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Abstract
The National Performance Review (NPR) purports to offer a new paradigm for public management, and it proffers a set of principles to guide federal organizations - reinvention labs and others - through the turbulence and sometimes deliberate chaos of reinvention. However, in so doing, it also presents those organizations with a paradox: a panoply of seemingly contradictory and conflicting principles and practices. Many reinvention lab employees exhibit almost evangelical commitment to the missions of their agencies. That kind of commitment can serve as a powerful mobilizing force for change. At the same time, it can become a source of bureaucratic inertia, engendering tunnel vision and resistance to anything that employees my perceive as a threat to their mission, including reinvention itself. The strength of NPR's principles, which include such homilies as "Cut red tape" and "Put customers first," is in their ambiguity. However, this ambiguity has its downside. The legislative stalemate over systemic reforms can be attributed in part to the absence of consensus on what those reforms should be.