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 programs. Better management demands that public organizations recast their policy approach to reflect the reality of social service delivery programs.

The starting place for considering the nature of this recasting is the lack of power—the limits of governance—in complex social programs. This lack of power brings an unavoidable discretion permeating organizations from the top through the point of service delivery. The problem of lack of power is compounded by lack of knowledge. Discretion must be exercised without a clear guide to organizational and programmatic means because appropriate tactics can only be determined in the field in the dynamic process of implementation and administration. Unavoidable discretion and interdeterminancy are the basic ingredients of social service delivery programs where prescription must start.

The basic need is for a decision making rationale and framework to shape choices that will orient social program organizations toward better field performance. The recommended decision

framework for guiding action in social service delivery programs, I label the implementation perspective.

The cardinal commandment of the implementation perspective is "look down toward where services are provided, that's the crucial point of policy determination." In social service delivery programs, capacity at the point of service delivery is the central factor determining success or failure. After the "big" decisions get made at the highest levels, what is done by those who implement and operate programs and projects has the critical impact on evolving policy.

The implementation perspective shifts away from the glamor of making decisions toward the details of putting them into the field. The central focus over time is on the slow, hard task of raising management and staff capacity through institutional investment so that social service organizations will be more likely to make reasonable judgments at the point of service and to respond appropriately to yet unspecified future implementation demands. This shift in focus seems certain to demand fundamental organizational changes. Such changes are never easy. The stakes, however, are high. Inattention to implementation in social service delivery programs is often fatal to performance.

Time magazine observed in an article entitled "The Beneficent Monster" (12 June 1978): "If one institution were to be singled out as having the most impact on American life today, it would not be church or school, private corporation or political party. It would be the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare." In the decade and a half since the start of the Great Society programs, the social agencies such as HEW, the Department of Labor, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development have become immense institutions charged with managing a vast array of social service delivery programs mainly through grants to state and local governments.

We'll be looking at implementation issues in terms of these grants-in-aid that force a partnership between the federal agencies charged with the federal management of social service programs and subnational governments that operate these programs. Federal grants-in-aid provide the most complex implementation setting,

and hence the richest for purposes of discussion. But anyone who has dealt at the state level with efforts to change welfare procedures or to modify the juvenile justice code or followed the efforts in a city to put in place a new educational procedure or method of police patrol or different rules for using firearms by policemen will be aware that the federal situation is not that much more complicated than the state or local ones. The implementation problem is a fundamental organization issue for all social service delivery organizations. The implementation perspective, it will be argued, applies at all levels of government as a guide for managing social service delivery programs.

Chapter II will look first at the intellectual orientation of recent research underlying the implementation perspective and then lay out and discuss some basic tenets of the implementation perspective derived from this recent work. The purpose of the section on implementation research is not to summarize that work but to provide some insights into the orientation of the studies. In the next section I will try to "distill" the most important aspects of the recent work on implementation. Set out and discussed are seven tenets of the implementation perspective that apply generally when complex social services are delivered by any organization. A final tenet speaks to the special case of shared governance where one political jurisdiction is responsible for managing funds but a second political jurisdiction operates the social service delivery programs.

Chapter III first offers a historical perspective by tracing briefly the development of federal grants-in-aid and the federal funding of social service delivery programs. In terms of size, both are of recent origin, grants-in-aid starting to grow rapidly in the physical investment area in the 1950s and the current social service program effort gaining real momentum in the 1960s. So the uneasy partnership where the federal government has major implementation and administrative responsibilities but subnational governments or their designees operate the federally funded

programs is quite new. And this newness has tremendous implications for appreciating implementation problems in the federal government. The bulk of the chapter offers an example of implementation in the uneasy partnership by considering two key pieces of Nixon New Federalism legislation: The Comprehensive Employment and Training Act of 1973 and the Community Development Block Grant program which is part of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974.

Chapter IV moves to the heart of the analysis. Of critical concern in our discussion of implementation are those limiting factors that over time block organizations from achieving the desired results of social policy. What will be argued, and it is fundamental to all that follows, is that those at the top face severe limits to their power to influence the direction of social service delivery programs. A host of socioeconomic, technical, political, and bureaucratic forces interact to create bewildering problems that reduce an organization's capacity to govern the programs it must administer and operate. This chapter's basic message is that the federal government and, indeed, all governments, face severe constraints, or conversely have limited power, in moving from decisions to operations.

The next chapter treats issues of social agency responsibility and control (or influence) in terms of program management generally and implementation specifically.1 In light of the severe limits of social agency power, it must be asked what are realistic objectives for social agency performance. Fixing realistic responsibilities and getting them carried out is one of the most basic issues in the agency implementation process. Once responsibility is determined, how is control to be exercised? Here we will be confronting the basic question of the control devices available to the social agency managers to induce desired behavior both by their own staffs in the field and by fund recipients.

Chapter VI considers agency resources. The agency is the place where the federal government locates most of its staff, materiel, and management capability. Of these resources we'll be looking

I'll distinguish among the terms power, control, and influence later.

specifically at information, field capacity, and organizational structure. Sound information is critical to agency management. At issue is whether or not the technical and organizational capacity is available to develop and disseminate good information to the people who need it for decisions and implementation. But the most critical resource of all is people. No question looms larger than how to get enough good people in the right place to help in making the discretionary judgments that can lead to better organizational and program performance. Last, we'll be asking whether or not changes in the organizational arrangement of resources can aid a social agency in its control and support efforts.

The next chapter discusses the development of an agency implementation strategy. In line with the real limits to its power and its resources, what are the specific steps the agency should take over time to incorporate an implementation perspective? As we shall see, the decision by the agency to be more concerned with implementation itself must be implemented, and it is a most difficult task because of the size and complexity of the organization. We must consider in detail the specific steps that need to be taken. Here we draw on the earlier discussion to spell out the elements of the agency implementation strategy detailing how the agency might bargain with grantees, develop and use information, allocate its resources—especially personnel—and organize in terms of the implementation perspective.

The final chapter will be a quick look at two issues. First is the question of the implications of the implementation perspective for overall federal policy. Second is the issue of the relevance of the implementation perspective and strategy for all organizations charged with social service delivery responsibilities. The agency implementation strategy postulates continuing social agency responsibilities for the implementation and administration of social service delivery programs. Is the emerging partnership of shared responsibility between federal and subnational governments the way to provide federally funded social services? Can the social agencies provide effective management of the complex, locally operated programs? No clear answers emerge but clearly the issues need debating. And one thing is certain: no alternative

strategy of funding is going to do away with the problems inherent in offering complex social services. Pursuing social goals will most certainly bring implementation problems and the need for an implementation perspective in whatever institutional framework is chosen for managing and operating social service programs. The basic claim will be made that the implementation perspective and strategy provide a useful management guide for any large-scale organization that administers or delivers social services. Indeed, it will be argued that in the emerging Proposition-13, balanced-budget world, the implementation perspective is a particularly apt approach for managing social policies.

Excerpted from The Implementation Perspective: A Guide for Managing Social Service Delivery Programsby Walter Williams Copyright © 1980 by Walter Williams. Excerpted by permission.
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