Public governance tensions: a managerial artefacts-based view

2021 ◽  
pp. 002085232098815
Author(s):  
Khouloud Senda Bennani ◽  
Anissa Ben Hassine ◽  
Bachir Mazouz

The aim of this article is to categorise the factors of tension in public organisational settings. The context of the administrative reforms undertaken in Tunisia has been chosen as an empirical illustration of the public governance tensions associated with managerial artefacts. The study focuses on three types of factors. An analysis of these factors confirms the theories on the appropriation of management tools and helps raise the existing level of knowledge in relation to the processes to mitigate public governance tensions within public organisations. Points for practitioners Today, the modernisation of public governance goes hand in hand with the introduction of new public management tools in administrative settings. On a practical level, the appropriation of these tools generates a tense relationship between political decision-makers and public managers. Often perceived from the perspective of paradoxical demands and antagonistic relationships that disrupt the daily life of state organisations, public governance tensions can be managed as long as they are identified and categorised in the light of the factors of tension associated with the reforms undertaken.

Author(s):  
Stavros Zouridis ◽  
Vera Leijtens

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.


2011 ◽  
pp. 2159-2167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ari-Veikko Anttiroiko

New public management and the more recent concept of new public governance have become the dominant management doctrines in the public sector. Public organizations have become increasingly network-like units with various governance relations with actors from the public, business, and voluntary sectors. Their organization is based more on networks than on traditional hierarchies, accompanied by a transition from the command-and-control type of management to initiate-and-coordinate type of governance.


Author(s):  
Mette Vinther Larsen ◽  
Charlotte Øland Madsen

This chapter addresses the ‘co-production turn' in public sector organisations from a top management perspective. The co-production turn is seen as a historical development from new public management to the concept of new public governance. Ideas on collaborative governance have been advanced as an answer to some of the challenges of the public sector in health services, caregiving, and social work. Current issues in welfare production in public sector organisations are seen as a result of the economic rationalisation ideas in new public management, and co-production has been theoretically advanced as a new way to involve citizens in the co-production of welfare. The co-production turn is explored as an emerging research field in this book, and in the current chapter, the authors explore how three top managers make sense of this concept when developing and implementing new strategies in their public organisations.


2022 ◽  
pp. 22-44
Author(s):  
Feras Ali Qawasmeh

Public policy is classified as a major field in public administration. Therefore, to understand the context of public policy as a field, it is essential to explore its root developments in public administration from epistemological and chronological perspectives. This chapter is a review study referring to main scholarly works including books, academic articles, and studies. The chapter first helps researchers and students in comprehending the evolution of public administration in its four main stages including classical public administration, new public administration, new public management, and new public governance. Second, the chapter presents a general overview of the evolution of the public policy field with particular attention paid to the concepts of Harold Lasswell who is seen as the father of public policy. The chapter then discusses different definitions of public policy. Various classifications of public policy are also investigated. The chapter ends with a critical discussion of the stages model (heuristics).


Author(s):  
Ari-Veikko Anttiroiko

New public management and the more recent concept of new public governance have become the dominant management doctrines in the public sector. Public organizations have become increasingly network-like units with various governance relations with actors from the public, business, and voluntary sectors. Their organization is based more on networks than on traditional hierarchies, accompanied by a transition from the command-and-control type of management to initiate-and-coordinate type of governance.


2017 ◽  
Vol 35 (7) ◽  
pp. 1264-1284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sander Merkus ◽  
Marcel Veenswijk

Within the literature of governance and policy making in the context of planning, the notion of performativity is specifically conceptualized as the self-fulfilling property of performances – such as story-telling – that shape public reality. One specific stream of performativity researchers – dominant in the realm of organization studies – focuses on the enactment of academic theory into reality. We contribute to this idea of bringing theory into being by conceptualizing purposive performative agents who strive to enact a specific theory in reality. Our paper demonstrates through which mechanisms the theory of New Public Management has shaped the reality of public governance at the will of one powerful performative agent. Using a perspective based on performative struggle, our interpretative case study – focused on a large policy process – exhibits how New Public Management doctrine gains influence at the expense of other public management theories. In conclusion, we claim that our findings offer a potential perspective for understanding through which dynamics certain agents aim to shape the public realm in alignment with their preferred theoretical propositions.


2021 ◽  
pp. 095207672110150
Author(s):  
Mette Sønderskov ◽  
Rolf Rønning ◽  
Siv Magnussen

Innovation has been highlighted as a magic formula that can solve deep-seated, emerging complex social and economic problems in the public service sector. However, public innovation efforts face both drivers and barriers. Innovation depends on context, and currently different competing governance paradigms’ influence has attracted growing academic and political interest regarding the potential of public service innovation. Today, new public governance (NPG) has been suggested as an alternative paradigm to classic public administration (CPA) and new public management (NPM), as the focus of attention has shifted from traditional hierarchical forms of government and market-based competition strategies to interactive- and collaborative-based governance. In this paper, we discuss how elements from different governance paradigms interact, support and undermine one another in terms of innovation in hybrid organisations. Although hybridisation has been described in extant studies on administrative welfare reforms, it barely has been examined in the public innovation literature. This is a theoretical paper based on a scoping review; however, we use the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration (NAV) as an illustrative case to explain how hybridisation may lead to both stimulations and perversions regarding the development, implementation and spread of public service innovation. Finally, the paper reflects on how public leaders can handle hybridity within their organisational units.


2013 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 243-258 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pina Puntillo

The main aim of this paper is to analyze how the yearly budget of public entities may be used as a tool of social accountability. The interest in researching this topic roots in a change in management style, from a bureaucratic kind, based on the formulation of rules and limitations, and on the more formal than substantial control of the civil servants’ compliance with the former, to a “post-bureaucratic” kind of management (Maroy, 2005), essentially founded on the evaluation of how efficiently resources are exploited. In this context, the term “accountability” refers to the set of techniques which may be used to measure and evaluate the results delivered by the administrative bodies, as well as the impacts on the community (Patton, 1992). The process of accountability confers to the subjects in question the legitimization of their own behaviour. After exploring the concept of social accountability, the paper will focus on the aspects of the public budget which make it a suitable tool of social accountability, showing how the shift from the New Public Management (NPM) paradigm to the Public Governance paradigm has strengthened and more clearly defined said role.


2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (16) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Noralv Veggeland

The United Kingdom was a "vanguard state" for experimentation with administrative reforms that came to be known as the New Public Management or NPM strategies aiming market orientation of the public sector. After three decades, what results has NPM produced in the UK? This is a review of a research report by Christopher Hood and Ruth Dixon, who tries to explain maladministration and judicial challenges to nUK government actions.


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