Governing by Network: The New Shape of the Public Sector

By Stephen Goldsmith and William D. Eggers. Washington, D.C. Brookings Institution Press, 2004.

A fundamental, but mostly hidden, transformation is happening in the way public services are being delivered, and in the way local and national governments fulfill their policy goals. Government executives are redefining their core responsibilities away from managing workers and providing services directly to orchestrating networks of public, private, and nonprofit organizations to deliver the services that government once did itself. Authors Stephen Goldsmith and William D. Eggers call this new model “governing by network” and maintain that the new approach is a dramatically different type of endeavor than simply managing divisions of employees.