Staff Participation and Public Management Reform

Author(s):  
David Farnham ◽  
Annie Hondeghem ◽  
Sylvia Horton
Author(s):  
Ewan Ferlie ◽  
Sue Dopson ◽  
Chris Bennett ◽  
Michael D. Fischer ◽  
Jean Ledger ◽  
...  

This chapter characterizes the overall strategy of public services reform apparent in England after the global financial crisis of 2008 and during the period of the UK’s Coalition government 2010–15. It argues that what can be termed a ‘proto narrative’ of reform, orientated around so-called ‘Big Society’ ideas, emerged around 2010. However, we argue it was trumped in the end by Treasury-led and New Public Management-friendly austerity discourse. The concrete example is taken of the health policy to form new clinical commissioning groups in the primary care sector. They were presented as a mechanism which could promote professional engagement in commissioning. However, they were soon subjected to top-down performance management pressures and systems, including strong attempts to prevent financial deficits from emerging at a local level, which eroded bottom-up and professionally driven innovation. We conclude that the Big Society proto reform narrative failed to consolidate itself.


Author(s):  
Ewan Ferlie ◽  
Sue Dopson ◽  
Chris Bennett ◽  
Michael D. Fischer ◽  
Jean Ledger ◽  
...  

This chapter explores, in greater depth, the idea floated in the Introduction that the macro-level political economy of public services reform can exert effects on preferred management knowledges at both national and local levels. We argue that an important series of New Public Management reforms evident since the 1980s have made UK public agencies more ‘firm like’ and receptive to firm-based forms of management knowledge. We characterize key features of the UK’s long-term public management reform strategy, benchmarking it against, and also adding to, Pollitt and Bouckaert’s well-known comparativist typology. We specifically add to their model a consideration of the extent to which public management reform is constructed as a top-level political issue.


Author(s):  
Walter Kickert

This chapter analyses the fiscal problems of Dutch local government in the 1980s and the way that municipalities handled the fiscal squeeze of that time. It first explores the causes of the 1980s fiscal squeeze, that is, the decrease in municipal revenues (particularly in block-grant funding from central government through the ‘Municipal Fund’) and increase in expenditures, partly as a result of recession. It then describes the local government responses to the fiscal squeeze, that is, what cutback measures were taken and what strategies were employed, and explores the linked reform of the financial management system and adoption of ‘divisionalised business model’ structures. Thirdly, empirical evidence about the causes and effects of Dutch local public management reform is considered. Finally, the chapter discusses the longer-term effects that went beyond management reform, that is, developments in local democracy in the 1990s.


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