The Public Services under Reconstruction

Client experiences, professional practices, managerial control

Marja Gastelaars

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• eBook ISBN: 9781134028528
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

This book examines the services in and around the public domain. The author analyses a number of socio-cultural changes that are generally considered relevant to these services, including the rationalising efforts of the New Public Management and the introduction of IT. The book particularly addresses the diversity of services. It focuses on the local complexities of their day to day processes of service delivery, and on the diversity of client experiences and professional roles associated with various client relationships.

A practical objective of this book is to encourage its readers to 'redefine' the services they professionally deal with, and move beyond the standard requirements of the New Public Management that are so often taken for granted as a starting point. Professional managers are, for instance, invited to reconsider their currently quite dominant 'technical' managerial perspective. Service professionals are encouraged to make sense of the risks and responsibilities involved with their day to day negotiations, including the impact of the services on the lives of their clients. Gastelaars adopts and interpretive approach to her subject, combining discourse analysis and ethnographic research to concentrate on the actual practices associated with service delivery, rather than on theories and justifications.

1 The public services are under debate

A cell-phone conversation on the train between The Hague and Rotterdam:

‘This is Bert…’

‘Hi! Yes, I’m on my way…’

‘No, by train. Well…. train… Let’s say they rented something in Belgium and they’re now towing it to Rotterdam.’

(de Volkskrant, 14 April 2003)

What is going on?

What on earth has happened to the services in and around the public domain? We all know the stories about hospitals that keep you on a waiting list for ages and then, just as your surgery is due, they postpone it. And about call centres that pretend to all be there for you, but confront you with their automated replies or with their standard apologies for the inconvenience whenever you try to contact them. It could be easily argued that the so-called client-centeredness which was introduced to many of these services about a decade ago, under such labels as ‘Service Management’ (Grönroos 1990; Normann 1991) and ‘New Public Management’ (McLaughlin et al. 2002) has, to say the least, been quite counter-productive.

Quite a few people appear to believe it is the new managers who are to blame. But rather than providing yet another critique of the New Public Management (NPM), this book will focus on another side of the story. It is taken as a starting point, here, that the new managers cannot be held responsible for most of the socio-cultural changes that are currently taking place and that may to a large extent, in fact, account for the many changes that affect the various services, at this point in time. For instance, it was not the managers, themselves, who invited their clients to ‘make a difference’ as individuals, or who invented the world-wide migration movements of the past few decades, or the global impact of the Internet, to mention only a few of these changes. As a matter of fact, one could even argue that the new managers are actually there to help their organizations keep up with these changes, and prevent them from getting out of control.

Moreover, one should also realize that the services in and around the public domain are permanently under debate. Of course, this has always been the case, if only because the services in and around the public domain are often endowed with public responsibilities such as ‘justice’, the ‘monopoly of violence’ or ‘public decency’; they are even involved in matters that affect ‘life and death’ and ‘the future of our children’. What did change, however, is the role of the contemporary media. They are, for instance, more inclined than ever before to invite their audiences to actually identify with individual clients—‘Would you like this to happen to your old father?’ And again, this media behaviour has always been encouraged by the fact that, with services, the clients by definition take part in the processes of service delivery. In fact, many of these services are part of our everyday lives. When we get up, go to the bathroom and take a shower, put the kettle on and prepare breakfast, we may not realize that there are already services performing for us, until something goes wrong. The human interest associated with such failures, however, has become ever more prominent in media debates.

However, one should not generalize about ‘the’ services, even in this respect. The various services are each expected to handle quite different client relationships, and, accordingly, they may also be required to answer to quite different values. For instance, professional services such as hospitals, should never allow the new attention to both cost effectiveness and the client experience to interfere with the professional quality of their daily work (Freidson 2001). The same is true for the selection bureaucracies that manage our social security system. Such new considerations should never be allowed to interfere with the equity that these services are expected to perform—even if they now are permanently under reconstruction. Accordingly, this book will develop a conceptual framework in which these differences are given a proper place. Moreover, it is assumed, here, that the socio-cultural changes mentioned above—as well as the new management—can certainly be expected to have an effect on all of these services. They may, however, have an essentially different impact on the different services that are available in and around the public domain.

So, accordingly, the starting point of the book provides a number of socio-cultural changes that are generally considered relevant to the services in and around the public domain. Among them are the rationalizing efforts of the New Public Management and the introduction of IT and all of the other aspects of contemporary rationalization. Moreover, the various individualizing tendencies of our society are considered particularly relevant to the development of these services, as well. The book’s ultimate aim, however, is to make sense of what is actually going on inside these various services in and around the public domain. In particular, it proposes to show how their day-to-day activities are affected by these general societal changes, but that during these various reconstructions these services had better continue their ‘business’ uninterrupted.

The book will first and foremost try to make sense of the many changes that affect the day-to-day activities of the clients and service professionals who are expressly expected to negotiate the actual performance of the core services that these services are to deliver. As a consequence, it proposes to take a multi-perspective approach that does not only include the perspective of the (new) service managers but also those of the service professionals and their clients. Accordingly, the book criticizes those who argue that ‘the ultimate truth’ concerning the changes affecting the services in and around the public domain is provided by the New Public Management. It also criticizes those who oppose these arguments with the proposition that ‘the truth’ is ultimately found with the service professionals and their specific ‘professional logic’. But the same is true for those who argue that it is ‘ultimately’ the client experience (or client satisfaction) that counts.

The Dutch Railways, for example

Some of the recent developments at the Dutch Railways (NS) may serve as an illustration of what this book will cover. It is observed from the perspective of a client who is trying to make sense of her own experiences, as well as those of the other parties present. When presented from another perspective, this story may turn out quite differently, indeed. The ‘I’ presented here is the author of this book.

I have been a commuter for some decades now. I don’t drive a car, so I am dependent on the train and take it four to five times a week from A to B, and vice versa. I am a regular traveller, so I only need to access the Railways’ website to plan my trips to other destinations. They also have a call centre with an automated female voice: ‘if you would like more information about…please press…’ But it is very inefficient, most of the time, and I have to pay for these calls!

I am glad that I usually don’t have to buy tickets. I have an annual ticket, as they call it. So I do not have to use the vending machines. The NS has also diversified my options, one could say. Not only are there many destinations and departure times to choose from, there are also different types of tickets available, depending on one’s age, travelling behaviour and one’s budget. There are discount tickets for the old; first-class and second-class tickets; discount tickets for people travelling outside of peak periods; and special tickets for the young.

But there are very few ticket windows open these days. They are easier to find in Station B. So that’s where I pick up my small stock of first-class tickets, every once in a while, which I buy in case the second class compartments get too crowded during rush hour. That is also where I buy my ‘detour’ tickets (the NS’s vocabulary is still bureaucratically precise, sometimes I fail to call the tickets by their proper names…) in case I end up wanting to travel to another destination, before going to point B and then back, again, to point A.

I don’t know whether other people have similar experiences, but I had to get used to the transformations of large railway stations like A and B. They have been turned into shopping malls which are, of course, quite convenient for our daily shopping needs. But now it’s even more difficult to find open ticket windows and the departures board, never mind finding the trains! Moreover, and apart from the few NS employees in uniform who offer information on and around the train platforms, face-to-face contact with NS representatives has become a rare experience. ‘The railways’ have disappeared behind the scenes.

The real journey has become an exercise in diversity, one might say. NS advertisements focus on middle-class people, and particularly those who drive a car. But there is an incredible variety of people on the trains. There are some middle-class people, of course, but also the volunteers who collect fruit for the homeless (and also ‘do not mind accepting some cash’). There are mothers with children in prams as well as migrants and tourists from all over the world who sit next to elderly Dutch people. And, of course, there are many students and commuters like me.

There are also the petty criminals, whom the NS intercom warns us against in a number of languages: ‘There are pickpockets on the train!’ But fortunately, I haven’t seen many of them, at least till now. And, apart from some quarrels involving paying fines for those not in possession of a ticket, most of the passengers keep to themselves. They appear to be mainly interested in reaching their destination, and so am I.

During rush hour, however, the physical experience of travelling turns into quite an adventure, indeed! The apparent shortage of equipment often forces us into fairly outdated compartments where we hope to find a seat. And we also hope the train will actually make it to its destination. It often doesn’t because of delays caused by obstructions or wet leaves on the rails or snow-drifts or a malfunctioning switch, or an accident or a fire or a power failure or a computer network failure or because the NS has gone on strike. It is during moments like these as we’re left waiting on a platform somewhere that we actually experience the power the NS has over us. Its standard apologies for the delay only seem to aggravate the situation.

Meanwhile, the media attempts to further aggravate our problems. The train appears to belong to the everyday experiences of many people. Serious delays are always news. And so are strikes or accidents or dangerous situations or confrontations on a train. The media also pays a lot of attention to the ongoing conflicts between management and employees. Thanks to them we know all about management’s intentions to enhance the NS’s performance with teams that are responsible for specific routes. These routes have come to be called ‘laps around the church’ by the employees, a metaphor that refers to the local cycling races that are otherwise very popular in Dutch villages, but that, in this context, meant the curbing of these workers’ freedoms on the rails.

We are also confronted in the media by an upper management which persistently presents itself as a group of heroic entrepreneurs encouraging ever further privatization. They propose the introduction of high speed trains and other projects, to ‘put the Dutch Railway system on the European map’. But, as a matter of fact, they have toned down their speeches of late, although this doesn’t necessarily mean that they have actually changed these plans. As far as our everyday transport is concerned, their promise of ‘seamless service from door to door’ including bus transport and so-called train taxis appears to have totally vanished. At present, the management seems quite satisfied when—‘with a margin of a maximum of five per cent’—about 85 per cent of the trains are on time, and, according to its regular reports on ‘client satisfaction’, the average client does not appear to mind. And, as a matter of fact, I don’t. Unless my own train is delayed, of course.

(field notes)

This example demonstrates how the NS appear to be permanently under reconstruction. It also demonstrates, however, that these changes cannot entirely be reduced to the ‘managerial efforts’ that are put in place. Moreover, it demonstrates that these changes may affect its essential client relationship only to an extent: the railways remain a mass service involving large numbers of clients. It also shows how the clients may often be presented as the ultimate alibi for the changes, but are not always the winners. But most of all it demonstrates that services like this have become quite complex, indeed, and, even more importantly, that this complexity can be argued from a variety of perspectives. The NS may have become complicated in the eyes of its clients but the example also shows that it may have become just as complex for the professional service workers who are involved. Therefore, it should not come as a surprise that even its managers may end up feeling that they are losing control.

What are ‘organizations’ all about?

To start with, it should be assumed that services—public and private services alike are ‘organized’ in ways that make them similar to other organizations. This means that, like any other organization, they can be seen as constructions that are intentionally produced, and that are also expected to deliberately exploit the resources available to them, in order to effectively create a specified set of ‘products’.

It can even be assumed that in this way they actually fulfil the goals they set for themselves, and guarantee the continuity of their organizations (Hasenfeld 1983: 7). Moreover, all services are expected to have a division of labour and are also expected to be familiar with the concept of co-ordination (Mintzberg 1983). However, and as a part of the current ‘permanent reconstruction’, most services have also developed a computerized infrastructure and various services that work behind the scenes to support their primary processes. And, more often than not, these services are now also developing a number of ‘boundary roles’ (Scott 1992), as exemplified by the marketing departments, call centres and client services that help them relate to their (potential) clients. As a consequence, they have also become more complex in a very technical sense of the word, which involves more units, more divisions and more possible links (Mintzberg 1983).

At the same time, however, these newly ‘reorganized’ services are not only expected to be ‘in control’ of their everyday performances but are held ‘accountable’ for them to the outside world, as well. Accordingly, the emergence of professional managers should not be too surprising: to some of us, they must be present to ensure that all of these new ‘organizational’ characteristics are put in their proper places.

And yet, the services should also be seen as a different kind of organization because of the actual core tasks they perform. In fact, even the current reconstructions should not allow this typical ‘service’ aspect of these organizations to change. For instance, services do not produce any material goods. They cannot be considered ‘information processing’ establishments, either. They are also different from governmental departments doing paper work, or from organizations taking care of data collection and/or storage (Korczynski 2002). They also do not resemble organizations that spend most of their time and energy on the transport and distribution of ‘material goods’. A number of authors believe that the main difference here is that service work means that these organizations do most of their work in the presence of their clients. (Normann 1991; Grönroos 1990). But it is not simply the ‘how’ or the ‘where’ that is different here: services are also expected to perform quite different tasks.

What is a ‘service’?

Yeheskel Hasenfeld (1983) argued some decades ago that the services, in particular, involve people work in two senses of the word. First, and like all other organizations, it is people who actually do the work, whether or not they are supported by a computerized infrastructure or by material objects. But, second, and unlike other organizations, the services also perform people work in the sense that they do their work to, with or for those people who actually participate in their processes as clients. Even those services that happen to perform much of their work ‘behind the scenes’, when seen from a client’s perspective, are actually expected to do something ‘to’, ‘with’ or ‘for’ their clients.

Hasenfeld argued that services are organizations ‘whose principle function is to protect, maintain or enhance the personal well-being of individuals by defining, shaping, or altering their personal attributes’ (Hasenfeld 1983: 1). This is still basically the case, although it may be more accurate, nowadays, to adjust Hasenfeld’s rather normative proposition of doing something about ‘the personal well-being’ of these individuals into a more generalized ‘changing’ these individuals’ physical, psychological or social ‘condition’. But, even with this adjustment, we can still assume that all services provide some sort of intervention in the lives of their clients.

Moreover, it may not appear as self-evident as it used to be in Hasenfeld’s time, that clients are invariably positioned ‘on the receiving end’ of the intended changes. Contemporary clients are sometimes even expected to actively ‘deliver’ the services themselves (Normann 1991). But again, the point that should be made here remains the same: the actual process of service delivery always involves two parties who, together, perform the client relationship as required.

Accordingly, a number of elements can be used to pinpoint what these services are about. First, there are those elements that expressly relate to their core business. Their primary processes (cf. Grönroos 1990) are organized around the specific core services they perform, including the client relationships that are central to these core services (cf. Hasenfeld 1983). Apart from this, the services are usually also expressly related to specific core values that link them to various stakeholders in their societal environment and that help them to (re)produce their legitimacy in the public debate as well.

So an appropriate description of what ‘organized services’ are about should contain at least three elements:

1. Services are generally organized around a primary process that consists of a series of client contacts that together make up the process of service delivery, as arranged by the organization.
2. This process of service delivery is arranged around one or more specific core services performing specific interventions, with specific aims, in the condition of the clients. These core services require an ‘organized’ client relationship involving both the organizations’ service professionals and their clients.
3. Such ‘organized services’ are not only expected to account for organizational values such as effectiveness and efficiency but also for specific core values related to the core service(s) they are to perform. Together these specifications provide ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface and acknowledgements
• 1 The public services are under debate
• 2 Meanwhile, in society
• 3 ‘Why are we here?’ Core services and client relationships
• 4 The (re)construction of the services: (re)routing the clients
• 5 ‘Whatever it takes!’ The organizational relevance of professional responsibilities
• 6 ‘What am I doing here?’ The client experience
• 7 The new management: about ‘process’ and ‘control’
• 8 Conclusion: where are we now?
• References