On Public Management Reform

Autor: Steve J. Martin
Rok vydání: 2003
Předmět:
Zdroj: British Journal of Management. 14:S79-S81
ISSN: 1467-8551
1045-3172
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8551.2003.00394.x
Popis: Christopher Pollitt and Geert Bouckaert believe existing analyses of the wave of public management reforms that has swept through OECD countries over the last two decades to be ‘incomplete and inadequate’. Most focus on single organizations, programmes or sectors. They are often overly descriptive and lacking in theory. The ‘Anglo-phone’ countries, which have ‘tended to the make the biggest noise’, usually feature too prominently, and there is a dearth of comparative, multi-country studies. In an attempt to rectify these failings Pollitt and Bouckaert have undertaken what they describe as a systematic comparison of public management reforms across ten countries – Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, UK and USA. They offer a simplified model of the key elements of public management reform and an analysis of the prevailing political and administrative regimes and different reform trajectories in these ten states. They then assess the impacts of reforms, before concluding with some observations on their implications for politicians and reflections on the limits to management change and the broader lessons for governance systems. Pollitt and Bouckaert argue that reforms in OECD countries have not been as uniform as accounts of the ‘New Public Management’ (NPM) often imply. They identify four basic approaches to reform. First, a tightening up of existing controls (budget cuts, freezing recruitment, drives to eliminate waste and so forth). Second, attempts to ‘modernize’ administrative systems through a combination of private-sector management practices and political reforms designed to produce more responsive, flexible organizations. Third, the introduction of markettype mechanisms intended to increase competition between public-sector organizations and other providers. Fourth, strategies based on minimizing or ‘hollowing out’ the state through the privatization and/or contracting out of public services. There have, they claim, been important differences between countries and over time. The ‘gung ho’ rhetoric of reform that has characterized the UK, the USA and New Zealand is identified with marketize and minimize strategies. Since 1997 though, the ‘New Labour’ administration in the UK has moved in the direction of ‘modernizing’ strategies which have sought to encourage ‘joined up’ government and greater partnership working between agencies (Cutler and Waine, 2002). In France and Germany, where NPM principles have been held at arms length, the discourse has been more cautious and public services are less likely to have been marketized or privatized. A third group of countries, including Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands, has borrowed from the ‘AngloSaxon’ rhetoric but adopted a far more consensual, participatory and ‘bottom up’ approach, with the result that reforms have been less ‘harsh, hectic and sweeping’ than in the UK. Pollitt and Bouckaert attribute these differences to variations in politico-administrative regimes in the ten countries under investigation. The NPM is not, they argue, as new as reformers often suppose, and rapid economic and technological change does not render obsolete some of the ‘basic lessons’ of public administration. In particular, British Journal of Management, Vol. 14, S79–S81 (2003) S79
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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