This book is about the process of change in some government bureaucracies of cities, counties, and states in the United States. The bureaucracies are finance departments, comptrollers' offices, controllers' offices, departments of administration, and the like. These agencies are ubiquitous because the accounting and auditing functions are needed in all local governments, but they are hardly known to the average citizen because their activities are routine and rarely excite controversy. We can only begin to describe finance departments and similar agencies in this Introduction, but because the entire book concerns these organizations, the reader should have a sense of familiarity with them by the end.

This book is also about organizational theory and research. Theory, of course, is a body of abstract principles meant to apply to a variety of organizational forms and settings, and research is a procedure for testing propositions. The research study that generated this book was grounded in theory, or better, a theory that might be labeled the Weberian,1 administrative, or closed-system model of organizations. As the study progressed, the theory became somewhat less plausible, but so did all organizational theories. The discussion of theory like the description of finance departments is necessarily sketchy in this first chapter, but it becomes more developed as we progress. If the reader finds the results of the research as consistent and convincing as I perceive them, then his skepticism of theory–or at least of theories purporting to describe all organizations without reference to their histories and social or institutional contexts–will grow with his understanding of finance agencies.