Compare and contrast the three major reforms: downsizing, reengineering, and continuous improvements. Which is the strongest type of reform according to the text and why?

What will be an ideal response?

Downsizing is motivated by pressures from the outside, the citizenry, to constantly decrease government spending. The assumption is that government is wasting taxpayer dollars and as such government needs to be made smaller. Reengineering restructures organizational processes to increase administrative efficiency by modeling ideas on the private sector using a top-down approach. Continuous improvement tries to respond to the consumer of government by constantly trying to better the quality of the organization from the bottom up. It is less competition oriented like reengineering and it tries to foster cooperation among workers. The assumptions embedded in each movement clashes with the other two movements. And in the final analysis, the text says we do not know which one works best, and finding out is impossible because it is impossible to test any in a pure form.