Public management has undergone a revolution. Rather
than focusing on controlling bureaucracies and delivering
services, public adminisu'ators are responding to admon-
ishments to “steer rather than row," and to be the entrepre-
neurs of a new, leaner, and increasingly privatized govern-
ment. As a result, a number of highly positive changes have
been implemented in the public sector (Osbome and Gaebler
1992; Osborne and Plastrik 1997; Kettl 1993; Kettl and
Dilulio 1995; Kettl and Milward 1996; Lynn 1996), But as
the field of public administration has increasingly abandoned
the idea of rowing and has accepted responsibility for steer-
ing, has it simply traded one “adminicentric” view for an-
other? Osbome and Gaebler write, “those who steer the boat
have far more power over its destination than those who
row it" (1992, 32). If that is the case, the shift from rowing
to steering not only may have left administrators in charge
of the boat—choosing its goals and directions and charting
a path to achieve them~it may have given them more power
to do so.