The Ashgate Research Companion to New Public Management
Abstract
This new in paperback edition provides a comprehensive, state-of-the art review of current research in the field of New Public Management (NPM) reform. Aimed primarily at a student readership with a special interest in contemporary public-sector reforms, The Ashgate Research Companion to New Public Management offers a refreshing and up-to-date analysis of key issues of modern administrative reforms.Designed as a one-stop reference point and revision guide, this textbook comprises 29 chapters divided into six thematic sessions, each with chapters ranging across a variety of crucial topics in the field of New Public Management reforms and beyond.The principal themes addressed are: • Processes and driving forces. Basic theoretical foundations are discussed as well as the importance of institutional environments, copying, diffusion and translation of reform ideas and solutions among countries • The question of convergence or divergence among countries. Four families of countries with different state traditions are examined: Anglo-Saxon countries, Scandinavia, Continental Europe and Asian countries.• Developments in the ’soft’ welfare sectors of hospital systems, universities and welfare administration, and the ’harder’ sectors like regulation of utilities in areas such as telecommunications and energy.• The effects and implications of NPM reforms, both the more direct and the narrower effects on efficiency and the broader impact on democracy, trust and public sector values.• What new trends are occurring beyond the NMP movement, such as whole-of-government initiatives, Neo-Weberian models and New Public Governance as a new trend.Covering not only the NPM movement in general but also the driving forces behind the reform and its various trajectories and special features, this important contribution is essential reading for students and anyone wanting to expand their knowledge of administrative reform.
... A number of public reform agendas have been implemented by many countries and MENA states were no exception. These efforts which came to be known as New Public Management (NPM), constituted a response to the complex institutional mechanisms, the weak, unprofessional, highly restricted, underperforming administrations, and the inefficient traditional bureaucratic paradigms of public administration (see Gunter et al. , 2016;Christensen and Laegreid, 2016;Bryson et al., 2014;O'Flynn, 2007, Hope, 2001Groot and Budding, 2008;Gruening, 2001;Bach and Bordogna 2011;Hope and Chikulo 2000;Hood, 1991;Minvielle, 2006). The term NPM is defined as "a set of assumptions and value statements about how public sector organizations should be designed, organized, managed and how, in a quasi-business manner, they should function" (Diefenbach, 2009, p.893). ...
... This study contributes to the literature in two ways. First, given the fact that the development of informal networks theory is still in an early and evolving stage (Horak, 2024;Horak et al., 2020;Minbaeva et al., 2022;Horak & Paik, 2022;Horak & Suseno , 2022), this study adds knowledge to the limited literature on informal networks, by exploring the interplay between informal networks on one side, and the NPM literature on the other side (Gunter et al. , 2016;Christensen and Laegreid, 2016;Bryson et al., 2014;Hope, 2001;Groot and Budding, 2008;Bach and Bordogna 2011;O'Flynn 2007;Hood 1995;Minvielle, 2006). To the best of our knowledge, there is no existing literature exploring the role that informal networks may play when it comes to the success or failure of the implementation of NPM agendas. ...
This study aims to understand the main factors that contribute to the failure implementation of New Public Management (NPM) plans, and the relationship between the pervasiveness of informal networks (i.e. wasta) in the workplace and this failure across Middle East and North Africa (MENA) organizations, with Jordanian public organizations taken as an illustrative case. A qualitative approach was applied, and a total of 24 semi-structured interviews were conducted in the Jordanian public organization with HR officials in different state-owned enterprises (SOEs), ministries, and government agencies (GAs). The results show that wasta contributes to the failure of NPM implementation in the Jordanian public organizations, and public employees contribute directly to the failure of NPM strategies in Jordanian public organizations for many reasons on top of which their resistant towards these reform plans. Also, our findings show that the implementation of NPM strategies failed to diminish the use of wasta in HRM practices even though wasta was an important reason to implement NPM. This study adds knowledge to the limited informal networks literature, by exploring the interplay between informal networks from one side, and the NPM literature from the other side. It also adds knowledge to wasta literature through uncovering a new dimension of the dark sides of wasta.
Keywords: Wasta, informal networks, New Public Management, MENA region
... Any government activity needs money in order to operate, and the ability to raise money and to spend it (financing and expenditure management) is what distinguishes the institutions of government with other parts of the society. After the financial administrations under many governments have been reorganized, public financial management, under new public management, have followed three main themes; promoting result-oriented management, introducing an accrual-based management accounting system, and the use of market-oriented mechanisms (Christensen and Laegreid, 2013). Therefore, the main focus of this paper is to review literature on the major functions of public sector financial management, followed by an international perspective of the public financial management reforms agenda. ...
... According to Christensen and Laegreid (2013), one main attribute of new public management is the adoption of the management and organizational practices used by private sector organizations. They argued that the new public management movement ascribes to the generic principle that the formal organizations of public and private sectors should be similar. ...
Various public sector reforms have occurred which can be viewed as a major policy shift in the manner in which governmental units exercise their financial management functions. In some countries, this change has given rise to the transformation of the whole public sector financial management. This paper therefore, examined the international perspective of the public sector financial management reforms. The distinctiveness of this paper was the use of a significant body of literature resolute on the existing literature about the new public management and the public financial management reforms from the major four continents of America, Europe, Asia and Africa. The findings could assist in creating awareness on the extent of financial management reforms within the four continents and help the public sector stakeholders to develop measures of enhancing performance and accountability within the public service.
... In addition, many jurisdictions today have an increased realization of the importance of collaboration, also called joined-up governance, and whole-ofgovernment approaches (Christensen and Laegreid, 2010a;O'Leary, Gerard, and Bingham, 2006;Osborne, Radnor, and Nasi, 2013). Included in this is the idea that the purpose of the public sector is service delivery, which includes the need for customer-centric and codesign approaches (Bingham, Nabatchi, and O'Leary, 2005;Osborne 2010;Osborne, Radnor, and Nasi, 2013). ...
... To some, "the horizontal challenge [is now seen] . . . as even more important than the vertical, because [of] the large number of sectoral pillars or 'silos' created [through NPM]" (Christensen and Laegreid, 2010a). Still, NPM persisted despite the realization that it often failed to address complexity (Diefenbach, 2009), with most efforts to address NPM silo effects added onto NPM programs rather than replacing them (Christensen and Laegreid, 2011;Laegreid, 2012, 2015;Lodge and Gill, 2011;Xialong and Christensen, 2019). ...
This Element is about the challenges of working collaboratively in and with governments in countries with a strong New Public Management (NPM) influence. As the evidence from New Zealand analyzed in this study demonstrates, collaboration – working across organization boundaries and with the public – was not inherently a part of the NPM and was often discouraged or ignored. When the need for collaborative public management approaches became obvious, efforts centered around “retrofitting” collaboration into the NPM, with mixed results. This Element analyzes the impediments and catalysts to collaboration in strong NPM governments and concludes that significant modification of the standard NPM operational model is needed including: Alternative institutions for funding, design, delivery, monitoring and accountability; New performance indicators; Incentives and rewards for collaboration; Training public servants in collaboration; Collaboration champions, guardians, complexity translators, and stewards; and paradoxically, NPM governance processes designed to make collaborative decisions stick.
... NPM promoted structural, functional, and territorial disaggregation and decentralization, but at the same time it aimed to strengthen central steering and coordination through various mechanisms and instruments. This type of NPM reform stimulated a significant stream of research on the whole of government and on joinedup government that aimed to improve coordination and integration across government levels, policy areas, and societal actors (Christensen and Laegreid 2016;Dan 2017;Hood 2005). Systemic approaches to policymaking and complexity thinking (Eppel and Rhodes 2017;Geyer and Cairney 2015) further proposed whole-of-government and whole-of-society perspectives that are at odds with the disaggregating and decentralizing elements of NPM. ...
In this introduction to the special issue 'The New Public Management: Dead or still alive and co-existing? State of play at 40+' we suggest that we are witnessing two principal developments when it comes to NPM: its endurance in practice and reconsideration in theory. Building on recent research, we argue that NPM ideas and practices continue to be adopted, used, and tailored to meet reform requirements and preferences, resulting in enduring forms of NPM. Given its lasting influence on administrative practice, we propose the need for a reconsideration of the NPM paradigm within public administration scholarship. We conclude that NPM is a remarkable case of how management and governance ideas endure, leading to important implications for the conceptualization, research, and assessment of administrative movements and governance paradigms as they develop over time.
... Regarding the doctrines that have emerged and prompted bureaucratic changes in several countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the professionalization of administrative structures, the introduction of competition in the public sector, and result optimization (Rocha, 2013;Rocha & Batalhão, 2021) have spread across Europe since the late nineteen-seventies. The rise of these two governance models derives from the combination of, at least, two factors: (a) financial problems due to public debt, and (b) the predominance of neo-liberal and progressive ideals (Christensen & Laegreid, 2011). With the aim of restraining the power of political leaders and assigning more authority to skilled public managers, new public management endeavours to reorganize the public sector with management and accounting models, similar to the models used in the private sector, in response to many bureaucratic stereotypes and to the public agencies' weak response to the clients (Blind et al., 2017;Hyndman & Lapsley, 2016). ...
Public procurement is one of the main instruments of State action and resource allocation and it is used in a wide range of public policies. It is a particularly vital tool for social, environmental and innovation policies. However, it entails many challenges, as public funds are expected to be used to obtain maximum profitability; and market development opportunities must be seized to strategically contribute to innovation, social inclusion, and financial and environmental sustainability of a country. This article, eminently macro-conceptual, discusses the topic of public procurement, characterizing it as a framework for boosting contracting activity in public bodies across Europe, and highlighting the evolution of this practice and its corresponding regulation. Attention will then turn to its main implementation instruments, considering the fundamental principles of public procurement and the EU law restrictions that underpin them. Draws lessons on issues of systematic monitoring of public procurement performance in various European countries, with a view to the concerted practice of public procurement, in compliance with the principles of fairer, more transparent, and more competitive Public Administration.
... Administrasi Publik perlu menjadi agen inovasi dan transformasi. Dalam menghadapi tantangan dan perubahan yang cepat, kemampuan administrasi publik untuk beradaptasi dan memperkenalkan perubahan menjadi esensial untuk meningkatkan kinerja dan efisiensi organisasi pemerintah (Christensen & Laegreid, 2011). ...
... The financial statements of an economic entity in which the assets, liabilities, net assets/equity, revenue, expenses and cash flows of the controlling entity and its controlled entities are presented as those of a single economic entity. (IPSASB, 2015, p. 7) Condenses a large mass of data into a single set of meaningful and useful information (Mellor, 1996) The users and usefulness of CFS can be hard to identify (Stewart and Connolly, 2021) Easier to understand and interpret by readers than the existing array of financial reports which provide an incomplete picture of government finances, and which are based on concepts and principles only understood by a select few (Mellor, 1996) A difficult exercise and one that can only be effective if those consolidated apply a standardised approach to preparing departmental accounts; such attempts at a standardised approach generate their own issues (Barton 2005;Ellwood, 2003;Ellwood and Newberry 2006) Improves accountability to Parliament and facilitates improved transparency in public sector finances (Gomes, Brusca and Fernandes, 2019;Stewart and Connolly, 2021) As CFS can result in a duality of systems between consolidated accounts prepared in accordance with the European System of Accounts (2010) a and IFRS/IPSAS, care is needed in their design, clearly specifying who are the key users of the system Accrual reporting also encourages a longer-term planning perspective by focusing on assets and liabilities, and the nature of each major item in order to determine their impact on future cash flows (Mellor, 1996) For many countries, the budget is maintained as the core of control, raising the question of what value preparing consolidated accounts brings (Bergmann et al., 2016) Helping coordination and integration strategies after the inevitable fragmentation involved in NPM (Christensen and Laegreid, 2011) It raises the question of whether the consolidated financial statement as a means of monitoring financial performance rather than activity performance is enough to ensure accountability Note: a See https:// ec .europa .eu/ ...
We review the literature on consolidated government accounting reforms from a network governance perspective, examining the ways in which such reforms can represent new forms of accountabilities, as well as the tensions that any reforms can bring. Given the diversity of experiences with consolidated government accounts adopted around the world, there is a risk that too much is expected of such reforms as a way in which to facilitate a shift towards network governance. A major challenge is to get appropriate political buy-in, which is essential if the reform is to achieve necessary alignment of its potentially conflicting goals, such as to improve probity (accountability), enhance policymaking and complement existing forms of accounting (e.g., national statistics).
... In 2013, the Arts Council of Finland was transformed to a performance-steered agency, Art Promotion Center Finland (Taike). The establishment of Taike as a performance-supervised agency with the task of implementing national cultural policies represents a development typical of NPM (Egeberg & Trondal 2009;Christensen & Laegreid 2011). It meant a transition to an agency-based decision-making system where the director of the agency has greater decision-making powers. ...
... Following a societal period when the welfare state was the dominant actor, governments have stepped back, relying more on other players to provide public goods and services. Hence, after the new public management era when the market was expected to deal with providing public goods and services ( Christensen & Laegreid, 2011a, 2011bMcLaughlin, Osborne & Ferlie, 2002 ;Pollitt, Van Thiel & Homburg, 2007 ), we now witness a growing reliance in the problem-solving capacity of the community. Some scholars have labeled it a shift toward "new public governance, " a reaction to society becoming more empowered, heterogeneous, and demanding ( Durose & Richardson, 2015a, 2015bFotaki, 2011 ;Osborne, 2010 ;Pierre & Peters, 2000 ). ...
... Scholars suggest the concepts deserve closer scrutiny to understand them (Mirit and Vigoda-Goda, 2017). Scholars, Christensen and Laegreid (2011a;2011b) confirm that the public management literature and public sector organizations understand it to be about the role of political actors with dynamic internal and external relations operating in society (Christensen, Fimreite, and Laegreid 2007). Public sector organizations, Rainy (1990; posits, have specific decision-making capacity because of factors such as political interventions, political constraints, and their diffuse objectives. ...
The success of Sub-Saharan South Africa’s public sector could be deemed dependent on context-relevant knowledge sharing and transfer (KST) frameworks to facilitate knowledge exchange. Knowledge sharing and transfer frameworks which facilitate knowledge management (KM) are still largely influenced by Western research studies, these contributions dominate the field. The extant knowledge sharing and transfer public management frameworks increasingly reflect a predominantly western oriented bias towards objectivist perspectives on knowledge, the alternate practice-based knowledge sharing and transfer frameworks, considered responsive to Sub-Saharan African knowledge exchange problems are under-investigated. This paper thus aims to understand ‘what KST framework factors enhance public management in Sub-Saharan South Africa’. The research was designed as a qualitative study underpinned by interpretivist philosophy. Qualitative data were collected from 15 public sector practitioners, using the semi-structured interview technique. Thematic Analysis and Trans Positional Cognition Approach was used to analyse the data collected. The findings from this study yielded four themes namely, Unique antecedent performance factors; Human performance factors; Organisational performance factors and Continuous learning performance strategies. Rahman’s knowledge sharing and transfer conceptual model was adopted as a theoretical framework and used to better understand the findings of this work. Applying the theoretical framework, we note elements within Rahman’s model could be deemed more applicable in a Western context as it only confirmed two of the study’s four findings. We therefore propose the output of this study as new knowledge within the Knowledge sharing and transfer frameworks’ domain. Our contribution is compatible with the Sub-Saharan South African organisational context. The implication of this within context is that KST implementation in sub-Saharan South Africa could deemed bottom up oriented as against the western approach which is top-down. This study thus contributes to a better understanding of KST Framework implementation in Sub Saharan South Africa and provides opportunity for future research work in this field.
... Para Pollit et al. (2014), este fenómeno global, acuñado "agencificación", fue una de las reformas que mayor impacto tuvo en la vida cotidiana de la ciudadanía, dentro del paradigma de la Nueva Gestión Pública (NGP). Con estas reformas, las administraciones públicas adoptaron prácticas gerenciales y organizacionales provenientes del sector privado (Christensen y Laegreid, 2011), bajo el axioma de la mejoría en los resultados y fortalecimiento de la gestión a través del monitoreo del desempeño (Lapuente & Van de Walle, 2020, p. 469). ...
La innovación docente que se ha utilizado en la presente practica es una herramienta que proporciona un aprendizaje experiencial y autónomo al estudiante, mediante la creación de un relato de identidad personal a través de la presentación de un storytelling en formato audiovisual que le permite presentar su Curriculum Vitae.
A través de la grabación del storytelling se persigue evidenciar las competencias
técnicas que se requieren en comunicación y marketing, así como la adquisición de las competencias transversales más demandas por el mercado laboral, tales como la curiosidad, creatividad, iniciativa, capacidad de adaptación, capacidad de aprendizaje entre otras, teniendo en cuenta las reflejadas en el Informe emitido por la consultora de Recursos Humanos Fundación Addeco (2021).
La realización del vídeo les ha permitido a los alumnos llegar a más destinatarios al
ser difundido por redes sociales y por ello han mejorado su empleabilidad.
Los resultados de la buena práctica han sido muy satisfactorios por parte del alumnado y con una mejora en las calificaciones académicas.
Palabras clave: Competencias transversales, empleabilidad, mercado laboral y
Storytelling.
... There was a later resurgence of evaluation through the increased use of statistical tools and adoption of the New Public Management (NPM). NPM emphasises input-output efficiency and fulfilment of output targets using managerial approaches of the private sector (Christensen & Laegreid, 2016;Dunleavy & Hood, 1994). ...
In this contribution to the inaugural issue of the APJE, we propose to explore two broad areas in the field of evaluation. The first is an expanded normative perspective on what evaluation should entail in principle, drawing from the large and diverse literature on the subject. The second is actual evaluation practice in the Indian context, which is often unrecognisably different from the normative perspective of best practices. Social interventions are designed to change existing social conditions. Unlike in the past, those involved in designing and implementing interventions now expect to calibrate inputs, outputs and outcomes, as well as the procedures and processes connecting them, in order to make them effective. We take "evaluation" to be a set of practices that examine how a social intervention unfolds and that place "values" on its different dimensions (Scriven, 1967; Weiss, 1972). Contemporary education policy, for instance, emphasises measurement of teacher engagement (as input) and student learning (as outcome). The underlying assumption is that the two are linked causally. And yet interventions are sometimes designed and implemented without sufficient regard for how and under what conditions teacher engagement affects student learning. This article retains the conventional approach in which "evaluation" is primarily about looking back at how an intervention fared, even though a variant (ex-ante evaluation) is used "to (hypothetically) anticipate and pre-assess the effects and consequences of planned or defined policies and actions in order to 'feed' the information into the upcoming or ongoing decision-making process" (Wollmann, 2017, p. 393).
... Reforms inspired by New Public Management (NPM) and post-New Public Management (post-NPM) have affected the sector. These reforms typically seek to streamline public sector through goals and performance management (Christensen et al., 2010;Christensen & Laegreid, 2011). Øgård (2005 states that NPM reforms are characterized by more indirect control than direct authority. ...
Reform in higher education is on the agenda worldwide, and there is increasing political interest in the content of study programmes. This article looks at the policy process leading to the new national curriculum regulation (NCR) for kindergarten teacher education (KTE) in Norway in 2012. The following questions derived from Kingdon’s Multiple Streams Theory (MST) will be posed to analyze the policy process: Who were the actors present in each of the different streams in the policy process leading to enacting a new NCR for KTE in 2012? What kind of opportunities for influence did the actors have in deciding to structure the KTE in interdisciplinary knowledge areas, and to what extent did these actors play roles as policy entrepreneurs? The data material consists of policy documents, consultation letters, and an online debate forum. The findings show that three policy windows, each representing different opportunities for impact for the participating actors, were opened during the process. Even if the process can be described as transparent and having a high degree of participation, the Ministry effectively structured it by setting rules and conditions. Nevertheless, one actor managed to take on a role as a policy entrepreneur early in the process.
... The institutional, cultural perspective finally perceives public organizations as institutions reflecting norms and values that develop standards and values across time although structural of organization change [7]. The significance of an organizational culture often becomes apparent when the public administration goes through reform processes and reorganizations, particularly if these processes threaten dominant informal norms and values [8]. ...
... As it is also prominent in the politics of New Public Management (Pollitt, Christopher, Bouckaert & Geert, 2011;Christensen, 2013;Gunter, 2016), alleged policies of necessity are today above all formulated in terms of the unavoidability of critically examining and reforming existing practices in order to be able to measure up to a future that is still arriving, wherefore it can only be apprehended and responded adequately to through critical discernment and anticipation (Raffnsøe & Staunaes, 2014). ...
Since the Enlightenment, critique has played an overarching role in how Western society understands itself and its basic institutions. However, opinions differ widely concerning the understanding and evaluation of critique. To understand such differences and clarify a viable understanding of critique, the article turns to Kant’s critical philosophy, inaugurating the “age of criticism”. While generalizing and making critique unavoidable, Kant coins an unambiguously positive understanding of critique as an affirmative, immanent activity. Not only does this positive conception prevail in the critique of pure and practical reason and the critique of judgment; these modalities of critique set the agenda for three major strands of critique in contemporary thought, culminating in among others Husserl, Popper, Habermas, Honneth, and Foucault. Critique affirms and challenges cognition and its rationality, formulates ethical ideals that regulate social interaction, and further articulates normative guidelines underway in the ongoing experimentations of a post-natural history of human nature.In contradistinction to esoteric Platonic theory, philosophy at the threshold of modernity becomes closely linked to an outward-looking critique that examines and pictures what human forms of life are in the process of making of themselves and challenges them, by reflecting upon what they can and what they should make of themselves. As a very widely diffused practice, however, critique may also become a self-affirming overarching end in itself.
... PSE values have been tested by managerial approaches, chiefly NPM (Hood 1991), but also by public value (Moore 1995;Benington 2011) and NPG (Osborne 2010). NPM emphasizes measurement and performance management, use of league tables, and targets in delivery of public services (Christensen and Laegreid 2011). For example, current UK government performance management targets on police arrests prioritize policy areas such as knife crime, or alternatively NHS waiting times (Elkomy and Cookson 2020) without consideration of underlying causes, how they are achieved or their widening impact. ...
Covid-19 has led to renewed public support for public services. Frontline workers symbolize a renewed ideal of public service ethos (PSE), though little attention has been paid to how the public managers delivering vital services interpret and mobilize PSE. We show how PSE is implemented by public managers reflecting their local contexts. We examine the theoretical roots of PSE and challenges by newer theories of public management before illustrating its contemporary manifestations through three case studies of local government responses to Covid-19 in England, showing how PSE has been adapted in current contexts and continues to inform public management practice.
... Indeed, managerialism was generally a failure in most regions, except in Britain, Australia, New Zealand. It also had a relative performance in some European countries like Norway (Christensen and Laegreid 2016). In SN Bus Econ (2021) developing countries, managerialism introduced the infamous Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) following the Washington Consensus, which significantly registered disastrous outcomes (e.g. ...
Generally, public bureaucracies are typically ill-disposed to promote whistleblowing and whistleblower protection. In developing countries, however, this takes an additional challenge. Public administration in these contexts operates in a largely clientelistic political marketplace. It is mainly characterised by bureaucratic secrecy and well-entrenched networks of gatekeepers/custodians of the deep-sited group interests. Also, public institutions employees are not as easily expendable as private sector employees. Instead, they are often somewhat cushioned by a plethora of laws and intricate and hierarchical disciplinary processes. Besides, they are protected by powerful informal networks within and outside public administration and more importantly, public institutions feature typical developing and democratising challenges. These include personalised loyalty, loosely regulated institutional environments, fluid policy-ownership, extreme disorganisation, institutionalisation deficits (limited statehood conditions), dishonesty, haphazardness, amateurism, and autocratic and self-serving leadership traditions. Under such conditions, conflict of interest is elusive, corruption is less punitive, whistleblowers are despised, and whistleblower protection legislation is implemented in a reactionary manner. This essay dissects these issues within the broader whistleblowing and whistleblower protection and functional governance literature giving nuanced illustrations in India, Bangladesh, Brazil, Ghana and South Africa. Conclusions provide an overview of improving whistleblower protection in developing countries, underpinned mainly in the realisation of democratic public administration.
... For example, when New Public Management (NPM) was recommended as the appropriate approach for public administration (cf. Christensen & Laegreid, 2011), it was perceived as having a high novelty degree in relation to public administration theories: it brought principles of management into the public sector that dramatically changed the idea of how public institutions are and should be managed. Conversely, today, the introduction of new efficiency or effectiveness measures represents just an add-on to that framework, which scores lower in novelty degree. ...
Resilience has attracted a multitude of scholars from diverse backgrounds and disciplines as it is a desired feature for responding to the adversities that modern societal systems face, not least the Covid-19 pandemic. Existing research displays little convergence on the definition of the concept making a robust theoretical framework and empirical understanding of resilience highly desirable. The aim of this chapter is to provide a more holistic understanding of the complex phenomenon of resilience from a multi-sectorial, cross-national and multidisciplinary perspective by proposing an original approach into the state of the art that might enhance future research. This chapter identifies three organizing principles for a framework of resilience. First, resilience embeds both stability and change which are both required elements. Second, adversities and their novelty profile can be mapped onto a typology of absorptive, adaptive and transformative resilience. Third, resilience has a temporal dimension that can be articulated in regard to forecasting, mechanisms and outcomes. The chapters of this edited book are positioned and connected by applying these three principles, in order to both enable theory testing and theory development throughout the volume and provide key empirical insights useful for societies, organizations and individuals.
... As shown in the above paragraphs, many authors have emphasised NPM as an eclectic term (Pollitt, 1995). Nevertheless, the literature still seems to agree that NPM consists of some shared core elements: It is a common set of administrative reforms that has had significant impact globally in the last 25 years, with mutual goals of effectiveness, strengthening customer relations, cutting down on public spending and heightening transparency and accountability (Christensen & Laegreid, 2011a). One description many authors emphasise is the idea that the public sector should learn from the private sector (Boston, 2011). ...
What is managerialism in higher education? And how do academics react to it? In this thesis, the author tries to answer these questions.
The first question is addressed through an analysis of managerialism in light of the history and norms of academic work. The second question is addressed through an interview-based qualitative study of how academics react to managerialism. Drawing on theoretical concepts like resistance, organizational misbehavior, gaming and functional stupidity, the author develops a set of academic reactions to managerialism.
A central argument in the thesis states that academic resistance towards management differs from traditional workplace resistance, as it is performed to protect academic work from what academics see as the corrosive effects of managerial systems.
By addressing these issues, the thesis contributes to the knowledge on academic work in the 21st century, with a special emphasis on how members of faculty react to contemporary developments in the management of universities.
... Indeed, managerialism was generally a failure in most regions, except in Britain, Australia, New Zealand. It also had a relative performance in some European countries like Norway (Christensen and Laegreid 2016). In developing countries, managerialism introduced the infamous Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) following the Washington Consensus, which significantly registered disastrous outcomes (e.g. ...
... Taiken perustaminen kansallista kulttuuripolitiikkaa toimeenpanevaksi, tulosohjatuksi virastoksi edustaa NPM:lle tyypillistä kehitystä (Egeberg ja Trondal 2009;Christensen ja Laegreid 2011). Viraston luominen merkitsi siirtymää päällikkövirastomaiseen päätöksentekojärjestelmään, jossa johtajalla on aikaisempaa enemmän päätösvaltaa. ...
Valtionavustustoiminta on olennainen osa suomalaista yhteiskuntapolitiikkaa ja valtionhallinnon ohjausjärjestelmää. Avustamista toimeenpanevat ministeriöt, tulosohjatut virastot sekä muut asiantuntijaorganisaatiot. Artikkelimme tutkii kulttuurihallinnon virkakunnan vallankäyttöä opetus- ja kulttuuriministeriön (OKM) valtionavustuspolitiikassa. Ymmärrämme kulttuurihallinnon ohjausvälineineen merkittävänä valtaa käyttävänä organisaatiorakenteena. Tarkastelu pohjautuu arviointitutkimukseen OKM:n tulosohjaaman asiantuntijaviraston Taiteen edistämiskeskuksen (Taike) valtionavustusprosessista. Artikkelimme on tapaustutkimus, jossa kuvaamme kulttuuripolitiikan toimeenpanorakenteet ja analysoimme OKM:n ja Taiken ministeriö- ja virastotason yhteistoimintana toteuttamaa valtionavustustoimintaa. Keskeinen aineistomme koostuu kulttuurihallinnon viranhaltijoiden haastatteluista. Tulkitsemme viranhaltijoita aktiivisina toimijoina ja nostamme esiin vallan- käytön mekanismeja. Politiikan ohjausvälineiden sekä valtionavustusprosessin puitteissa tarkastelemme viranhaltijoiden vallankäyttöä sekä keskinäisenä kamppailuna että suhteena poliittiseen päätöksentekoon ja avustuksia hakeviin järjestöihin. Nykyinen kulttuuripolitiikan ohjausjärjestelmä sisältää toimintatapoja julkishallinnon paradigmoista. Yksittäisillä viranhaltijoilla on paras tieto järjestelmän eri osista ja mahdollisuuksia vaikuttaa kulttuuripoliittisen järjestelmän toimintaan useilla tavoilla aina strategisesta suunnittelusta ja politiikan valmisteluvaiheesta arviointiohjaukseen asti. Lopputuloksena esitämme kuusi viranhaltijoiden valtaa ilmentävää teemakokonaisuutta. Valtionavustustoiminta ja siihen kytkeytyvä ohjaus ei ole lineaarinen hallinnollinen prosessi, vaan jatkuvaa, syklistä poliittista toimintaa, joka on kytköksissä erilaisiin julkishallinnon vaiheisiin ja tavoitteisiin. Valtasuhteet eivät myöskään ole yksisuuntaisia, vaan esimerkiksi kansalaisyhteiskunta on Suomessa perinteisesti vaikuttanut ja vaikuttaa edelleen hallinnon ratkaisuihin.
Strategic management is a crucial process involving the formulation, implementation, and evaluation of decisions to achieve an organization's long-term objectives. This research examines the role of strategic management in improving the performance of public organizations in Indonesia, focusing on a review of various strategic management approaches and practices, as well as the challenges of implementation in the public sector. The method used in this study is a literature review, sourcing from books, academic journals, articles, and other relevant materials related to the research topic. Findings from this literature review indicate that adapting to technology and employing participatory approaches are key to enhancing public organization performance. However, challenges such as bureaucracy and resistance to change remain significant obstacles. With the right approach, public organizations in Indonesia can overcome these challenges and achieve better performance in serving the community.
Background: In South African local government, citizen-based monitoring (CBM) for frontline service delivery is pivotal for enhancing governance. Understanding the factors shaping effective CBM in this context is crucial for improving public service delivery. This study examines the complex dynamics involving government departments, community-based organisations (CBOs) and local media communities in CBM to uncover challenges and opportunities within frontline service delivery.Aim: This research identifies and analyses the factors impacting the effective CBM of frontline service delivery in South African local government. Despite existing research, gaps persist in understanding collaboration among government departments, CBOs and local media in frontline service delivery.Setting: The study conducted within South African local government focuses on frontline services like healthcare and education across urban and rural areas, ensuring comprehensive insights into CBM challenges.Methods: A mixed-methods approach was used, including qualitative interviews, surveys and document analysis. Interviews with government officials, CBO representatives and media members provided qualitative data, while surveys collected quantitative insights from citizens. Secondary sources supplemented the findings.Results: The study reveals multifaceted factors influencing CBM in frontline service delivery, including communication dynamics, resource availability, political influences and diverse stakeholder perceptions.Conclusion: Addressing these factors requires stakeholder collaboration to foster trust, allocate resources and mitigate political influences. Policymakers must optimise CBM to enhance frontline service delivery.Contribution: This study contributes to improving public service access and quality in South African local government by identifying challenges and opportunities. It offers insights for policymakers and stakeholders to enhance transparency, accountability and citizen engagement.
Developing countries have adopted or adapted public sector reform interventions based largely on the model of new public management (NPM). Since this model has now been rejected as a global ‘one‐size‐fits‐all’ framework, what does post‐new public management hold for developing countries? This paper offers a preliminary review of the literature on public sector reforms in developing countries. It charts scholarship which examined the evolution (including different types of policy interventions), the failure of NPM, and contemporary approaches to reform. The post‐new public management era is ill‐defined, eclectic, and characterised as hybrid and layered where new reforms are superimposed on pre‐existing interventions to deliver ‘good enough’ governance in developing countries.
The aim of the paper is to present conceptual framework used to assess Europeanization in Lithuania during the last 10 years across the classical to Europeanization literature dimensions of polity, politics and policy. In the article author reviews Europeanization literature, the main approaches as well as their critique and weak points. Author argues that because usually consequences of Europeanization are fragmented and hardly possible to generalize, therefore, it is wise to look at the new EU member states, where this impact was concentrated. The latest Europeanization literature, however,mostly critically views the very concept of Europeanization, especially because of its inability to include factors of domestic politics. Transitology approach also has certain drawbacks which cannot explain changes in the new EU members. Thus, it is argued by the author that Europeanization theory has to be complemented by additional approaches accounting for a domestic change. Therefore, Europeanization is put into a broader development studies. The theory of development produced by Douglass C. North, John Joseph Wallis and Barry R. Weingast serves as theoretical framework in the research. This theory is about a long-term change based on depatrimonialization of a given society and move from the so-called natural state characterized by the use of rents into an open access regime characterized by universal rights, competition, wide use of public goods and density of organizations. This developmental approach puts an emphasis on the role of elites, state capture and broader transformation of the society and thus focuses and complements the current theory of Europeanization. It also provides a framework to analyse the issue of corruption and state capture, which is no longer considered as a deviation, but rather as a norm.
A pandemia COVID-19 tem desafiado uma infinidade de atores e de setores a realizar ações coletivas para resolver a dramática crise global de saúde, revivendo um problema recorrente na história da humanidade: a coordenação das ações, ou a falta dela. A ciência não tem exceção: a concorrência desenfreada de países e empresas farmacêuticas para gerar vacinas e tratamentos revela que, longe de ser resolvida, a coordenação da pesquisa continua sendo uma questão válida. Este artigo faz uma revisão crítica das tentativas de coordenação da ciência dos últimos 40 anos, com particular interesse nos países federais, mais propensos à dispersão, duplicação e lacunas. Uma revisão da literatura permitiu uma revisão das políticas e instrumentos de coordenação e culminou com a proposta de estudar as redes de políticas em ciência, em busca de uma análise mais granular dos atores do ecossistema de pesquisa.
Performance appraisal interviews are a distinct feature of modern work organisations. A generic organisational script, appraisals have also been adopted by traditional professions within old religious institutions. Based on the theory of institutional logics, this article aims at providing new knowledge about the interplay of professionalism and managerialism in pastoral appraisals. It addresses the following research question: How do professional and managerial logics intersect in performance appraisal interviews of pastors in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Norway? This study clarifies the function, contents and ambiguity of appraisals by interviewing pastors and their leaders and analysing their experiences and expectations of appraisals. The author discusses how ideal-typical professional and managerial logics are demarcated and hybridised in appraisals. With the church in a state of transition, this study shows how the pastor profession constructs itself in appraisals by drawing on both logics yet primarily safeguarding professionalism.
The challenge of understanding social and political order is enduring in the social sciences (Elster, 2007; Waldo, 1992) with continuous disputes over ‘the legitimate role of democratic politics in society’ and ‘forms of political association’ (Olsen, 2016: 1–5). This chapter makes a plea for public administration scholarship and organization theory to understand the multilevel administrative state. Government institutions are essential components of contemporary democracies and play fundamental building-blox in the democratic governing of modern societies (Dunleavy & Rhodes, 1990; Orren & Skowronek, 2017; Wilson, 1887: 221). In recent decades, however, architecture of government has faced profound challenges by being increasingly embedded into multilevel federal structures. Yet, political order formation above and beyond the nation state is less studied and still poorly understood (Benz et al., 2021). This chapter discusses administrative integration in the EU and examines implications for political order. Political order consists of a relatively stable arrangement of institutions that are formalized and institutionalized. One implication is that government civil servants carry dual roles in a multilevel executive order that span levels of authority. Serving as key actors in implementing and enforcing EU rules on national ground, government officials personalize multilevel executive orders by working within national ministries and agencies while simultaneously partaking in European administrative networks and interacting with EU agencies and the Commission (Egeberg, 2006; Trondal, 2010). The chapter outlines a conceptual scheme of administrative integration and outlines an organizational theory approach to account for dynamics of administrative (dis)integration.
The widespread use of government contracting opens up learning opportunities in public organizations’ engagements with private contractors. However, whether public organizations utilize these opportunities to improve their practices has scant coverage in the government contracting literature. We adapt insights from the organizational learning literature, develop an argument on the learning logic in government contracting, and examine manager perceptions of learning outcomes and whether intra- and inter-organizational and contextual conditions shape the learning outcomes. The argument is assessed against survey data reporting on the municipal park and road managers’ contracting experiences in Scandinavia. The findings show that government contracting in the context of the study is associated with positive learning outcomes and indicates possible tradeoffs between conventional cost-driven and learning strategies. The implications contribute to discussions about the role and benefits of government contracting beyond cost savings in the post-NPM reform era.
This article explores the effects of a reform inspired by New Public Management with the objective of analyzing whether the incorporation of technical criteria in the selection system for Senior Public Management (SADP) in Chile generates positive effects on institutional performance. Using quantitative, public and objective information from 72 Chilean public services, for the period 2004 to 2015, five statistical models are estimated using data panel. The explanatory variable used is the length of tenure of the SAPD appointee, which accounts for accumulated experience. Five outcome variables related to institutional performance are used, one for each model: productivity, efficiency, annual budget execution, budget execution at the third quarter and compliance with performance indicators. The results show that there are only significant effects of the SADP on compliance with the performance indicators, which indicates that the political-technical system for the selection of top management in Chile has not had the expected results since its creation. One of the possible causes is the low time of permanence in the position, less than three years, which is not enough to achieve the required learning to contribute to the improvement of management and service provision.
Hospitals in Norway are organized as trusts, required to follow the same accounting principles as the private sector, and responsible for funding their own investments. Thus, being able to run with a surplus has been an important part of their management. We analyze hospital budgeting for the whole sector over a 9‐year period, looking at the size of the budget surplus, degree of optimism bias, and degree of budget accuracy when comparing to the actual financial results. Our findings indicate that on average, health trusts budget with a relatively small surplus. We find indications for optimism bias, but also examples of pessimism bias. Large health trusts seem to have a higher degree of accuracy of the budgeted results. Trusts that fail to meet budgeted results have a lower budgeted surplus the following period. Capital intensity, an indication of need for new investments, is not associated with budget surplus, degree of optimism, or budget accuracy.
Med paradigmet om brugerinddragelse forventes borgere i dag at påtage sig et ansvar for at styre, mestre og overvåge deres egen sundhed. Brugerinddragelse lægger derfor op til mere grundlæggende forandringer i relationen mellem borger og professionel, og udfor- drer eksisterende videns- og ansvarshierarkier. I denne artikel undersøger vi hvordan de professionelle i psykiatrien oversætter idéer om brugerinddragelse til praksis, og hvordan deres professionelle ansvar, viden og relationsarbejde samtidig forandres og sættes under pres. Artiklen er baseret på narrative interviews med professionelle i en større institution i den regionale distriktspsykiatri. Vi demonstrerer hvordan spændinger imellem forskel- lige forståelser af recovery, og deres praktiske fortolkninger hos henholdsvis professionelle og borgerne, former den måde brugerinddragelse bliver til på. Vi viser desuden, hvordan mestring af brugerinddragelse med vægt på brugerens viden og autonomi, fører til prakti- sering af ’tilbageholdt faglighed’. En tilgang til det psykiatriske arbejde, der skal opmuntre borgeren til at indtage positionen som ansvarlig og rationelt målrettet handlende aktør i eget liv. Dette er dog ikke uproblematisk; vi viser hvordan borgernes perspektiver og mål indgår i brugerinddragelsens forhandlingsrum, og hvordan de fagprofessionelles viden og vurdering og borgerens mål ofte kommer i konflikt. Vi peger således på hvordan balancer imellem risiko og ansvar i sundhedspraksis spilles ud på nye måder. I et arbejde hvor etab- lering af langvarige relationer til borgerne opfattes som centralt for at kunne lykkes med behandling, spiller emotionelt arbejde en vigtig rolle i at forhandle borgernes personlige mål, at opnå professionelle mål, samt som en del af at etablere et meningsfuldt arbejde. Vi diskuterer afslutningsvis hvordan spændinger i den brugerinddragende praksis har impli- kationer for det emotionelle arbejde.
Studies suggest that citizens have higher trust in some groups of scientists than in others. However, we still know little about the causes of these trust gaps. The current study fills this knowledge gap by examining Norwegian citizens' trust in climate scientists, economists, and so‐called “less politicized natural scientists.” I argue that trust in climate scientists and economists is lower than trust in less politicized natural scientists because the former fields are politicized, while the latter are not. Politicization strengthens ideological conflicts between citizens' ideology and research produced by climate scientists and economists, which leads to lower trust in these groups of scientists. I test this argument by running regression analyses on data from a representative survey of the Norwegian population. The results support the argument: Citizens have significantly higher trust in less politicized natural scientists than in both climate scientists and economists, and these differences can be explained by ideological biases in trust. Citizens with a proeconomic growth ideology have significantly lower trust in climate scientists than in less politicized natural scientists, and citizens with a left‐wing economic ideology have significantly lower trust in economists than in less politicized natural scientists.
The introduction of market-based competition into the public service delivery process may incentivize desirable bureaucratic behaviors but may also have unintended effects. Using a sample of public servants from 48 countries and cross-country estimates of public service marketization, this study provides evidence of a competition-based erosion of public service motivation (PSM). Second, using three different estimates of external market competitiveness, the analysis shows that the negative effect of marketization on PSM strengthens as external competitiveness intensifies. This study extends the motivational crowding literature by linking the hypothesis to contextual factors and testing the theory in a cross-national setting.
Artikkelen diskuterer muligheter og utfordringer knyttet til koordinering på tvers av styringsnivåer. Utfordringen er minst tredelt: Dels knyttet til balansen mellom kontinuitet og endring, nærmere bestemt evnen offentlig forvaltning har til å balansere en stabil kjerne samtidig som den justerer, oppdaterer og reformerer; dels balansen mellom effektivitet og legitimitet, nærmere bestemt evnen til kortsiktig problemløsningen i møtet med kriser og langsiktige utfordringer knyttet til legitime løsninger generelt og parlamentarisk forankring konkret; dels dilemmaet mellom politisk-administrativ orden i turbulente tider, nærmere bestemt hvordan offentlige institusjoner håndterer kriser og vanskelige problemer når sammenhengene mellom problem og løsning er vanskelige å forstå og krevende å kontrollere. Artikkelen diskuterer disse dilemmaene i det som fremstilles som en europeisk administrativ flernivåstat.
The study contributes to our knowledge of leadership in public organizations on three specific areas. First, it is a unique exploration of whether managers in publicly owned organizations perceive less job autonomy than managers in privately owned and hybrid organizations. Hybrid organizations are defined in two categories: shareholder companies with both public and private owners, and public companies (organizations selling their products or services, but publicly owned). Second, the study investigates possible mechanisms - more specifically formalization and professionalization - through which organizational ownership (public, private, and hybrid) is assumed to affect managerial autonomy. Finally, the study incorporates important confounding variables – first and foremost size (number of employees), task (technology), and hierarchical level - missing from many other comparisons of public and private organizations. The main findings support the notion that perceived managerial autonomy in publicly owned organizations is lower than in both hybrid and private organization. These differences are not, however, explained by differences in formalization and professionalization.
The cultural sector has increasingly adopted practices of impact measurement to justify public investment. While scholars have investigated the (de)merits of this cultural trend, literature on its rationale, development, and evolution is limited. We address this oversight by uncovering the intellectual history of impact measurement in cultural contexts. We reveal how measurement justification and practice became misaligned over time, creating a latent paradox of impact measurement in cultural contexts. We argue that current practices of impact measurement both strengthen and weaken the justification for public cultural investment. In the short term, impact measurement strengthens investment justification by providing cursory evidence of produced outcomes. In the long term, current practices weaken this justification by failing to produce counterfactual accounts for how cultural spend achieves funding objectives. We problematize this paradox and outline future research to either confront, embrace, or cope with its existence.
Management by Objective through Open Performance Review and Appraisal System (OPRAS) was introduced in Tanzania for evaluation of public servants work performance in 2004. The aim of this study was to investigate how teachers perceive the implementation of OPRAS as a mechanism of assessing their work performance and making them accountable for their teaching. The study was mainly qualitative with some aspects of quantitative data. It involved 108 informants, where 90 were the primary school classroom teachers, 10 headteachers, 6 school committee members and 2 district educational officials. The data were collected through questionnaires, interviews, and focus group discussion. Some teachers think if OPRAS contract could well be worked out, it could improve the performance; however, there are those teachers who think OPRAS is impractical and unrealistic to the Tanzanian context where pupils are congested in classrooms with shortage of desks. During the school visit in both Kinondoni Dar es Salaam and Mbeya City findings indicated that OPRAS had been abandoned as it created hostility between headteachers and teachers. Teachers complained of the expenses involved in duplicating the copies and the time consumed for discussion. I argue in this paper that although evaluation of teachers is important, the adoption of the type of assessment for their work performance has to be considered because of the nature of the field and the complications involved in dealing with human mind. Teaching is a labour-intensive process. Teachers cannot, by means of their teaching, determine how many pupils will pass a given exam and how well they will do in their exams under the OPRAS requirements.
Resumen: La pandemia del COVID-19 ha interpelado a una multitud de actores y sectores a llevar a cabo una acción colectiva para resolver la dramática crisis sanitaria mundial, reavivando un problema recurrente en la historia de la humanidad: la coordinación de acciones, o la falta de ella. La ciencia no ha sido la excepción: la competencia desenfrenada de países y farmacéuticas para generar vacunas y tratamientos revela que, lejos de estar resuelta, la coordinación de la investigación sigue siendo una cuestión vigente. Este artículo hace un repaso crítico de los intentos de coordinación de la ciencia de los últimos 40 años, con particular interés en los países federales, más propensos a la dispersión, la duplicación y los vacíos. Una revisión bibliográfica permitió pasar revista de las políticas e instrumentos de coordinación y culmina con una propuesta de estudiar las redes de políticas en ciencia, a la búsqueda de un análisis más granular de los actores del ecosistema de investigación. Palabras clave: Coordinación de la investigación. Políticas e instrumentos de coordinación. Redes de políticas en ciencia. Países federales.
Hybridity has become a widely-used concept in public management theory and practice. Yet, there is limited insight in what constitutes a hybrid organization. This article argues that it is not enough to say an organization is hybrid; you need to say how an organization is hybrid, as organizations can mix the characteristics of state and market on several dimensions and with differing intensities. They all have, as it were, a distinctive hybrid thumbprint, which can influence an organization's performance and hence the quality of its service provision. Therefore, a model is presented to visualize this unique thumbprint.
The national budget system shows what the government intends to do during the period of its fiscal calendar and how it intends to finance its activities. It is these budgetary activities and their implications on public financial management that the study sought to assess. Particularly, the study was guided by the research questions as to whether the national budget system of Rwanda is perceived to be effective in terms of preparation, execution, reporting and follow up?; how effective the Rwandan system of budget is, in terms of compliance and clean up audit?; and whether the Rwandan budget system help in enhancing the effectiveness of public financial management? The study applied descriptive and inferential research technique in analysing both quantitative and qualitative data, form five ministries in Rwanda. The results indicated that the national budget system and effective public sector financial management of selected ministries are significantly correlated.
Continued critiques, evidence and newer reform trends have increasingly contested the use of market-centered models–the competition prescription–for urban public space maintenance as well as other local services. This article adopts a contextualized contingency perspective on the competition prescription and questions the contested status of market-centered models in a survey-based study of the current use of and satisfaction with private providers for maintenance of parks/greenspaces and road/streets in Scandinavian local governments. The study finds widespread use of and satisfaction with private providers. However, satisfaction depends on national context and multiple contingencies. The study challenges the contested status of market-centered models, highlights that different models serve different strategic objectives, and directs attention to discussions of context and key contingencies that define how well market-centered models perform.
The Programme for International Student Achievement (PISA) has become the most influential comparative assessment in our time, as PISA has induced media debate and triggered reform measures in the education systems of several countries. The programme has caused shockwaves in the educational landscape in Norway, and led to a reorganisation of educational policies. This research sought, first, to explore press coverage and debate intensity in Norwegian newspapers in the wake of PISA releases, and second, to discuss the use of media strategies among Norwegian officeholders to investigate how the media portray cases in which they are involved. Blame management is an example of how officeholders can attempt to avoid blame or displace it onto political opponents. Using their media responses as data, the nature and value of blame management were analysed in relation to a game theoretical framework. Patterns and themes emerging from the data were described quantitatively and qualitatively, and illustrated by direct quotations from political and bureaucratic officeholders. It is important to gain a better understanding of the dynamics in media coverage of educational matters, and how participants in the game use strategic tools. This study contributes to the understanding of the media’s shaping of education policies and debates. The significance of the media and the media strategies in use suggest that educational research should expand its perspectives towards how the media influences public opinion on educational quality. Key words: blame management, government, PISA, public opinion.
Operational auditing, also known as comprehensive auditing, management auditing, performance auditing, and value-for-money auditing, has had a diverse history across countries and professional disciplines. Although operational auditing is primarily a function of the internal and governmental auditor, public accountants and management consultants also perform similar audits. The roots of operational auditing go in multiple directions, as various organisations have played major roles in its development. Influential organisations were the General Accounting Office (GAO), under the leadership of T. Coleman Andrews; the American Institute of Management, led by Jackson Martindell; the Canadian Comprehensive Auditing Foundation, under the leadership of J. J. Macdonell; and the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA), under the leadership of many individuals. Although the work of Martindell was carried on simultaneously with that of the IIA and the GAO, there was little influence of one group on another. In other words, two different professions developed operational auditing independently, but simultaneously. The US was the leader in the development of the concept of operational auditing. Surprisingly, despite its leadership in operational auditing development, principles developed in the US have not been adopted by other nations. Instead, Canada developed its own system, which was later partly copied by others in the British Commonwealth. This historical view of operational auditing across English-speaking countries provides evidence that international diffusion and cross-disciplinary diffusion of auditing ideas has been minimal.
Public sector reform has persisted for a sufficient length of time in several countries to examine patterns over the longer term. Australia and New Zealand are both early and long-term reforming countries that display distinctive features as well as being Anglophone countries identified with new public management. As third generation reformers, the products of more than two decades of reform activity are becoming clearer: the starker manifestations of new public management have less prominence now and a set of distinctive trends has emerged with commonalities across the two countries. The synthesis of elements in the third generation suggests that system integration and performance are central to the prevailing approach and that an emergent model is best represented in the mid-2000s as integrating governance. The article explores the constituent elements and significance of the new model and its relationship to earlier models.
This article defines the public audit function and identifies pressures changing Value for Money (VFM) auditing in the public sector in the UK. These pressures have prompted a range of innovations in how organizations such as the National Audit Office carry out their evaluations. Related to these pressures is the rise of formal futures within the public sector. The implications of this thinking for VFM public auditing are examined. It is argued that, although conventional VFM auditing remains appropriate for much of the public sector, there are a growing number of public sector activities requiring a different approach. Such approaches include scenario planning. These not only present methodological problems for auditors but also raise important issues about the role of audit more generally. Finally, although these new tools may be helpful in many respects, it is suggested that they may increase the tension between anchoring parliamentary accountability in some statements of fact and contributing to improvements in the quality of public services.
The contribution undertakes to focus on the process of administrative reform in Greece during the past twenty years. In doing so, the strategies of the two central party organisations in Greek politics, the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) and New Democracy (ND) are detailed. The core argument consists in elaborating that administrative reform efforts have been intrinsically shaped by and are the results of specific features of competition between the two major political parties. Albeit with differences in approaches and priorities, both PASOK and ND reproduced the two major deficits of administrative reform in Greece: redundant reforms and re‐emergence of clientelistic practices.
This article investigates the role of the state auditor in Alberta. An analysis of the Office of the Auditor General of Alberta’s annual reports shows that the role of the Office has significantly changed to promote and encourage the implementation in the public sector of a particular type of accountability informed by new public management. The authors argue that the Office has increased its power to influence politicians and public servants about the merits of its specific understanding of what accountability should be. However, as the Office becomes more powerful, it also becomes more vulnerable to complaints about a lack of independence from the executive. Indeed, the Office is now so closely associated with new public management that we believe that it is difficult for the Office to sustain the claim that it is able to provide independent assessments of public-sector administration.
For a couple of decades, employment and social integration policies have undergone significant transformations. In order to grasp the theoretical and practical meaning of these evolutions, new analytical tools and normative frameworks are needed. This is the very task that we pursue in this chapter. In the first section, the main evolutions are identified as well as their consequences in terms of analytical tools. Indeed, the contemporary transformations imply that the key locus of social policies is the local agency where the beneficiaries are assessed (as to the legitimacy of their claim, their degree of employability, and so on) and where active labour market programmes are actually designed and implemented. Therefore, new analytical tools are to be found in order to theoretically and critically assess these new modes of governance. The second section paves the road in this direction, by advocating the relevance of the capability approach (Sen, 1985, 1992, 1993, 1999) in such a context. In contrast with an employability (or human capital) perspective, which remains to a large extent entrapped in a technocratic or centralised conception of social policy, the capability approach genuinely takes into consideration what is the true goal of social policy, that is, the well-being and capacity to act of the beneficiaries. The concluding section takes a more policy-oriented view and identifies the main challenges faced by contemporary social integration policies in a capability perspective.
Individualisation and situated public action
New patterns of public action
Since the early 1980s there has been a threefold evolution of social policies in the field of labour market integration and the struggle against unemployment, which is by now well documented:
• • first, a shift from passive measures (that is, benefits provided on the basis either of citizenship or of previous payment record, without further behavioural requirements on behalf of the jobseeker) to active programmes, in which the benefit payment is conditional upon the appropriate behaviour of the recipient, especially concerning their efforts to get back to the labour market as quickly as possible. In the literature, this first shift is captured as the move from decommodification to recommodification, where social policies are subordinated to labour market objectives as illustrated by the current focus on employability;
• • second, a move towards individual measures, implying the substitution of the standardised programmes of conventional social policies based on predefined categories of social risk by individualised tailor-made policies.
Providing a new comparative analysis of the changes which have radically questioned the 'old' organizational arrangements of the delivery of welfare services since the early 1980s, this book argues that new managerial accountability regimes severely undermine the democratic foundations of the welfare state in Europe.
‘Choice’ and ‘voice’ have become watchwords of current policy and provision in public services. Evidence points to choice serving as an important incentive for promoting quality, efficiency, and equity in public services, and in many cases more effectively than relying solely or largely upon alternative mechanisms such as ‘voice’. This chapter argues that both choice and voice have their merits, based on the need which users identify for ensuring that providers listen to what they have to say. While notions of choice invite images of public service users ‘shopping around’ for the best provider, the best appointment time, the best housing, and so on, there are different elements to people's relationships with the public services they use, which mean that it is ‘not like shopping’.
This chapter suggests evidence that there is logic to the idea of the fragmentation of healthcare consumers. There is an evident move from a position in which consumers were characterised as passive and compliant, accepting the authority not only of medical science but also of the professional as decision maker. Expectations of the service encounter vary from compliant acceptance of both medical science and authority, to the active challenging of medical science as a paradigm and the medical professional as decision maker. The challenge lies in balancing the competing, and occasionally contradictory, perspectives of all the parties involved within a context in which the consumerist discourse has gained primacy. Given this trajectory of evolution, the retention of a unitary ‘one-size-fits-all’ model of service provision would seem unlikely to be effective in meeting these expectations and in ensuring consumer satisfaction.
In this article an alternative theory on the generation of social capital is presented. Contrary to standard accounts of social capital theory that emphasize how generalized trust is built up by the citizens themselves through a culture that permeates the networks and organizations of civil society. The focus here is how social capital is embedded in and linked to formal political and legal institutions. The argument is that trust thrives most in societies with effective, impartial and fair street-level bureaucracies with which citizens are in direct contact. The article presents the causal mechanism between these institutional characteristics and generalized trust, and illustrates its validity in a cross-national context.
S'appuyant sur des enquêtes réalisées dans l'enseignement supérieur et au ministère de l'équipement, les auteurs proposent une analyse des pratiques contractuelles qui ont été développées au sein du secteur public entre des directions centrales et leurs unités locales. Ils montrent tout d'abord que ces contrats valent moins par les documents qui les concrétisent que par le processus engagé pour les élaborer et les mettre en œuvre. Toutefois, si ces dispositifs contractuels ont contribué à modifier les relations centre-périphérie dans les deux cas étudiés et à accroître l'autonomie des unités locales, ils restent inscrits dans une logique de pilotage vertical et centralisateur.
In this chapter, we suggest that modern globalization, in the absence of other strong regulatory systems, has carried a worldwide wave of scientization. And authoritative scientization, in turn, created the foundation for an environment in which all sorts of social participants (from individuals to national states to corporations) can and must become organized social “actors.” Turbulence in the world comes under a sort of control through scientific rationalization, relying on a natural “sovereign” in the absence of strong legal or organizational ones. As a result of its expanding authority, scientization encourages the constitution of various social entities as organized, rule-making, and empowered actors. Uncertainties are transformed from mysteries into risks that must be managed (the European version; see Beck 1992) or into opportunities for more effective action (the American version; see Peters and Waterman 1982). In this environment, we see every new science or scientist or recognized scientific finding as tending to create incentives and requirements for forceful collective rule-making and for elaborated organization, both on a global scale. Scientization disciplines and rationalizes the chaotic uncertainties of social environments, facilitating the creation of articulate rule systems, so that social actors can organize to deal with them. And given scientization, social actors must organize to manage the newly rationalized uncertainties in order to be or appear to be sensible and responsible. They must incorporate new technologies and create organizational routines to deal with the now supposedly manageable environment, in order to be properly accountable. © Cambridge University Press 2006 and Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Public organizations vary considerably. Yet little attention has been paid to the systematic analysis of this diversity. Drawing on case studies of four public organizations and a survey on all central government organizations in Denmark, variations in tasks, environments, constituencies, and central governance are conceptualized. Public organization tasks can be analysed at three levels ranging from user-oriented outputs, general outputs which can further be divided into policy goals, scope of profile, standard setting and capital accumulation, to the normative base of the public sector. Public organizations vary with regard to the emphasis put on level of output and on how the different aspects of the tasks are interrelated. Variations in constituencies and exchange cycles with the environment are further related to different task profiles. Finally it is shown that central oversight organizations compete with other actors in the public organizations' environment in the governance of public organizations. From an organizational point of view 'the state' appears to have a humble and remote position.
This article will try to sort out myths from realities by exploring three broad questions: • Has the state in fact become more fragmented? • What is the evidence about the effect of structure on performance? • What do the likely future trends imply for the structure of the state?
This article revisits the main elements of the theory of the audit explosion, critically addressing the extent to which its claims have relevance beyond the UK context. The argument begins with the traditional model of auditing, against which the transformations implied by the audit explosion theory can be evaluated. This is followed by a broad, and no doubt familiar, account of the public management reforms which have, in some countries and in some domains, been strongly associated with an audit explosion. Third, an explicit comparison between the UK and the USA is made and its implications for the theory are considered. The second half of the article shifts to the critical focus of the theory of the audit explosion. First, the significance of auditable systems of control for the expansion of audit processes is emphasized. Second, a variety of adverse consequences of the audit explosion are addressed. The article concludes with a series of reflections on the normative issues at stake in the design of auditing and inspection practices if the worst excesses of the audit explosion are to be avoided.
Historically in America two branches of management science have developed: one in the private sector and one in the public sector. Recently, this conventional taxonomy has been challenged and around the country there is emerging a more generic approach to management. This article argues that management has universal applications whether it be in the profit or business sector or in the non-profit public sector. While there are important distinctions to be made, this article concludes that management in the private sector and in the public sector are more similar than different.
Despite much scholarly research on the link between macroeconomic evaluations and political behavior, relatively little is known about the influence of government economic policy on this process. Margaret Thatcher's recent sales of public assets (privatization) in Britain provide a unique opportunity to examine the link between microeconomic activity (measured by privatization), macroeconomic evaluations, and voting. By applying multivariate analysis to data collected during the 1983 and 1987 general elections, we show that privatization (measured by share purchases and council house ownership) stimulates positive judgments about the country's economy. However, the effect of privatization on the vote is almost entirely indirect, via these retrospective judgments about the economy. While privatization has undoubtedly benefited the Conservatives electorally, the evidence on council house purchases suggests that the impact may be temporary.
This paper develops a two-stage model of the decision to contract out. The first stage is the choice of whether to produce publicly provided services internally, externally, or to reduce costs as well as potential cost savings, which depend primarily on the nature of a particular service. The second stage in the contracting decision is the choice of sector with which to contract-other governments, private firms, or nonprofit organizations. Sector choice is primarily influenced by the nature of the service and the availability of suppliers in the different sectors. The model is used to analyze the current contracting patterns of 1,780 cities and counties from across the United States.
The reform of public services in the UK has been driven - in part - by a conception of citizens as consumers of public services, a conception that has been articulated in narratives about the wider social transition to a consumer culture. This paper explores the political and policy discourses of New Labour's citizen-consumer. We examine some of the conditions, condensation and consequences of this hyphenated identification in the context of New Labour's political and governmental project. We draw on a recent research project that examined the shift towards a consumerist orientation in public services, using material from this project to explore popular understandings of identifications and relationships with one particular public service: health care.1 We end by considering some of the political and analytical implications of such everyday understandings and the forms of reasoning that they involve.
The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks stunned Americans. They also created new and unprecedented challenges for public administration, in theory and practice. A careful look at these challenges, however, reveals a familiar core: At its foundation, homeland security is about one of public administration's oldest puzzles—coordination. Although the field has a great deal to say about solving this puzzle, homeland security introduces new and especially difficult dimensions: matching place-based problems with functionally organized services; defining and achieving a minimum level of protection that all citizens ought to receive; building a reliable learning system for problems that, with luck, occur only rarely; balancing the new homeland security mission with existing missions that remain important; and meeting citizens' expectations in a fragmented governance system. These challenges demand a new, more effective system of contingent coordination, one that flexibly develops and matches government's capacity to new and unpredictable problems.
In his Autumn Statement for 1992, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Rt. Hon. Norman Lamont announced a new initiative to attract more funding from the private sector into public sector projects. Measures have since been taken to implement the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) across all main departments of government as well as in executive agencies and other public bodies. This article examines the origins of the policy, evaluates its significance for public bodies and looks at what the initiative has achieved in practical terms.
What is the state of public service values in EU countries that have experienced similar yet far from identical administrative reforms? This article compares the findings of empirical studies on public sector values in three EU countries: the Netherlands, one of the founders of the EU and a member since 1951; Denmark, a member since 1973; and Estonia, a very new member that joined the EU in 2004 together with several other former Soviet countries. There are many similarities, as well as a number of interesting differences, among the three countries. In general, their public sector value orientations are in keeping with the values for public organizations in EU memberstates prescribed in the Sigma project, which supports prospective members.
This article examines the place that the reform of central government ministries — the ‘Hashimoto reforms’ — has occupied within the context of administrative reform in the last half of the 20th century. The first part traces the administrative reforms attempted by successive governments, with particular reference to the Hashimoto reforms in comparison with the earlier highly productive ‘Rinchô’ reforms. The article also identifies the controversial points inherent in the Hashimoto reforms and considers the implications of these reforms for Japanese government in the 21st century. Brief reference is also made to the administrative reforms being pursued by the government as of 2004.
Public administration writers, with some notable exceptions, generally have not paid a great deal of attention to the history of ideas. However, public administration inquiry is profoundly affected by longstanding political and social ideas. This article shows how the idea of the state as a purposive association-that is to say, a collective enterprise that is driven by some set of substantive ends or purposes-has helped to shape the thinking and discourse of some public administration writers, particularly those of the reinventing government movement. The implications of this for public administration inquiry and education are examined.
Public sector change in 2003 was a product of external demands and internal pressures for improvement. The specific areas addressed are responses to security threats in the international environment; strengthening internal capacity, particularly through whole-of-government approaches; and fine-tuning the public management model in part through readjustments to the centre-agency relationship and greater emphasis on horizontal structures and processes.
This is the ninth year an administrative essay has been published in the journal since 1996. Earlier chronicles include: J. Stewart 55(1) 1996; S. Prasser 56(1) 1997; J. Homeshaw 57(3) 1998; J. Moon 58(2) 1999; J. Curtin 59(1) 2000; C. Broughton and J. Chalmers 60(1) 2001; N. Miragliotta 61(1) 2002; and J. Nettercote 62(1) 2003.
In this issue two chronicles are published — the first, by John Halligan and Jill Adams, focuses on external security and internal capacity building. The second assessment by Scott Prasser takes a different view of compliant management, poor decisions and reactive change.
T his paper discusses the strategies adopted by public sector unions following the restructuring of the New Zealand state in the 1980s and the industrial relations reforms of the early 1990s. The discussion is placed within the context of a consideration of the nature of public sector industrial relations and the role of strategy in trade union activity. The paper focuses on the mobilisation of occupational and professional identity as an industrial strategy by unions in the education and health sectors as a counter to the processes of decentralisation and marketisation of public services, the adoption of managerialist modes of organisation and the individualisation of employment relations in the state sector. Limited comparison is made with the problems faced by unions operating in tbe core public service. The paper is based, in part, on interviews with representatives of various organisations involved in this adjustment to the state sector reorganisation and the changes wrought by the Employment Contracts Act. The paper is a temporal case study as well as a case study of organisational and strategic adjustment.
There has been a paradigmatic shift in the mode of governance in capitalist nations, developing countries, and postcommunist states. Under the newly emerging neoliberal state, which has largely replaced other state formations, public governance has undergone significant transformation. In comparison with the earlier mode, the new mode of governance has the objective of narrow economic growth rather than overall development, the role to support rather than lead service delivery, the structure of managerial autonomy rather than accountability, and the standards based on business norms rather than public ethics. This mode of governance, which emerged in advanced industrial nations, has been extended to most developing countries, including those in South Asia. This paper explores the origins and trends of recent changes in governance in South Asian countries, and evaluates the critical implications of such changes for various dimensions of society in these countries.
New Public Management (NPM) puts a major emphasis on consumer sovereignty. Through consumer sovereignty, it is argued, public organizations will produce outputs more in line with what citizens want. This article analyses the implications, both theoretical and practical, of conceiving of citizens as customers. We discuss the features of citizenship, the ways in which the emerging customer focus impacts the role of citizen, how consumerism would and, in implementation, does work and the wider implications for democratic governance, particularly the effects on political and administrative leadership roles and leaders' political accountability, of the tendency to define citizens as customers of government agencies when conceptualizing their relationship to the state.
This article reviews research on the process of strategic management reported over the last six years in seven leading journals. Nine " 'streams" of work are identified and critiqued. The field is described as giving continuing attention to the possibilities and problems of strategic planning and decision making, but also moving into new areas of research-especially the problem of how the attention of decision makers is directed toward specific agendas for action. We recommend more studies that simultaneously consider strategy formulation and implementation and more studies that attempt to integrate methods and concerns across the various areas of process research. Finally, we recommend that future research give simultaneous attention to the content as well as the process of strategy.