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The study of public organizations has withered over time in mainstream organization studies research, as scholars in the field have migrated to business schools. This is so even though government organizations are an important part of the universe of organizations-the largest organizations in the world are agencies of the U.S. government. At the same time, the study of public administration, once in the mainstream of organization studies, has moved into a ghetto, separate and unequal. Centered in business schools, mainstream organization research became isomorphic to its environment-coming to focus on performance issues, which are what firms care about. Since separation, the dominant current in public administration has become isomorphic with its environment. In this case, however, this meant the field moved backward from the central reformist concern of its founders with improving government performance, and developed instead a focus on managing constraints (i.e., avoiding bad things, such as corruption or misuse of power, from occurring) in a public organization environment. Insufficient concern about performance among public administration scholars is particularly unfortunate because over the past 15 years, there has occurred a significant growth of interest among practitioners in improving government performance. The origins and consequences of these developments are discussed, and a research agenda for organization studies research that takes the public sector seriously is proposed.

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One answer to the question of why government organizations don't perform better-common in academic “public choice” literature but also in folk wisdom-is that resources come too easily, independent of performance. Some businessmanagement literature suggests that a crisis in resource flows can force successful change-”necessity is the mother of invention.” However, the literature also presents an alternative view: that crisis promotes rigid preprogrammed responses, not new ways of behaving. This paper examines the impact of crisis on organizational change in government by examining an organizational change effort in the U.S. federal government (procurement reform during the 1990s) that occurred simultaneously with an organizational crisis involving workforce downsizing and introduction of competition for some buying offices. Using a dataset consisting of a survey of approximately 1,600 frontline government contracting officials, the impact of variation in crisis at different buying offices on variation in behavior change is examined. Necessity was found to be the mother of invention, not rigidity. However, these effects were counteracted by two negative effects of crisis on organizational change: 1) employee resentment over violation of a “social contract at work” reduced behavior change, 2) employee association of the change effort with downsizing reduced attitudinal support for the change, which translated into reduced behavior change. On balance, crisis inhibited organizational change, rather than promoting it. © 2006 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management