Hybrid stimulations and perversions in public service innovation

2021 ◽  
pp. 095207672110150
Author(s):  
Mette Sønderskov ◽  
Rolf Rønning ◽  
Siv Magnussen
Keyword(s):  
Public Service ◽  
Public Management ◽  
Service Sector ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Service Innovation ◽  
Illustrative Case ◽  
Public Governance ◽  
The Public ◽  
New Public ◽  
Theoretical Paper

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.

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.

Does Citizens’ Self-Identification of Their Public Role Affect Their Satisfaction with Public Services?

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-100
Author(s):  
Hemin Choi ◽  
Jong Seon Lee
Keyword(s):  
Public Service ◽  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Role ◽  
New Public ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Service Expectations ◽  
Manova Analysis

This study investigates how citizens define their role qua citizen and how the public role they assign themselves matters in their assessment of satisfaction with public service performance. We compared survey respondents who identified their citizen role as customer (n=280), partner (n=353) or owner (n=467) to test this relation. Theoretically, the dominance of New Public Management (NPM) scholarship has resulted in the framing of citizens as simply customers, but our empirical study finds that citizens consider themselves more as partners or owners of government. This mismatch in conception was our research hypothesis for further research. We then ran a number of t-tests and carried out a MANOVA analysis, the results of which indicate that there is a significant difference between the customer and partner groups regarding expectations and satisfaction on the quality of their living area but not regarding performance. There is also evidence that shows that the role citizens assign to themselves is related to their public service expectations but that the connection between their view of their role and their assessment of performance is weak.

Strategic Knowledge Management in Public Organizations

2011 ◽  
pp. 2159-2167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ari-Veikko Anttiroiko
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Management ◽  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Public Organizations ◽  
Public Governance ◽  
The Public ◽  
New Public ◽  
New Public Governance ◽  
And Control ◽  
Strategic Knowledge Management

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.

Understanding the Field of Public Policy in the Context of Public Administration Evolution

2022 ◽  
pp. 22-44
Author(s):  
Feras Ali Qawasmeh
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Critical Discussion ◽  
Public Governance ◽  
The Public ◽  
New Public ◽  
Review Study ◽  
New Public Governance

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).

Strategic Knowledge Management in Public Organizations

2005 ◽  
pp. 2632-2637
Author(s):  
Ari-Veikko Anttiroiko
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Management ◽  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Public Organizations ◽  
Public Governance ◽  
The Public ◽  
New Public ◽  
New Public Governance ◽  
And Control ◽  
Strategic Knowledge Management

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.

scholarly journals Exploiting conditionality: EU and international actors and post-NPM reform in Ireland

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-200
Author(s):  
Muiris MacCarthaigh ◽  
Niamh Hardiman
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Policy Coordination ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Sector Reforms ◽  
New Public ◽  
Public Sector Unions ◽  
Administrative Elites

Between 2008 and 2015, Ireland undertook unprecedented and systemic public sector reforms in a polity not traditionally considered a prominent reformer. While some of these reforms comprised part of the loan programme agreement with EU and international actors, many others did not. This article argues that the crisis in Ireland provided a window of opportunity to introduce reforms that political and administrative elites had previously found difficult to implement. The authority of the Troika was invoked to provide legitimacy for controversial initiatives, yet some of the reforms went further than the loan programme strictly required. A number of these concerning organisational rationalisation, the public service ‘bargain’ and transversal policy coordination are considered here. Agreements were negotiated with public sector unions that facilitated sharp cuts in pay and conditions, reducing the potential for opposition to change. The reform effort was further legitimated by the reformers’ post-New Public Management, whole-of-government discourse, which situated considerations of effectiveness and efficiency in a broader framework of public service quality and delivery.

scholarly journals New Public Management and Governance: Quo Vadis?

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 430
Author(s):  
Vasilios P. Andrikopoulos ◽  
Amalia Α. Ifanti
Keyword(s):  
Public Service ◽  
Service Provision ◽  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Public Governance ◽  
Sector Reform ◽  
Organizational Conditions ◽  
Governance Regime ◽  
New Public ◽  
Quo Vadis

This paper seeks to provide an overview of the literature regarding contemporary public management and administration. For this purpose, New Public Management and New Public Governance principles and methods are explored, since they remain the dominant approaches to public management and governance regime. A systematic examination of the relevant discourse was carried out. Data analysis revealed that the theoretical schemes continue to emphasize the priority of management over public service. As a result, the New Public Service approach is revisited focusing primarily on the reinterpretation and reorientation of public service provision. This study enriches our theoretical and practical understanding by providing important reflections and insights about the organizational conditions of public sector reform that is proceeding nowadays.

Turning New Public Management theory into reality: Performative struggle during a large scale planning process

2017 ◽  
Vol 35 (7) ◽  
pp. 1264-1284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sander Merkus ◽  
Marcel Veenswijk
Keyword(s):  
Public Management ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Public Governance ◽  
The Public ◽  
New Public ◽  
The Will

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.

scholarly journals Analyzing the potentiality of the government budget in the framework of public accountability

2013 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 243-258 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pina Puntillo
Keyword(s):  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Social Accountability ◽  
Management Style ◽  
Government Budget ◽  
Public Governance ◽  
The Public ◽  
New Public ◽  
The Government ◽  
Substantial Control

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.

An Interpretive-Phenomenological Critique of the Science of (New?) Public Management: A Polemic

Public Voices ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terence M Garrett
Keyword(s):  
Public Administration ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Public Organizations ◽  
The Public ◽  
New Public ◽  
Technical Rationality ◽  
Executive Level ◽  
General Technical

Public Administration as a field of academic inquiry has faced numerous challenges. Public management scholars focus exclusively on the executive level of management in public organizations. Knowledge possessed by lower-level managers, workers, and/or the public is ignored and deemed to be irrelevant or unimportant in the decision-making process within agencies. In general, technical rationality, or what passes for traditional management practice and the new public management, has had some success for executives and managers in public organizations insofar as motivating individuals for instrumental purposes. (*) The success of public management as a social and political movement makes it difficult to overcome. The concentration of the “public management movement” on the executive level of management has supplanted traditional public administration and public service. It is the ideology of public management that is the primary focus of this paper. Alternatives including the New Public Service and the knowledge analytic will be presented briefly as a counterpoint to address the democratic shortcomings of the public management movement, both new and old.*See Guy B. Adams and V. Ingersoll’s “Culture, Technical Rationality, and Organizational Culture,” in American Review of Public Administration, December 1990, 20/4: 285 – 302, for an excellent elaboration of the concept. In general, technical rationality is an approach to thinking that “has stripped reason of any normative role in shaping human affairs” (Adams and Balfour 1998, xiii).

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