The Implementation Perspective: A Guide for Managing Social Service Delivery Programs

University of California Press

Implementation may be described most briefly as the stage between a decision and operations. It is the hard next step after the decision, involving efforts to put in place—to make operational—what has been decided. More and more frequently, one is warned to be concerned with implementation—that is the stage in the policy process where so much can go wrong.

The advice to be concerned with the implementation of a decision is much like the warning to keep one's eye on the ball in tennis. First, it seems so obvious. Everybody knows that. Second, doing it does not guarantee success, since, with the eye fixed unrelentingly on the ball, lots of things can still go wrong. Third, there is almost a Cassandra-like aspect to the advice: it is a prediction of problems before the great new idea gets started. But alas, not heeding it is a fundamental error that seems certain to undo any other positive steps. Fourth, and most discouragingly, however simple and straightforward the advice may sound, it is almost always devilishly difficult to carry out in action.

That is the problem. Implementation cannot be neatly segmented, isolated into a compartment in the policy process, and assigned to some special unit of the organization to be completed. As will be argued, implementation should be a major concern even prior to making a complex decision, by posing the obvious, but strangely almost never asked, question at the point of decision: How hard will it be to implement the various alternatives being considered? Even if thoughts of implementation only spring forth after the decision, the implementation problem is with the organization almost immediately and stays until the often

arduous task is finished of moving from a decision to operations. And if the decision to be implemented is a complex new social service delivery project or program, the implementation stage is not completed when the doors open but rather runs through that terrible, and sometimes seemingly indeterminable, period of start-up in which Murphy's Law predominates.

Implementation is an extremely broad concept. Implementation issues do not arrive only with the passage of new legislation or with major legislative or executive branch efforts to modify existing programs. Rather, legislatures and administrative or operating organizations make a range of decisions about programs and processes which must be implemented in the field, so that implementation becomes an integral part of the continuing activities of the public organizations charged with managing social service delivery programs.

Not only is implementation a lengthy process in social service programs, it is an extremely involved one. In a federal agency, for example, a vast distance in layers of bureaucracy stands between the major decisions made at the top and the ultimate service delivery at the operating level. The implementation process stretches from the halls of Congress and the corridors of agency power to the point of delivery between a social service professional and a client. And along this route emerge political, organizational, bureaucratic, and technical problems, often in mind-boggling combinations that thwart the implementer at every turn.

Implementation, then, is not simply a problem of the field or a technical problem of getting a product in working order. The issue may be one of politics when local people defy implementation efforts by going to their congressional delegation. Bureaucracy may be the blockage when there is an effort to change existing organizational modes of behavior. Or, implementation may involve continuing questions of intergovernmental relationships when federal funding and supervision and state or local operations force an uneasy partnership, such as that emerging in federal grants-in-aid for social service delivery programs.

However, with all of this political and bureaucratic complexity,

it is critical to keep in mind that implementation is not some abstract social science concept. Individuals and organizations must take action after a decision. "To decide" does not necessarily mean "to do." For an individual a decision requiring implementation may demand commitment, capacity, or both for execution. When the decision maker and the implementer are different, a third demand arises, communications. The decision maker needs to get the message across to the implementer. The implementation issue most straightforwardly concerns how to bring together communications, commitment, and capacity so as to carry a decision into action.

Actually, when we turn to large-scale public organizations, there are two implementation issues. The first is what might be labeled "implementation proper"—the effort to make a specific decision operational over time. That decision may set out both specific objectives such as improving the earnings capacity of individuals or reducing delinquency rates and the means (procedures, techniques) for pursuing the objectives. Implementation concerns putting these means in place. At issue is how to get changes in organizational behavior—that is, what people in the organization do—to reflect what the decision envisions. The first implementation issue is the process of trying to get from the here of a decision to the there of operating policy such that people in the organization are doing things in a different way.

The second implementation issue is the more general aspect of the first one. It is the capacity problem. Over time any major organization will be making now unspecified decisions that will demand changes in organizational behavior. A basic question is one of what can be done to raise organizational capabilities to implement these future, yet unspecified decisions.

The two problems blend. A major decision begets a host of minor decisions all of which raise implementation problems. Any organization at a particular point in time is likely to be concerned with implementing a decision or decisions and also expecting to make other decisions the implementation of which will be enhanced if there is greater administrative and operational capability. In what follows we will address both the immediate

problem of implementing a known decision and the capacity problem of preparing for the implementation of yet unmade decisions.

The primary concern in this book is the implementation of publicly funded social service delivery programs, particularly those funded through federal grants-in-aid to state and local governments. These programs involve the delivery of a service usually by a professional person (e.g., teacher or social worker) to an individual or small group of persons in a complex organizational environment. Social service delivery program areas include, but are not restricted to, employment and training, education, criminal prevention and rehabilitation services, and housing and community development assistance.

I consider implementation problems to be the major substantive, as opposed to purely monetary or political, obstacles to the improvement of social service delivery programs. Implementation is the primary management issue facing the public organizations responsible for these...