Questioning the New Public Management

John Chandler, Mike Dent, Mike Dent

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351907095
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Gestión

The book contains a wealth of detailed and fascinating case studies of New Public Management (NPM) in practice in the UK, exploring the enactment of NPM in its specific organizational contexts. A range of public services are covered including local government, education, social work and the police, with particular attention paid to the National Health Service. The editors introduce the case studies through an examination of the 'hydra-headed' nature of NPM, its variability between sectors and its contested character. This provides themes that are developed within the case studies, where, in varying organizational contexts, the meaning of NPM is negotiated and its impact on those working in the organization is explored. The book points to the complex, fluid and negotiated character of NPM, as well as its centrality in reconfiguring occupational identities and relations within public service organizations.

Chapter 1

Introduction: Questioning the New Public Management

Mike Dent, John Chandler and Jim Barry

New Public Management (NPM) has enjoyed centre stage within the UK public services for well over a decade. There has been much written on the subject and much of it was concerned with establishing the presence and charting its development as well as considering the implications for the public sector (e.g. Hood, 1991, 1995; Ferlie, Ashburner, Fitzgerald and Pettigrew, 1996; Clarke and Newman, 1997; Exworthy and Halford, 1999; Hood et al 1999; Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2000). In this process there has been a tendency to see the NPM movement as a more integrated and uniform than it perhaps really is for we would argue that NPM is in practice not one unified set of practices but a theme which has distinct variations within the different sectors (e.g. health, education, social services): it varies across sectors, it varies within sectors and it varies according to the outcomes of specific management-professional settlements. Firstly, we contend that not only is NPM manifested in a variety of guises but also, its form varies across sectors. Beyond the general pressures to be cost effective, accountable and market-friendly the implementation of the NPM across, for instance, health, social services and education, has been quite variable. We would suggest, for instance, that schools were less directly affected by the introduction of the quasi-market than were hospitals, even if the rhetoric was similar. Conversely the impact of audits has had a far more direct and immediate effect earlier on within schools than in health care, although this has begun to change with the introduction of Commission for Health Improvement. Secondly, despite its underlying themes, NPM does not offer managers any ‘magic bullet’ or toolkit, for it is a hydra-headed phenomenon, not a single instrument but a collection of management tools that have been adapted and modified over time. During the early 1990s the disciplinary force of the ‘quasi-markets’ was expected to be, more or less, sufficiently effective. By the late 1990s, however, accountability and audits came to dominate NPM practice (Power, 1994; 1997; Jary, 2002) as it became clear that the quasi-market had failed to deliver and the model became politically less attractive in the wake of ‘Blairism’, or the ‘Third Way’. Instead of quasi-market competition the emphasis was now even more clearly on managerialism, even so, the newer versions of NPM have continued to embrace private sector involvement as, for example, in the cases of public/private partnerships and the Private Finance Initiative (PFI). Thirdly, we would argue that NPM is very much a contested terrain on which a reconfiguration of management-professional relations has been forged. It has not offered an easy victory for managements, nor have the professions remained unscathed. Rather than the new managerialism undermining the public sector professions in any direct way what is to be seen is a reconfiguration of expertise and its management, a process that is redefining both managerial and professional work and their organisational relationship. Certainly this is a process that seriously challenges these professions but it is not a process that is leading to their ‘deprofessionalisation’ or ‘proletarianisation’ but instead, is redefining professional autonomy in ways that make it compatible with the new managerialism. Whilst many public sector professionals view NPM as a threat to their autonomy and authority they cannot openly condemn its implementation given the public claim that it will improve the service to the public/client/consumer. Instead, therefore, they broadly accept NPM and look for ways of ameliorating its impact. This, the professionals attempt to achieve in one or more of three ways:

1. Colonisation: claiming their professional right to take on the responsibility for the activity and thereby if not dictating certainly influencing the measures for success and failure. This is particularly evident within higher education

2. De-coupling: minimising the impact of NPM on their work by treating it as a formal requirement that has little practical importance for their real work (i.e. decoupled cf. Meyer and Rowan, 1991), for example in teaching and medical work. Doctors, for instance, have long adopted this technique in relation to medical audit (Power, 1997: 106).

3. Reconfiguration: a combination of both previous strategies in an attempt to retain control over the organisation and delivery of their services.

At the same time, some managers have felt threatened by the ‘iron cage’ of accountability and audits experiencing these as an attack on their traditional ethos of public service. But in general, management lacks a credible independent base from which to resist NPM and have to learn the new ‘scripts’ and adapt to the new ethos which increasingly draws on a revised form of professionalism which has more to do with the ‘responsibilisation’ of labour (Fournier, 1999) than with legitimating the autonomy of particularly groups of expert labour. All these issues are taken up within the chapters that make up this edited collection and together provide a critical assessment of the phenomena of New Public Management.

The authors draw on a range of sociological and organisational theories in their analyses of a range of case studies and evaluations. The body of the book starts, however, with a detailed and theoretical analysis of NPM and the public sector professions (Part I), provided my Dent and Barry. This is followed by three sections each one dealing with one of the characteristics of the NPM movement: variation; variability; contestability. Variation is the focus of Part II (Variations Between Sectors), which comprises of four chapters that relate to the issue of variation between sectors. It covers local government, social care management, social work and the police and each chapter documents the growing emphasis on the imposition of new ‘standards’ and chart the variation of responses across the public sector. While each report conflicts and dilemmas for managers and professionals the impact of NPM and the response to it varies considerably. In Keen’s chapter on ‘Best Value’ in local government she draws on case study research to examine the range and variation of responses of middle managers to NPM and, in particular, the ‘best value’ policy initiative. Henderson and Seddon’s study reports on the experience of first line managers in social care and the challenges they face in meeting the new demands to work in multi- and cross-disciplinary teams to provide the ‘seamless care’ promised by government. Garrett’s study is of social work and emphasises more the challenges of standardisation within professional practice. He examines and analyses the increasing demands on social workers to work ‘within centrally devised schedules, checklists and proforma’ and the implications for social worker/ client relations. Metcalfe concludes this section with her study of an English police force and the challenges it faced in introducing a new performance appraisal policy. The study, which draws on a large survey as well as participant observation, identifies problems associated in introducing NPM-type organisational changes without taking sufficient account of organisational and professional cultures.

Variability is the subject of Part III (Hydra-Headed NPM: The Case of the National Health Service) and here there are four chapters each reporting on original research that demonstrate the variations of NPM and its implications within just one sector, the National Health Service (NHS). Linstead and Catlow open with a study of the experience of women in senior management and the extent to which the new managerialism has challenged the dominant discourse of masculinity. This contribution continues with concerns raised in the previous section and contrasts with the other three contributions, which focus on specific organisational and policy initiatives. Howorth, Mueller and Harvey draw on the concept of the ‘learning organisation’ in their study of the adoption of an NPM system of ‘Patient Focused Care’ within a hospital trust. Ruanne’s case study examines NHS Trust managers’ ambiguous perceptions of the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) while Alferrof and Dent’s study of ‘Out of Hours’ care presents an account of the complexities and variations in the working relations between general practitioners and Accident and Emergency units in developing services that were consumer/patient focused.

The discussion of the contested nature of NPM is the subject of Part IV (NPM as a Contested Terrain) and it is here that the issues of adaptation, negotiation and struggle with NPM are examined. Berg, Barry and Chandler begin this section with a chapter reporting on studies that examines the insecurities and stress for academics within higher education in Britain. The chapter is as much a critique of the psychology of stress as it is a report on staff responses to work pressures and shows how the reach of management extends to the control of emotional responses. This is followed by Bolton’s study that demonstrates how at least one occupational group resist the disciplinary mechanisms of NPM. The focus here is on a particular mode of resistance as employed by nurses – humour. Drawing on a longitudinal study Bolton demonstrates how humour can be applied as ‘a potent negotiative device’ one that can change the balance of power and defy the ‘taken for granted’ patriarchal assumptions of much of their work. In short, ensures the nurses retain their practical autonomy within the work terrain even in face of pervasive NPM driven organisational change.

Part V, The Limits of NPM, provides an overall assessment, comprising two chapters, each setting out a ‘score card’ for NPM. Jones provides an evaluation of the evidence from New Zealand and Singapore, countries selected because both are keen players in the NPM game. The chapter provides evidence that suggests the gains of the much-vaunted new managerialism are less easily won than many of its proponents had led us to expect. Finally, Cutler provides the coup de grace with an incisive critique of the rhetoric that has attached to the new managerialism in the public sector despite pre-existing evidence of poor performance within the private sector.

References

Clarke, J. and Newman, J. (1997), The Managerial State, Sage: London.

Exworthy, M. and Halford, S. (eds) (1999), Professionals and the New Managerialism in the Public Sector, Open University Press: Buckingham.

Ferlie, E., Ashbumer, L., Fitzgerald, L., and Pettigrew, A. (1996), The New Public Administration in Action, Oxford University Press: Oxford.

Foumier, V. (1999), ‘The Appeal of “Professionalism” as a Disciplinary Mechanism’, The Sociological Review, 47(2): 280–307.

Hood, C. (1991), ‘A Public Management for All Seasons?’ Public Administration, 69: 3–19.

Hood, C. (1995), ‘The “New Public Management” in the 1980s: Variations on a Theme’, Accounting, Organizations and Society, 20, 2(3): 93–109.

Hood, C., Scott, C., James, O., Jones, G. and Travers, T. (1999), Regulation Inside Government: Waste-Watchers, Quality-Police and Sleaze-Busters, Oxford University Press: Oxford.

Jary, D. (2002), ‘Aspects of the “Audit Society”: Issues arising from the Colonization of Professional Academic Identities by a “Portable Management Tool”’, in M. Dent and S. Whitehead (eds), Managing Professional Identities: Knowledge, Performativity and the ‘New’ Professional, Routledge: London.

Meyer J.W. and Rowan, B. (1991), ‘Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony’, in W.W. Powell and P.J. DiMaggio (eds), The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, The University of Chicago Press: Chicago and London.

Pollitt, C. and Bouckaert, G. (2000), Public Management Reform: a Comparative Analysis, Oxford University Press: Oxford.

Power, M. (1994), The Audit Explosion, London: Demos.

Power, M. (1997), The Audit Society: The Rituals of Verification, Oxford University Press: Oxford.

PART I

CONTEXT AND THEORY OF THE NEW PUBLIC MANAGEMENT

Chapter 2

New Public Management and the Professions in the UK: Reconfiguring Control?

Mike Dent and Jim Barry

Introducing the New Public Management

Writing in the early 1940s the disillusioned ex-Trotskyist James Burnham warned of a managerial revolution, a ‘major social revolution … now in fact occurring [with] the [second world] war … subordinate to the revolution, not the other way round’ (Burnham, 1942: 8). In recent years a new variation has come to prominence, this time evolutionary rather than revolutionary, with academic commentators noting the emergence of a ‘managerial reform movement’ developing in the public sector, often referred to as the New Public Management (NPM), evident from the late 1970s onwards (Hood et al, 1999: 189–90). These commentators have, as with Burnham, also documented a growing international interest, albeit one which seems to have varied in its appeal (Hood, 1995). Some countries, including New Zealand and Sweden in addition to the UK, have adopted the reforms fairly readily while others have not. Germany and Japan are good examples of the latter category. As an early adopter Britain may even be something of a test case. Clarke and Newman (1997), sensing a managerial colonisation of the public sector, have argued that in Britain a ‘managerial state’ is in the making. Talk in Britain of a ‘creeping managerialism’ (Strong and Robinson, 1990) in relation to NHS reforms and the ‘decline of donnish dominion’ (Halsey, 1995) alongside the emergence of the ‘McUniversity’ (Parker and Jary, 1995) in academe, would appear to lend weight to this view.

The appeal of the NPM lies in the claim that it delivers improved public services and that it represents an empowerment of those it employs and those it seeks to serve. This siren call certainly seems to have found a ready and willing audience in senior public servants (Pollitt, 1990: 171–72), keen to better manage their unwieldy administrative machinery, and a fickle public who appeared to be losing faith in the ‘bureau-professional regime’ of the welfare state (Clarke and Newman, 1997: 12–13). Yet there is little in all this that appears to be new beyond a rhetoric concerning quality, shared values and empowerment in the service of a public now relabelled ‘consumers’. Indeed, as a reading of the growing literature reveals, much of what constitutes the NPM is borr...