Theories of Performance: Organizational and Service Improvement in the Public Domain

Colin Talbot.Theories of Performance: Organizational and Service Improvement in the Public Domain.Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2010.Reviewed by Howard A. DoughtyColin Talbot is to be commended merely for attempting this project. He is doubly to be commended for succeeding. He has taken on a formidable task, and he has convinced at least one sceptic that his approach and the application of his ideas to real-world circumstances are fundamentally valid. I am sure that I am not alone.The first thing that Talbot does is to speak directly and sensibly about and then to link this discussion to both methodological problems concerning research and to practical issues of governmental processes-all within the context of a single overarching theme, namely how to improve the ways that government does its job.The first problem is that theorists may not be terribly interested in the specific applications of to concrete situations. The second problem is that practitioners are probably even less interested in hearing about theoretical discussions-especially when they are tied to the internal squabbles among academics within and across social science disciplines.It is, I regret to say, a common ailment of our culture that theory is imagined, even by some of the certifiably educated, to be part of a hierarchy of confidence running downhill from fact to to hypothesis to guess... [but] and theories are different things, not rungs on a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts (Gould, 1983: 254). We feel comfortable with facts, whereas theories make us nervous; still, in the absence of theories, we cannot make sense of facts. Like it or not, we all put together with in order to make practical action possible. Those who seek to think seriously about situations will need to get beyond these cultural blockages. Talbot solves the problems in three related ways.First, he lays out a plan or description, discussion and argument and sticks to it. The result is that a potential mash-up of confused and confusing steps are laid out and meticulously followed. Readers know at all times where they have been, where they are and where they are going to go. It is a plan, moreover, that makes sense and that is explained clearly early on. There are no surprises and no detours. As a result, seemingly disparate approaches and issues are set out in a way that maps some difficult terrain and makes what, in less skillful hands, would be a disjointed expedition into a seamless and quite enjoyable journey.Second, he speaks persuasively. His efforts become meaningful because he so plainly and sincerely believes that this work is important. Linking and practice is a hard job at the best of times, but Talbot's audience is apt to include people with considerable expertise in some parts of the argument and little or none in others. Finding the best way to explain the elements of portions of his narrative to newcomers without boring the already well-schooled is an art in itself, and Talbot is an accomplished artist.Third, his book has a common and consistent thread running through it. It is about something. That thread has a conceptual name; it is consilience; it also has a flesh-and-blood form; his name is E. O. Wilson. Talbot discusses the famous Harvard sociobiologist (and coiner of the term) in his introduction and mentions him occasionally in the text; but, his presence is never far away. He is unobtrusive, but ever watchful. He is also the source of my aforementioned scepticism.It would be foolish to underestimate the man and his influence. For over forty years he has been a dominant figure and an inspiration to a variety of branches of the Darwinian tree, not least the now popular field of evolutionary psychology and even the slightly more remote domain of behavioral economics. …

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