expenditures of time and resources (Svara, 1988; Nalbandian, 1991).

Although few jurisdictions deliberately explore this intermediate zone, let us try to do a bit more. To illustrate, at least three kinds of things can be done to reframe council-manager relations, consistent with a more elabo- rated politics/administration mind picture. The sugges- tions deal with a new balance, and hence go far beyond conventional injunctions to be helpfully skillful (Ander- son, Newland, and Stillman, 1983; 66-69) or to manage appearances while doing the proscribed but unavoidable (Duggan, 1991).

240 Public Administration Review . MayJune 1995, Vol. 55, No. 3



Periodic Fine Tuning Some simple designs can help diagnose the fluid intermediate

zone, where continuous diagnosis is critical. Our favorite design involves the sharing of 3-dimensional images, in which pairs- such as city manager and council-separately develop lists of answers to three questions (Golembiewski, 1993; 318-323): 1. How do you see the (council or manager)? 2. How do you see yourself in relation to the (council or manager)? 3. How does the (council or manager) see you?

Periodic public sharing of these 3-D images, along with examples of the liked/disliked policy, idea, behavior or attitude, provide the raw material for contracting about the short-term character of the politics/administration intermediate zone. Operationally, participants then develop lists from the 3-D images of what they would like to see stopped, started, or con- tinued. Bargaining can proceed. What will one side stop, for example, to see a start by the other on some item? Formal documents often result.

The basic purpose is to make useful midcourse corrections, conveniently and regularly. Caught soon enough, such materials can result in greater clarity about jurisdictions and performance, improved working relationships, and other fine tunings.

This is not some nicety. City managers today operate in ter- ritories where real-time feedback is useful, if not critical. For example, "How aggressive [should a manager] be as a change- agent?" (Anderson, Newland, and Stillman, 1983; 68). Only local and often temporary approximations apply and, absent high-quality data, only the foolhardy will go very far, or very fast. Yet proactivity is precisely what is required. Newell (1993; 9) urges that '...the manager must not only discern the values of the community ... but also help to guide citizens toward values that benefit the entire community."

Unfortunately, materials in this intermediate zone are seldom shared, and especially in deliberate, public ways-as in periodic retreats, performance reviews, and so on. Normally, differences in perceptions or disagreements or dislikes may simmer, at times becoming 'news" that is bigger-than-life.

This lack of sharing is not inevitable. One city-manager client held such dearing-of-the-air sessions on community TV. And why not? Public management is at issue, after all. Viewer boredom was the major negative effect.

The 3-D design also helps increase regenerative interaction, which gets separate attention later. A detailed literature supports the usually favorable effects of such an easily implemented design (Golembiewski, 1993; 318-336).

Regular Performance Evaluation Much more formally, regular performance appraisals also can

help provide a bearer sense of the political geography in the intermediate politics/administration zone, as well as of mutual expectations and of how performance will be operationally esti- mated. Ideally, all major stakeholders should be involved, but

participants usually are limited to city council and city manager. Ideally, also, the environment should be regenerative and the guiding metaphor that of a "learning organization," about which more will be said later. In practice, the environment will be variably adversarial, but the probable benefits outweigh the costs, overall. Useful designs are straightforward, if on occasion emotionally arousing (Golembiewski and Kiepper, 1988; esp. 61-94).

The relevance of formalized performance evaluation has been recognized in the city management literature (Schwarz Becker, 1977) for straightforward reasons. As Wheeland explains (1993b; 60):

Clearly, open and frequent communication makes a team approach successful. A team approach seeks to manage conflict in order to use tension and disagreement creatively and constructively. The systematic performance evaluation of the manager by the council is one of the most important team-building techniques designed to facilitate better communication between council members and their manager.

Such rationales notwithstanding, the overall record seems underwhelming. Some progress has been made in implementing the idea, especially in larger jurisdictions (Wheeland, 1993b; esp. 61-62; Hopper, 1988). However, one close observer concludes (Wheeland, 1993b; 61): 'Although municipal managers widely use systematic performance evaluation as a tool to evaluate their employees, the traditional approach used by their councils to evaluate them has been haphazard, unstructured, and infor- mal....' We concur. Frequently, where evaluation is attempted, the technique dominates, in the form of simplistic rating scales. This awkwardly substitutes the form for the spirit of a learning community.

Straegic Planning Exercises At macro-levels, broadly participative strategic planning (SP)

or visioning exercises also can serve to provide context and content for the intermediate zone, with the rationale being obvious. At least major priorities can be set; this, in effect, provides a tem- plate for decision making; and one prime consequence involves the diminution of fixture role conflict via clearer values, mutually agreed upon.

From important points of view, the prescription for strategic planning and visioning is not controversial. Thus, strategic planning gets strong recommendations nowadays (Eadie, 1983). More significantly, numerous exemplars exist at many levels of complexity-from small units of local government (Gabris, 1992; Wheeland 1993a), to cities (Rutter, 1980; esp. 141-151), through worldwide applications (Golembiewski et at, 1992).

However, judging from the available literature as well as our own experience, strategic planning or visioning efforts usually are limited. Thus, even the best of the breed-like Calgary's view of its probable and possible fixtures-are not sufficiently related to the decision-making infrastructure. Moreover, strategic planning exercises are more likely to be housed in individual

Tomorrow's City Management: Guides for Avoiding Success-Becoming-Failure 241



departments of government than jurisdiction-wide (Poister and Streib, 1989), which obviously limits their reach-and-grasp. In addition, such exercises seldom are broadly participative, and this leaves stakeholders with a variable commitment to imple- mentation, which (of course) is where strategic planning lives or dies. Perhaps even more to the point, strategic planning and visioning labels often are attached to mere needs assessments, to bare prioritizations of policy alternatives, or (worst of all) to aggregations of departmental wish lists.

Toward Interaction of Fact Value In the deep structure of city management ideology, facts are

sharply separated from values. This was always procrustean, but it could and did work-ifpolitical elites were homogeneous and relatively inactive, if(as a consequence) large and stable areas of consensus existed, and if(derivatively) city manager's discretion was substantial and taken for granted. Those conditions tend not to exist today, and hence the sharp fact/value separation has decreasing value as guiding myth.

What we propose is a zone of interaction between fact and value, rather than of fact versus value. One sense of this mutual- ity has long been with us. Thus, a value may be considered a fact in elaborations of means/ends chains, or vice versa. Consider rules for purchasing, initially designed to serve squeaky clean values but which at a later date take on Gibraltar-like features as facts or givens that can waste the time and dollars they are intended to save. Later still, new values-prompt service versus precluding any hint of shenanigans, even at the cost of delay and service becoming control-may encourage less-cumbersome procedures (Barzelay, 1992).

More broadly, city management increasingly operates in a context of fact/value confusions or even transformations. Thus, a conventional means may suddenly come to be seen as having important and even profound relevance for some elite, especially a newly formed elite. Rounds of consensus seeking and fact/value clarification can be triggered even in once-stable areas of administration, especially when political regimes succeed one another.

Briefly, this fact/value zone of interaction seems likely to grow, and it does absolutely no good to cherish the days when everyone could distinguish givens from variables in both realms. At least for an indefinite period, in most urban jurisdictions, those days are gone.

How to make reasonable adaptations to this probability and its consequences? Three possibilities point the way for city management: * Realize that what was fact for more stable political elites can eas-

ily become contentious value for emerging elites, and that this constitutes a basic way our political consciousness develops.

* Acknowledge, and empathize with, the probability that emerging elites will be inclined to micro-oversight-that theyh may see politics where more stable elites might have been content to see administration. Both perceptions are right.

* Try not to condescend or patronize as new elites busy themselves with what may appear to be reinventing the wheel. These elites often are testing relationships for their trustwor- thiness, or are moving toward the formation of new coalitions under uncertain conditions. This makes life messy, but is a high art form and, in any case, is unavoidable.

This fact/value permeability has some clear implications for city managers' role content and job descriptions. Broadly, the city manager role will become less chief implementor and more

* value-clarifier, often as a resource to help an elite reshuffle the deck, and many times as an honest broker between contend- ing new elites, as in exercises dealing with visioning or strategic planning-,

* builder of shared norms that will guide mutual striving by those in both politics and in administration-as in a service orientation, or in Total Quality Management; and

* major builder of progressively clearer templates for collaborative action with political and administrative officials.

In such rolling readjustments, new and even once-proscribed skills will gain a new prominence. Thus, city management will be in politics, but not in the machine politics that was so long their nemesis as well as their reason for being. Members of the city management team will be in new modes-serving as facilita- tors, which risks being seen as directors. Success in uncivil engineering will become the new city management standard, whereas civil engineering played a powerful historic role.

We can be a bit more specific here. Consider two classes of situations: more/less conditions, and those which can be charac- terized as more/more (Golembiewski, 1989; esp. 207-228). Some of the world is ineluctably more/less-e.g., the more of a specified total budget awarded to A, the less remains for B. But much of the world has, or can have, more/more features. That is, the more A cooperates with B, the more B probably will reciprocate.

In short, city managers will have to become specialists in cre- ating more/more conditions. Basically, this will require the nur- turing of regenerative interaction which, in turn, will guide the key processes underlying value clarification-norm-building and strategic planning with various stakeholders. The sense of it is an escalating partnership between council, city manager, and other stakeholders.

Toward Effectiveness and Away from Efficiency

The present view proposes a transition in emphasis, rather than an either/or condition. It should not prove overly difficult, even though efficiency and economy are deeply imbedded in city management ideology. Indeed, this conceptual ball is already rolling. To illustrate, a recent Green Book contains the chapter "Managing for Effectiveness, Efficiency, and Economy" (Ander- son, Newland, Stiliman, 1983; 75-107).

242 Public Administration Review * May/June 1995, Vol. 55, No. 3



This new emphasis can help overcome the traditional imbal- ance on differentiation rather than integration. Thus efficiency encourages a focus on particularisms-as in the components of a line-item budget-and economy is narrower still. In contrast, effectiveness encourages a holistic assessment of how the parts come together, as in a focus on the customer, or on quality. In sum, it is insufficient to know that all line-items are accounted for-insufficient to permit confidence that the right things are being done, or to estimate how much of that occurs.

This conceptual revision can be overdone, of course. For example, proponents of one integrative metaphor need remind- ing that the target of public services is more nearly an owner than a mere customer. As such, the common prescription to be dose to recipients of products or services has to be qualified. If noth- ing else, being close has significantly different implications, depending on whether the customer is a needy service recipient or a fugitive.

How to tether overenthusiastic metaphors? Perhaps paramountly, any movement away from the bureaucratic model will help. Thus, that model awkwardly focuses attention on * separate roles and jurisdictions rather than on getting the

total job done-on the parts, again, rather than the whole of performance; and

* on assigning blame for specific error, rather than on empowering people to achieve heightening performance, service, or quality.

In practice, this moving away from the bureaucratic model can be accomplished in several ways. First, the model could be scrapped, but that will be a long process. Numerous alternatives exist (Golembiewski, 1987, 1994), but no structural mil- lennium has begun, despite numerous postbureaucratic break- throughs.

Second, various structural or procedural Band Aids might be applied, while retaining the basic bureaucratic model, but stub- born facts remain. For example, job enrichment might be tried, and that often has positive effects on morale, motivation, and performance. But bureaucratic notions conflict, flatly, with the philosophy and practices underlying job enlargement.

Absent an unlikely flexibility in specific bureaucratic settings, consequently, even very successful postbureaucratic interventions face an inhospitable reception (Walton, 1977). Specifically, job enrichment implies wide spans of control, short structures, and few supervisors and middle managers. Bureaucratic structures have an opposed profile.

Much the same may be said of urgings to reinvent government, as by greater entrepreneurial behavior. Those prescriptions not only conflict with bureaucratic structures and tradi- tions, but often will be dangerous in these deliberately risk-aversive settings.

Third, reliance can be placed in various normative overlays which, in effect, seek to plug the spaces between the fragmenting tendencies inherent in bureaucratic departmentalization by par- ticular functions or activities. These overlays include:

* culture statements concerning the values "we serve as we do city business around here";

* ideals regarding niche, standing, and style: for example, "Delivery in 24 hours, every time, whatever it takes." These serve as templates for decision making;

* mission statements reflecting agreements concerning the character and quality of doing work in a specific organization; and

* programs like Total Quality Management.

Toward Continuous Improvement Specifically, the bureaucratic model assumes a kind of

machine which, once set going correctly, will keep going. Even recent ICMA Green Books retain much of this bureaucratic bias, which serves as the largely implicit infrastructure for the height- ened emphasis on policy analysis and policy making (Anderson, Newland, and Stillman, 1983; 75-107).

Idealizing a stable state grows increasingly inappropriate, however, and hence the prominence of dynamic metaphors-the permanent enhancement of systems of interaction between people and groups (e.g., Golembiewski, 1993); the never-ending improvements in processes and products called for by Total Quality Management (Deming, 1982); or the encouragement to become more entrepreneurial, which is a light-footed metaphor for finessing basic structural change in the public sector.

These metaphors constitute no plug-ins, however, despite the exuberance of some zealots. Specifically, these new metaphors typically require profound associated changes-often as prior conditions, or at least as reinforcing factors.

A few illustrations reinforce the point. First, continuous improvement often will require cultural changes in organizations, which cannot be finessed except by encouraging public employees to make themselves vulnerable. The cultures typically associated with bureaucratic organizations are poorly suited to flexible metaphors, and rechristenings do not accomplish the transformational job. Thus, advising public sector entrepreneur- ship may poorly serve the unwary in bureaucracies, who face punishment for risk-taking when the basic steady-as-she-goes infrastructures remain intact (e.g., Glazer and Glazer, 1989).

Second, the fragmenting tendencies inherent in bureaucratic departmentalization can be offset by team-building, with gener- ally positive effects in the short run but with a real need for periodic reinforcement (Dyer, 1987). More expansive proposals involve a cooperating pair of executives with internal and external orientations, respectively (Ammons and Newell, 1989; 126 if.), or a broader executive constellation of functional specialists at senior levels (Moment and Zaleznik, 1963). A periodic rota- tion of functional heads also can reduce the probability of organizational myopia or empire building, if with obvious costs.

Third, postbureaucratic structure and policy can reinforce integrative and continuous-improvement metaphors, and this is typically usefull if not necessary. The case for basic structural




change has been made elsewhere (Golembiewski, 1987, 1989, 1994; Gabris, 1993), but here consider only gainsharing (Doherty and McAdams, 1993). One way to reinforce the new real-time metaphors is via compensation plans that reward continuous improvement, with any savings in year one being shared with the employees and later factored into the base for down- stream years.

Such arrangements have good track records, but they face common opposition in public agencies. As one city manager noted about gainsharing, by way of explaining end-of-year buy- ing splurges to eliminate any surplus: "If we do save any dollars, council will certainly insist that we give them back. They may even tell us to improve our budgeting and financial practices to avoid future surpluses!"

Toward a Greater Emphasis on the City Management Team"

The larger and more comprehensive a system, the less effective is reliance on a one-to-one co mmand/obey orientation, and the more central is teamwork in developing cultures at work that will facilitate the development of loose-tight systems (Sayles and Chandler, 1992). These facilitate delegation and decentraliza- tion (i.e., "loose"), but only within quite specific normative con- texts (i.e., "tight" policies and procedures).

The implied role shift features a city manager transition from chief implementor to chief facilitative change agent. More expansively, city management ideology would focus less on individual managers, and more on city management teams making collaborative decisions.

How? To be deliberately expansive, a city management team might well seek placement together, and leave together. This amounts to a kind of mobile HMO in city management. The analogy intentionally suggests that other individualistically ori- ented professionals are successfully challenging limitations on their practice.

Today's problems seem responsive to such innovations. For example, CM teams might increase average tenure, and hence contribute to meaningful changes in local cultures and values. Or they might well contribute to diversity, via effective working and mentoring relationships among their members-mixed with respect to ethnicity, culture, gender, and so on. These relationships-starting as they do at the top-might provide useful impetus for effective diversity throughout local management systems.

Further, HMO-like teams also have other probable attrac- tions, as in changing city management norms, for example, in connection with tenure-in-job. Revealingly, Loble (1989; 18) notes: I have had ingrained in me the maxim that city managers should stay a minimum of three years, start looking in five, and be gone within seven-in order to serve their community in the best way possible." What is true of the individual city manager, however, need not be true of a team.v Exchanges of support can buffer turbulence, for example, or see individuals through

the inevitable rough spots that might otherwise induce turnover. Reduced stress felt by individual managers also could be expect- ed, which research on city management burnout suggests is useful, if not necessary. See the companion piece for details.

If in a subtle way, moreover, apparently increasing city management turnover also supports the need for nontraditional prescriptions. Let us begin with what seems a positive trend: overall, according to data provided by an ICMA official, city management tenure was an average of 3.5 years for 1965, 4.4 years for 1974, 5.4 years for 1984, and 5.2 years for 1991.

However, care in interpreting the numbers seems appropriate (Barber, 1988; esp. 697). Ominously, it appears that the absolute growth rate of municipalities adopting the plan is plummeting, and especially in the case of choice situations. This may compel many managers to stay put simply because of reduced opportunities for upward mobility into choicer assignments, with the consequence that city managers simply stay in their first or second jobs longer. This diminishes inde- pendence and autonomy for individual managers.

Other features add to the attractiveness of an HMO-like approach in city management. We cannot do the point full justice, but here consider only that a specific problem- updating an information system, expanding a staff or a reduc- tion-in-force-often encourages the choice of a city manager with a specific profile. Once the presenting symptom gets sufficiently dealt with, local elites may begin to look around for a manager with a different profile.

The associated features do not attract. They include: a see-sawing that discourages basic change; encouraging a stretch-out by the new manager; a desire by local elites to build-in curbs on the manager, rather than helping create a favorable political climate; or escalating buy-out packages. Individual city managers could become specialized-as crisis managers, or whatever-with a consequent increase in the cir- culation of managers.

The HMO approach would allow far more flexibility in such matters, with executive team members arranging shifts in emphasis by varying assignments and responsibilities, as well as by variations in the relative prominence of various team members. Such flexibilities could impact variously by increasing team influence and bargaining power, facilitating phased retirement of one or more CM team members, responding to emerging issues as team members arrange for retooling or recreation, illness, family or health needs, and so on.

Limited approaches also can help induce greater integration among members of the top management of local governments. Consider here only team building (Dyer, 1987), which can accelerate psychological time and facilitate the building of appropriate cultures at work.

Several points relate to making an informed choice about team-building. First, alternative models are available. Start- up situations present real advantages in such an effort, but even organizations with long histories can host successfull team building (Golembiewski and Kiepper, 1988; esp. 177-200).

244 Public Administration Review . May/June 1995, Vol. 55, No. 3



Second, team-building features are increasingly useful or even necessary when the focus is holistic, for example, on quality performance; or on serving the customer, whether an external voter/owner or an internal customer requesting a staff service. Where bureaucratic forms are followed, which will be much of the time in most local governments, even responsibilities imme- diately below the manager's level typically focus on the parts- human resources planning, budgeting and finance, operations, and so on. Teams help fill the gaps between such particularized responsibilities.

Third, success rates in team building are substantial (Dyer, 1987), in government as well as in business. Experience in government also exists, both recent and early (Brown and Saunders, 1973).

Toward a Greater Emphasis on Regenerative Interaction

Progressively, this sixth recommendation proposes a new answer to the old and basic question: By whose warrant do you manage? Capitalists answer: Because I own the place. Tradi- tional city managers would note: Because of powers delegated to me by a legally constituted authority. To which the new city manager would add: Because we also help induce and maintain powerful and empowering cultures at work.

An earlier article, "Today's City Manager" (in the Novem- ber/December 1994 issue of PAR) detailed how regenerative interaction is both powerful and empowering-high openness, owning, and trust, as well as low risk (Golembiewski and Gabris, 1994). City management could act in the following various ways to trigger the self-heightening effects implied by that model:

* emphasize the energizing of valid and reliable communication between all stakeholders,

* model regenerative interaction on the city management team, * use experienced city managers as range riders to help identify

and confront barriers in personal, professional, and management development,

* aggressively use site visits to provide an external evaluation of local operations, which could cut two usefiUl ways: the evaluating teams might be critical of some local operations; but they also can serve as a professional lever to help motivate the doing of needed things by recalcitrant local political authori- ties, and

* use multiple approaches to increase the flow of information-surveys, focus groups, town meetings, and so on. All these possibilities have been acted on, and over a long

period, but with insufficient frequency. Consider the successful programs to increase the levels of trust between elected council members and appointed officials (LeBaron, 1978).

Institutional extensions of the thrust toward regenerative interaction also are possible. Consider the possibility of a city

manager analog of the Fund for Displaced Pastors (FDP), a social invention of racial integration days. Pro-integration clerics who were displaced could be supported by an FDP grant, as long as they remained involved in the local religious scene. In city management, similar arrangements could serve as useful protections against such things as local interests pressuring a city manager into unethical or illegal behavior, or against trumped- up charges by vengeful locals alleging sexual harassment, child abuse, or whatever.

Several professional associations provide similar protection for those who feel pressures to do something unethical, illegal, or immoral. The clearest case is the quality control chemist whose buccaneering employer demands good results, whatever the tests show. Nationally, a modest program also exists to support whistleblowers, or ethical resisters (Glazer and Glazer, 1989; esp. 238-257).

The general model could be put into city manager service, pretty clearly. Aggressive political actors have been known to make uncomfortable, and at times illegal, demands on managers. All officialdom is vulnerable to locally inspired charges. Among other factors, concerns about present or future employment, and the costs of litigation, discourage dealing with such possibilities head-on.

Toward a New Balance in Council-Manager Relations

To simplify a bit, councils in the past often gave their managers a long leash. That discretion was balanced by minimum attention to guarantees of security-in-role, for obvious reasons.

Today, many jurisdictions want to tether managers closely, while also retaining quick-strike unbuckling. Arguably, this poses problems, at least for managers and (we propose) also for councils. Councils may be indined to pay inadequate attention to the manager's long-term 'fit" in hiring decisions; and councils may be encouraged to overreact to even modest shifts in the political winds. In turn, the manager may suffer a kind of role devaluation.

How to move toward a more realistic balance? A city management team clearly would contribute to such a shift, and especially if the team came (and left) as a collectivity. More robust buy-out packages also might be encouraged, or even mandated by the actions of CM professional associations. Any movement in this direction would encourage more demanding choice making at the time of entry, as well as of exit, by all parties.

Larger buy-outs constitute no magic bullet, of course. Thus, they might be viewed as thinly veiled attempts to buy

silence when city managers might better be vocal, from the per- spective of the general welfare.

C~an It Hiappen Again? Environmental forces can induce and shape change over a




short period of time, even in seemingly stable systems. Prior to 1911, the mayor-council form constituted the dominant form of municipal government. Today, city management reflects substantial staying power in the hardball politics of urban government, but the plan remains the most common form of government only in medium-size communities (Blair, 1986). And tomorrow?

In any case, the city manager plan is far from immune to change. Just as it was invented and diffused in response to novel environmental demands, so it can be deconstructed or transmut- ed. The dominant signals and signs reflect a widespread and deep dissatisfaction with "government as usual," at all levels.

This article suggests how the CM profession can leverage its past to increase its survival probabilities. Dynamic environmental forces threaten city management status, but they also may

prove a powerful stimulus inducing new approaches, as well as the greater diffusion of innovations which already exist.

Robert T. Golembiewski is research professor at the Universi- ty of Georgia, Athens. He is the only recipient of the two major recognitions for distinguished scholarly contributions to business as well as public management-the 1992 Irwin Award and the 1993 Waldo Award.

Gerald T. Gabris is associate professor, Department of Public Administration, Northern Illinois University. He has published widely in the literatures of organizational development, strategic planning, personnel management, as well as state and local government. His latest work-in-progress is The Everyday Organiwtion.

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Tomorrow's City Management: Guides for Avoiding Success-Becoming-Failure