The Public Servant

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Ehn
Keyword(s):  
Private Sector ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Public Servants ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Servant ◽  
New Public ◽  
Formal Organizations ◽  
Statutory Regulation

This chapter discusses Swedish public servants and the question whether they are to be considered as traditional bureaucrats or as “managers,” modeled after the private sector. The chapter shows that nowadays Swedish public servants can hardly be characterized as old-fashioned bureaucrats, but neither as fully fledged managers. Instead, they are generally best described as “private servants.” The privatization of the public servant is partly expressed by an alignment between the public and the private sector regarding the statutory regulation of working conditions. Also, New-Public-Management-inspired reforms have created a situation where public servants have come to regard the agencies as formal organizations in their own right. They tend to see themselves as just another worker in any organization, whether it be public or private. There is a limited, and declining, understanding of the specific requirements that are entailed by the position of public servant.

Institutional Entrepreneurship in Defence Acquisition

2017 ◽  
pp. 222-241
Author(s):  
Derek McAvoy
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Private Sector ◽  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Effective Means ◽  
Institutional Logics ◽  
Institutional Entrepreneurship ◽  
The Public ◽  
New Public ◽  
Gain Access

One of the most common arguments used to justify the outsourcing of defence activities is that the private sector is more innovative than the public sector. New Public Management has been widely promoted as the most effective means by which the public sector can engage with markets and gain access to the greater entrepreneurial capabilities offered by the private sector. However, a major obstacle to generating the improvements sought by having greater access to entrepreneurial businesses is bound up in the inherent tensions generated by divergent institutional logics. Government departments are motivated to move towards stasis while the entrepreneurial market spirit ideally embraces institutional change. This chapter examines the challenges faced by defence acquisition in changing these potentially opposing institutional logics before concluding with suggestions on how to progress an applied research agenda for defence acquisition in order to make better use of entrepreneurial capabilities.

scholarly journals Retrofitting Collaboration into the New Public Management

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Eppel ◽  
Rosemary O'Leary
Keyword(s):  
Performance Indicators ◽  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Public Servants ◽  
Operational Model ◽  
The Public ◽  
New Public ◽  
Management Approaches ◽  
Governance Processes ◽  
Organization Boundaries

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.

Institutional Entrepreneurship in Defence Acquisition

2017 ◽  
pp. 1184-1203
Author(s):  
Derek McAvoy
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Private Sector ◽  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Effective Means ◽  
Institutional Logics ◽  
Institutional Entrepreneurship ◽  
The Public ◽  
New Public ◽  
Gain Access

One of the most common arguments used to justify the outsourcing of defence activities is that the private sector is more innovative than the public sector. New Public Management has been widely promoted as the most effective means by which the public sector can engage with markets and gain access to the greater entrepreneurial capabilities offered by the private sector. However, a major obstacle to generating the improvements sought by having greater access to entrepreneurial businesses is bound up in the inherent tensions generated by divergent institutional logics. Government departments are motivated to move towards stasis while the entrepreneurial market spirit ideally embraces institutional change. This chapter examines the challenges faced by defence acquisition in changing these potentially opposing institutional logics before concluding with suggestions on how to progress an applied research agenda for defence acquisition in order to make better use of entrepreneurial capabilities.

scholarly journals New public management in Iran’s health complex: a management framework for primary health care system

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (03) ◽  
pp. 264-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jafar Sadegh Tabrizi ◽  
Elaheh HaghGoshayie ◽  
Leila Doshmangir ◽  
Mahmood Yousefi
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Private Sector ◽  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Health Sector ◽  
Market Mechanism ◽  
Primary Health Care System ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Health Sector ◽  
New Public

BackgroundNew public management (NPM) was developed as a management reform to improve the efficiency and effectiveness in public organizations, especially in health sector. Using the features of private sector management, the managers of health organizations may try to implement the elements of NPM with the hope to improve the performance of their systems.AimsOur aim in the present study was to identify the elements and infrastructures suitable for implementing NPM in the Iranian health complex.MethodIn this qualitative study with conventional content analysis approach, we tried to explore the NPM elements and infrastructures in Iranian public health sector. A series of semi-structured interviews (n=48) were conducted in 2016 with a managers in public and private health complex. Three focus group discussions with nine faculty members were also conducted. A data collection form was used to collect the demographic characteristics and perspectives of the participants.FindingsFrom the perspective of managers, managerialism, decentralization, using market mechanism, performance management, customer orientation and performance budgeting were the main elements of NPM in the Iranian context. The most important infrastructures for implementing this reform were as follows: education and training, information technology, the proper use of human resources, decision support systems, top management commitment, organizational culture, flexibility of rules, rehabilitating of the aging infrastructures, and expanding the coverage of services.ConclusionThe NPM was generally identified to be an effective replacement for the traditional administration method. These reforms may be helpful in strengthening the public health complex and the management capacity, as well. NPM also seems to be useful in interacting the public health sector with the private sector in terms of personnel and resources, performance, reward structure, and methods of doing business.

scholarly journals Influence of New Public Management Philosophy on Risk Management, Fraud and Corruption Control and Internal Audit: Evidence from an Australian Public Sector Organization

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anup Chowdhury ◽  
Nikhil Chandra Shil
Keyword(s):  
Risk Management ◽  
Control System ◽  
Public Sector ◽  
Private Sector ◽  
Financial Management ◽  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Internal Audit ◽  
The Public ◽  
New Public

Research Question: This study will explore how private sector financial management technologies (specifically, risk management system, fraud and corruption control system and internal audit) become embedded in a selected public sector organisation. Motivation: The motivation for this study is to explore how private sector financial management control tools contributed to and shaped new organisational culture within the public sector organisation. Idea: The idea was generated from the philosophy of New Public Management which was based on the premise that using the private sector tools, the public sector would be efficient and at the same time effectiveness would be improved (Chowdhury and Shil, 2017). Data: Qualitative research approach was adopted and data was collected in the case study tradition. Twenty top, mid and junior level executives from a selected Government Department in the Australian Capital Territory were interviewed (Chowdhury and Shil, 2016). Tools: The main data sources were interviews and archival official documents. Another tool used was direct observation which helped researchers to support the archival documents and interview data. Data were analyzed using the approach provided by Miles and Huberman (1994). Findings: Findings of the study revealed that strategic risk management is a part of the business planning life cycle of the researched Department and business units review their strategic risks as part of their business planning process. In the Department it is evident that fraud and corruption control system is a part of their cultural environment. The Department has established an independent Internal Audit and Review Unit, who provides service to management to meet all prescribed statutory responsibilities within a performance improvement environment. Contribution: The findings of the present study are expected to increase our understanding about the private sector control devices used in a public sector context and this study will be of value to the academic researchers and practitioners. The study may be useful to the policy makers also who are engaged in formulating new public sector policies. Moreover, the findings reported on this study would be useful to the public sector managers in their day to day decision-making process.

scholarly journals Habitus, Hysteresis and Organizational Change in the Public Sector

2012 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 357-380 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peggy McDonough ◽  
Jessica Polzer
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Change ◽  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Major Change ◽  
Occupational Class ◽  
The Public ◽  
Class Differences ◽  
Public Servant ◽  
New Public

This paper examines the daily struggles of unionized employees whose municipal workplace was undergoing major change influenced by New Public Management. In-depth interviews with 45 front-line service providers revealed widespread frustration with working conditions and relationships with management. We interpret this response as an embodied expression of hysteresis, a term that Bourdieu used to describe the gap between changing field conditions and habitus. We argue that organizational change posed challenges for these workers because it produced a rupture between their taken-for-granted ways of being a “good” public servant (i.e., public service habitus) and what was expected of them after restructuring. Moreover, on the basis of gendered occupational class differences in employees’ practices, we suggest that hysteresis is itself a socially-structured phenomenon that reflects the tacit calculation of what was possible (or not) for workers occupying specific positions within the stratified order of the organization.

scholarly journals Intellectual Capital and Sustainable Economic Performance in the Public Sector: The Context of the New Public Management in Malaysia

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (14) ◽  
pp. 7885
Author(s):  
Kardina Kamaruddin ◽  
Indra Abeysekera
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Intellectual Capital ◽  
Economic Performance ◽  
Public Management ◽  
Structural Equation ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
The Public ◽  
New Public ◽  
Operational Variables ◽  
Construct Dimensions

The New Public Management allows us to reflect upon whether intellectual capital helps public sector organisations meet their performance benchmarks. Sustainable economic performance gains importance from the public sector’s service ideal. Although there have been empirical endeavours using intellectual capital as operational variables, this study examines the theoretically informed relationship between the intellectual capital construct and its construct dimensions and the sustainable economic performance construct and its construct dimensions. The decision-making inputs of senior officials in the Malaysian public sector are vital for evaluating the relationship, as these officials are the individual strategists of the collective organisational strategy. The study conducted a survey that received 1092 usable responses and analysed them using the structural equation modelling research method. The findings showed a robust theoretical relationship between intellectual capital and sustainable economic performance. Furthermore, the study identified intellectual capital items that play a vital role in supporting public sector sustainable economic performance in Malaysia under New Public Management. The findings provide useful knowledge for public sector officials and policymakers, and for further research.

scholarly journals Bringing the Law Back in the Law-Government Nexus in an Era of Network Governance

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stavros Zouridis ◽  
Vera Leijtens
Keyword(s):  
Public Management ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Network Governance ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
Management Theory ◽  
Public Governance ◽  
The Public ◽  
New Public ◽  
The Law

Abstract Recently, scholars have claimed that public management theory has too much ignored law. Consequently, the under-legalized conception of public management has produced a flawed understanding of public management theory as well as public management practices, threatening public institutions’ legitimacy. In this article, we argue that law never left public management theory. Rather, the link between government and law has been redefined twice. We refer to the assumptions that constitute this link as the law-government nexus. This nexus changed from lawfulness in a public administration paradigm, to legal instrumentalism in a (new) public management paradigm, and to a networked concept in the public governance (PG) paradigm. In order to prevent a faulty over-legalized conception of public management, bringing the law back in should be built on lessons from the past. This article elaborates on three strategies to reconnect law and public management. We map the strengths and weaknesses of each law-government nexus and illustrate these with the case of the Dutch tax agency. In our strategies that aim to reconceptualize the current law-government nexus, we incorporate the benefits of each paradigm for public management theory. The revised law-governance nexus enables the PG paradigm to correspond to contemporary issues without encountering old pathologies.

CHANGES IN MANAGEMENT AND GOVERNANCE IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION. CASE STUDY IN ROMANIA

2021 ◽  
Vol 14(63) (1) ◽  
pp. 71-84
Author(s):  
Maria Popescu ◽  
Lidia Mândru
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Modern Approach ◽  
The Public ◽  
New Public ◽  
Management Perspective

"The paper addresses to the Public Administration (PA) from the management perspective. The first part of the study defines the conceptual framework of the two management doctrines, generically called the New Public Management and New Public Government. The second part of the paper reviews the transformation movement in PA management and governance in Romania in the last two decades. The methodology of the study consists in the analysis of the recent theoretic studies on PA modern approach, and official documents, national and European reports, and other publications related to the PA reform in Romania. "

scholarly journals Accounting and the post-new public management

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 255-279 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ileana Steccolini
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Public ◽  
Accounting Research ◽  
Societal Relevance ◽  
New Public ◽  
Public Sector Accounting

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to reflect various pathways for public sector accounting and accountability research in a post-new public management (NPM) context. Design/methodology/approach The paper first discusses the relationship between NPM and public sector accounting research. It then explores the possible stimuli that inter-disciplinary accounting scholars may derive from recent public administration studies, public policy and societal trends, highlighting possible ways to extend public sector accounting research and strengthen dialogue with other disciplines. Findings NPM may have represented a golden age, but also a “golden cage,” for the development of public sector accounting research. The paper reflects possible ways out of this golden cage, discussing future avenues for public sector accounting research. In doing so, it highlights the opportunities offered by re-considering the “public” side of accounting research and shifting the attention from the public sector, seen as a context for public sector accounting research, to publicness, as a concept central to such research. Originality/value The paper calls for stronger engagement with contemporary developments in public administration and policy. This could be achieved by looking at how public sector accounting accounts for, but also impacts on, issues of wider societal relevance, such as co-production and hybridization of public services, austerity, crises and wicked problems, the creation and maintenance of public value and democratic participation.

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