Public Management Reform. A Comparative Analysis

The "new public management" (NPM) wave in public sector organizational change was founded on themes of disaggregation, competition, and incentivization. Although its effects are still working through in countries new to NPM, this wave has now largely stalled or been reversed in some key "leading-edge" countries. This ebbing chiefly reflects the cumulation of adverse indirect effects on citizens' capacities for solving social problems because NPM has radically increased institutional and policy complexity. The character of the post-NPM regime is currently being formed. We set out the case that a range of connected and information technology-centered changes will be critical for the current and next wave of change, and we focus on themes of reintegration, needs-based holism, and digitization changes. The overall movement incorporating these new shifts is toward "digital-era governance" (DEG), which involves reintegrating functions into the governmental sphere, adopting holistic and needs-oriented structures, and progressing digitalization of administrative processes. DEG offers a perhaps unique opportunity to create self-sustaining change, in a broad range of closely connected technological, organizational, cultural, and social effects. But there are alternative scenarios as to how far DEG will be recognized as a coherent phenomenon and implemented successfully.

New public management is dead. Long live digital-era governance

This progress report considers the need for developing a critical body of research on deliberate transformation as a response to global environmental change. Although there is a rapidly growing literature on adaptation to environmental change, including both incremental and transformational adaptation, this often focuses on accommodating change, rather than contesting it and creating alternatives. Given increasing calls from scientists and activists for transformative actions to avoid dangerous changes in the earth system, and the likelihood that ‘urgent’ solutions will be imposed by various interests, many new and important questions are emerging about individual and collective capacities to deliberately transform systems and structures in a manner that is both ethical and sustainable. This presents a transformative challenge to global change science itself that calls for new approaches to transdisciplinary research.

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0309132511425767

Global environmental change II: From adaptation to deliberate transformation

In this paper I want to address some fundamental questions concerning the nature of knowledge about public management reform, and particularly its transferability between countries and contexts. My main point will be that knowledge of what works and what does not tends to be heavily contextdependent. That is to say, a technique or organisational structure which succeeds in one place may fail in another. So – to put it bluntly – there is no set of general tools that can be transferred from one jurisdiction to another, all around the world, with confidence that they will work well every time. This means we have to look carefully at contexts, and at the "terms of trade" each time we are thinking of borrowing a good management idea from somewhere else. This is not a "how-to-do-it" paper. Rather it is a series of reflections on the nature of the "trade" in public management reforms, drawing on the existing academic literature and seeking to identify issues where further work seems to be desirable...

/pdf/public-management-reform-r4nkytrfm4.pdf

Public Management Reform

A new public administration movement is emerging to move beyond traditional public administration and New Public Management. The new movement is a response to the challenges of a networked, multisector, no-one-wholly-in-charge world and to the shortcomings of previous public administration approaches. In the new approach, values beyond efficiency and effectiveness—and especially democratic values—are prominent. Government has a special role to play as a guarantor of public values, but citizens as well as businesses and nonprofit organizations are also important as active public problem solvers. The article highlights value-related issues in the new approach and presents an agenda for research and action to be pursued if the new approach is to fulfill its promise.

Public Value Governance: Moving Beyond Traditional Public Administration and the New Public Management

/pdf/agencies-how-governments-do-things-through-semi-autonomous-249nrzobls.pdf

Agencies: How Governments Do Things Through Semi-Autonomous Organizations

Part One: Setting the Scene 1. Managers managing? The international trend towards agencies, quangos and contratualization Colin Talbot 2. Patterns of structural change Geert Bouckaert and Guy B. Peters Part Two: Agencies, Quangos and Contracts in the Heartlands of the New Public Management 3. Adapting the agency concept: variations within 'Next Steps' Francesca Gains 4. Executive agencies and joined-up government in the UK Oliver James 5. Contracting and accountability: a model of effective contracting drawn from the U.S. experience Jocelyn Johnston and Barbara Romzek 6. Contractualism and performance measurement in Australia Linda McGuire 7. The agency concept in North America: failure, adaptation and incremental change Andrew Graham and Alasdair Roberts Part Three: Autonomization in Continental Europe and Japan 8. Quangos in Dutch government Sandra van Thiel 9. Lost in translation? Shifting interpretations of the concept of 'agency': the Dutch case Amanda Smullen 10. Central agencies in Sweden: a report from Utopia Jon Pierre 11. Agencification in Japan Kiyoshi Yamamoto Part Four: Autonomization in the Developing and Transitional Countries 12. New Public management in a developing country: creating executive agencies in Tanzania Janice Caulfield 13. Agencies in Thailand Bidyha Bowornwathana 14. The design, performance and sustainability of semi-autonomous revenue authorities in Africa and Latin America Robert R. Taliercio Jr 15. Castles built on sand? Agencies in Latvia Christopher Pllitt 16. Agencies in Jamaica Colin Talbot Part Five: Overview 17. Theoretical overview Christopher Pollitt

Unbundled Government:A critical analysis of the global trend to agencies, quangos & contractualisation

In the last 15 years, the governments of many OECD countries have transferred a wide range of functions to new, agency-type organizations. Allowing for the fact that, for comparative purposes, it is difficult precisely to define agencies, and further acknowledging that in many countries agencies are far from being new, it nevertheless remains the case that there seems to have been a strong fashion for this particular organizational solution. This article investigates the apparent international convergence towards “agencification.” It seeks to identify the reasons for, and depth of, the trend. It asks to what extent practice has followed rhetoric. The emerging picture is a complex one. On the one hand, there seems to be a widespread belief, derived from a variety of theoretical traditions, that agencification can unleash performance improvements. On the other hand, systematic evidence for some of the hypothetical benefits is very patchy. Furthermore, the diversity of actual practice in different countries has been so great that there must sometimes be considerable doubt as to whether the basic requirements for successful performance management are being met.

Agency fever? Analysis of an international policy fashion

1. Introduction SECTION I: PERFORMANCE AND THEORY 2. Problematics of Performance 3. Theories and Performance SECTION II: GOVERNANCE AND PERFORMANCE 4. Performance Regimes: Institututions 5. Performance Regimes: Interventions 6. Performance and Public Value(s) SECTION III: PERFORMANCE AND ORGANIZATIONS 7. Performance and Organizations 8. Performance and Public Organizations SECTION IV: CONCLUSIONS 10. Individual, Managerial, and Organizational Responses 11. Shaping Public Performance

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

Are we about to enter a new era of public management? There are good reasons to think that this may be the case. This special issue of the International Journal of Public Administration on “Public ...

Colin Talbot

Papers

Agencies: How Governments Do Things Through Semi-Autonomous Organizations

Unbundled Government:A critical analysis of the global trend to agencies, quangos & contractualisation

Agency fever? Analysis of an international policy fashion

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

Public Value—The Next “Big Thing” in Public Management?