Paul Charles Light

"Outlines the debate on how to define social entrepreneurship, examining the four main components of social entrepreneurship: ideas, opportunities, organizations, and the entrepreneurs. Presents research on high-performing nonprofits, exploring how they differ across the four key components. Offers recommendations for future action and research in this burgeoning field"--Provided by publisher.

"Although many Americans believe that government creates more problems than it solves, the federal government has amassed an extraordinary record of successes over the past half century. Facing seemingly insurmountable odds, the United States helped rebuild Europe after World War II, conquered polio and other life-threatening diseases, faced down communism, attacked racial discrimination, reduced poverty among the elderly, and put men on the moon.". "In Government's Greatest Achievements, Paul C. Light explores the U.S. government's achievements from 1944 to 1999. Drawing on survey responses from 230 historians and 220 political scientists, Light profiles fifty legislative initiatives through which the federal government has tackled some of the world's toughest problems."--BOOK JACKET.

"Under increasing competition from private firms and faith-based organizations, the nonprofit sector's 1.23 million organizations and 11 million employees are facing unprecedented pressure to improve performance. While the sector is awash in ideas for management reform, no one knows which reforms are working and why. As a result, reforms come and go like waves at the seashore, rarely leaving a lasting imprint.". "Pathways to Nonprofit Excellence provides data on the impact of recent reform efforts from professionals who have observed them firsthand. Based on interviews with 250 leading thinkers from the worlds of philanthropy, scholarship, and consulting, as well as 250 executive directors of some of the nation's most effective nonprofits, the book illuminates the characteristics of effective organizations.". "The research reveals that there is no one best way to achieve and sustain strong performance. The professionals interviewed caution nonprofits against pretending to be private firms, governments, or faith-based organizations - even if they behave like them from time to time. In fact, nonprofits must become more nonprofit-like if they are to choose their future."--BOOK JACKET.

"In Making Nonprofits Work, Paul C. Light charts the current trends of management reform in the nonprofit sector and assess the climate for reform at the local and national levels. Light examines the four popular philosophies, or "tides," being advocated - scientific management, liberation management, war on waste, and watchful eye - offering examples and caveats from a portfolio of recent experience." "Drawing on confidential interviews with leaders in nonprofit management reform, a detailed search of Internet sources, and a survey of state associations of nonprofit organizations, Light's findings suggest that the nonprofit sector has a remarkable opportunity to prevent the excesses and fadism that have dominated reform efforts in government and the private sector. He cautions leaders in the nonprofit sector to recognize the limits of various reform models, to set priorities carefully, and to limit investments of reform energy to a handful of priorities. Finally, he urges reformers to boost the sector's ability to implement new systems and reforms by focusing more closely on capacity building."--Jacket.

"In this profile of the public service profession, Paul C. Light examines two decades of change in the career patterns and motivations of America's top public servants. Drawing upon interviews with graduates of the nation's top public policy and administration graduate schools, Light argues that the nation's young professionals have changed little in their basic desire to make a difference through public service, but they no longer imagine thirty-year careers in government as the only way to have an impact on national and local issues. They are just as likely to start their public service careers in the nonprofit or private sectors, and intend to switch back and forth during their careers."--BOOK JACKET. "By letting top graduates speak in their own voices, this book offers a clear agenda that can help government make its invitation to service more meaningful and more attractive."--BOOK JACKET.

This book addresses a seemingly simple question: Just how many people work for the federal government anyway? Congress and the president almost always answer the question by counting the number of full-time civil servants, which totaled 1.9 million when President Clinton declared the era of big government over in 1996. But, according to Paul Light, the true head count that year was nearly nine times higher than the official numbers, with about 17 million people delivering goods and services on the government's behalf. Most of those employees are part of what Light calls the "shadow of government" - nonfederal employees working under federal contracts, grants, and mandates to state and local governments. In providing the first estimates of the shadow work force, this book explores the reasons why the official size of the federal government has remained so small while the shadow of government has grown so large.

Any organization can innovate once. The challenge is to innovate twice, thrice, and more - to make innovation a part of daily good practice. This book shows how nonprofit and government organizations can transform the single, occasional act of innovating into an everyday occurrence by forging a culture of natural innovation. Filled with real success stories and practical lessons learned, Sustaining Innovation offers examples of how organizations can take the first step toward innovativeness, advice on how to survive the inevitable mistakes along the way, and tools for keeping the edge once the journey is complete. Light also provides a set of simple suggestions for fitting the lessons to the different management pressures facing the nonprofit sector and government. Unlike in the private sector, where innovation needs only to be profitable to be worth doing, nonprofit and government innovation must be about doing something worthwhile. It must challenge the prevailing wisdom and advance the public good. Sustaining Innovation gives nonprofit and government managers a coherent, easily understandable model for making this kind of innovation a natural reality.

Paul Light explains that Congress and the presidency have never decided whether they trust government and its employees to do their jobs well, and so they have moved back and forth over the decades between four reform philosophies: scientific management, war on waste, watchful eye, and liberation management. These four philosophies, argues Light, operate with different goals, implementation strategies, and impacts. Yet reform initiatives draw on one or another of them almost at random, often canceling out the potential benefits of a particular statute by passing a contradictory statute soon afterward. Light shows that as the public has become increasingly distrustful of government, the reform agenda has favored the war on waste and watchful eye. He analyzes the consequences of these changes for the overall performance of government and offers policy recommendations for future reform approaches.

"A former staff member of the Senate Government Operations Committee describes the effort to include a provision for judicial review in the bill establishing the Veteran's Affairs Department as an example of how Congress really works"-- Amazon.