Labour-Management Relations and New Public Management: The American Experience

2002 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven W. Hays
Keyword(s):  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Agencies ◽  
Management Reform ◽  
Reform Agenda ◽  
American Experience ◽  
New Public ◽  
Public Workers ◽  
Broad Overview

This paper provides a broad overview of the role that unions have, and have not — played in the unfolding drama of public management reform in the United States. Factors impeding the ability of unions to shape the reform movement are highlighted. Fragmentation of power and even the absence of rudimentary collective bargaining rights in many locations restrict civil servants' ability to influence the reform agenda. As a result, New Public Management (NPM) initiatives have progressed in a fashion that often works to the disadvantage of public workers. ‘De-privileging’, privatisation, and devolution of public agencies have become almost ubiquitous. The paper concludes with the observation that NPM offers a golden opportunity, if not the obligation, for management and labour to adopt a more cooperative and participatory approach to policy making in the workplace.

The political economy of English public services reform and implications for management knowledges in health care organizations

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ewan Ferlie ◽  
Sue Dopson ◽  
Chris Bennett ◽  
Michael D. Fischer ◽  
Jean Ledger ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Public Management ◽  
Public Services ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Health Care Organizations ◽  
Public Agencies ◽  
Political Issue ◽  
Management Reform ◽  
New Public

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.

scholarly journals The New Public Management and Public Management Studies

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ewan Ferlie
Keyword(s):  
Academic Writing ◽  
Public Management ◽  
Public Services ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
Extreme Case ◽  
The United States ◽  
Professional Staff ◽  
Public Agencies ◽  
New Public

The New Public Management (NPM) is a major and sustained development in the management of public services that is evident in some major countries. Its rise is often linked to broader changes in the underlying political economy, apparent since the 1980s, associated with the rise of the New Right as both a political and an intellectual movement. The NPM reform narrative includes the growth of markets and quasi-markets within public services, empowerment of management, and active performance measurement and management. NPM draws its intellectual inspiration from public choice theory and agency theory. NPM’s impact varies internationally, and not all countries have converged on the NPM model. The United Kingdom is often taken as an extreme case, but New Zealand and Sweden have also been highlighted as “high-impact” NPM states, while the United States has been assessed as a “medium impact” state. There has been a lively debate over whether NPM reforms have had beneficial effects or not. NPM’s claimed advantages include greater value for money and restoring governability to an overextended public sector. Its claimed disadvantages include an excessive concern for efficiency (rather than democratic accountability) and an entrenchment of agency-specific “silo thinking.” Much academic writing on the NPM has been political science based. However, different traditions of management scholarship have also usefully contributed in four distinct areas: (a) assessing and explaining performance levels in public agencies, (b) exploring their strategic management, (c) managing public services professionals, and (d) developing a more critical perspective on the resistance by staff to NPM reforms. While NPM scholarship is now a mature field, further work is needed in three areas to assess: (a) whether public agencies have moved to a post-NPM paradigm or whether NPM principles are still embedded even if dysfunctionally so, (b) the pattern of the international diffusion of NPM reforms and the characterization of the management knowledge system involved, and (c) NPM’s effects on professional staff working in public agencies and whether such staff incorporate, adapt, or resist NPM reforms.

scholarly journals Reflections on New Public Management-Style Reform in the U.S. National Administration and Public Trust in Government

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (1/2) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
David Rosenbloom ◽  
Suzanne Piotrowski
Keyword(s):  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
The United States ◽  
Management Style ◽  
Trust In Government ◽  
Reform Agenda ◽  
Performance Review ◽  
National Performance Review ◽  
New Public ◽  
Government Work

A concerted effort to introduce thoroughgoing reforms into U.S. national administration began in September 1993, when the Clinton-Gore administration issued the first report of the National Performance Review (NPR). The continuing reform effort, which is generally called “reinventing government” in the United States, shares many characteristics with the broader global New Public Management (NPM) movement and is often treated as part of it. The American NPM-style reform program was augmented by congressional attempts to make national agencies more performance-oriented. President George W. Bush, who took office in January 2001, continued to advance several NPM goals, though with some important differences. There is no parallel period of such fundamental, comprehensive, and concentrated administrative reform in American history. The reform agenda has been coherent and consistent enough to allow reflection on its efficacy in terms of its own objectives. These were: 1) making government work better and cost less and 2) building citizens' trust in it. We made two conclusions within this paper. First, the record of the NPM's achievement of greater cost-effectiveness is ambiguous, disputing the Clinton-Gore administration's central claims; the public as a whole perceives no reduction in the waste of its tax dollars. Second, the NPM fell far short of building significantly greater trust in government.

English public management reform after 2010

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ewan Ferlie ◽  
Sue Dopson ◽  
Chris Bennett ◽  
Michael D. Fischer ◽  
Jean Ledger ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Performance Management ◽  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Global Financial Crisis ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Management Reform ◽  
Big Society ◽  
New Public ◽  
Primary Care Sector ◽  
The Global Financial Crisis

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.

scholarly journals The Neoliberal University in Ireland: Institutional Bullying by Another Name?

Societies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 52
Author(s):  
Margaret Hodgins ◽  
Patricia Mannix McNamara
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Academic Staff ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Decent Work ◽  
New Public ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Health And Well Being

New managerialism and the pervasive neoliberalisation of universities is by now a well-established phenomenon. Commentaries explore the political and economic drivers and effects of neoliberal ideology, and critique the impact on higher education and academic work. The impact on the health and well-being of academic staff has had less attention, and it is to that we turn in this paper. Much academic interest in neoliberalism stems from the UK, Australia and the United States. We draw particularly on studies of public Irish universities, where neoliberalism, now well entrenched, but something of a late-comer to the new public management party, is making its presence felt. This conceptual paper explores the concept of neoliberalism in higher education, arguing that the policies and practices of new public management as exercised in universities are a form of bullying; what we term institutional bullying. The authors are researchers of workplace culture, workplace bullying and incivility. Irish universities are increasingly challenged in delivering the International Labour Organisation (ILO) principles of decent work, i.e., dignity, equity, fair income and safe working conditions. They have become exposed in terms of gender imbalance in senior positions, precariat workforce, excessive workload and diminishing levels of control. Irish universities are suffering in terms of both the health and well-being of staff and organisational vibrancy. The authors conclude by cautioning against potential neoliberal intensification as universities grapple with the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper reviews neoliberalism in higher education and concludes with insight as to how the current pandemic could act as a necessary catalyst to stem the tide and ‘call out’ bullying at the institutional level.

The Anglo-American Tradition

2021 ◽  
pp. 116-138
Author(s):  
B. Guy Peters
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Administrators ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
New Public ◽  
American Tradition ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Definition Of

The Anglo-American tradition is perhaps the most difficult to characterize. Although there are common roots, there has been a divergence between the United Kingdom and other Westminster systems and the United States. There are common roots among these cases, including a contractarian conception of the state, an emphasis on the separation of politics and administration, an emphasis on management rather than law in the role definition of public administrators, and less commitment to uniformity. But these common values are interpreted and implemented differently in the different countries. For example, the United States has a more developed system of administrative law than do most of the Westminster systems. All these administrative systems, however, have been more receptive to the ideas of New Public Management (NPM) than have other governments, although the United States and Canada had implemented many of those ideas long before NPM was developed.

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