Incluye bibliografía.

Foreword -- Abstract -- Acknowledgments -- 1. Introduction -- 2. The Bank and public sector management -- 3. A Pareto-efficient public sector agency -- 4. Determining the scope of interventions -- 5. Building the capacity to consolidate interventions -- 6. Conclusion and directions for the future -- Bibliography -- Boxes -- Tables -- Figures.

The paper argues that strategic change in government agencies is a process by which line managers continually seek to align core strategy, internal organizational design, and external environment. It first provides a working model of an efficient government agency that allows managers to identify areas of misalignment, which then become the basis for Bank-sponsored interventions. In helping managers realign government agencies, the paper recommends that the Bank employ three sets of instruments - incentives, information-processing institutions, and coordination mechanisms. Finally, it illustrates how managers in client countries can systematically consolidate efficiency gains by mobilizing appropriate stakeholders, enforcing broad checks and balances to enhance transparency, and establishing system-wide change agents. Certain new aspects of institutional reform, namely information processing, are highlighted and will prove useful to Bank operations and policy research.