This book has presented a perspective, a model, and a large set of empirical findings. The results speak to a broad agenda occupying many scholars and practitioners: understanding how public managers shape agency and program performance. In this chapter we draw the volume to a close by undertaking two tasks. First, we review and tie together what we have learned about public management and performance. We then sketch a new agenda for some of what, we believe, remains to be explored.

What does the evidence show?

This research program has developed many findings about whether, how, and how much public management influences the performance of public organizations. Most findings explain what is going on in school districts within one state; but, we argue strongly, this “limitation” should not diminish the record. Although this work should be replicated in other empirical settings – and although we have initiated that ourselves, as have others discussed in earlier chapters – the patterns analyzed here should not be marginalized. First, the sample included in most of our empirical studies consists of more than 1 percent of all governments in the United States. Second, no larger sample of public organizations has ever been analyzed for determinants of performance. Third, the analyses develop and report on numerous types of managerial influence. While the findings sometimes show that managers shape performance in ways that some might find to be expected, the results do not merely theorize or speculate about such channels of influence; they demonstrate the influence with systematic evidence.