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Explaining the New Public Management: The Importance of Context

Author: N Flynn
Date: 2002
Size: 19 pages

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Summary

How can the differences in how governments describe their public sectors and behave towards them be explained? Do particular contexts make implementing change easier or harder? This study examines the proposition that different contexts generate different discourses and affect how governments diagnose the problems that they seek to solve. The study maps public sector management changes in a wide sample of European countries and analyses how diagnoses are constructed according to particular economic, political, institutional and cultural contexts.

There are distinct differences between countries and sectors in the way management change is approached. At a highly abstract level, governments use similar language to describe their reforms, but in practice there are differences in priorities and objectives. The context in which management change takes place accounts to some extent for these differences. Success in implementation is affected by institutional context, which has four parts: the management climate, the national culture as it impacts on organisational culture, the socio-technical systems in the sectors to be reformed and the institutional capacity for change.

If the chances of successful management changes are to be increased, the potential positive and negative influence of the context needs to be understood. Some negative influences will be easier to change than others.

• If there is a national culture that reinforces hierarchy and is comfortable with large power differences and reluctant to individualise responsibility, then a reorganisation that removes tiers of management and devolves responsibility will be difficult.
• Other approaches to performance improvement, such as a hierarchical system of measurement and a collective responsibility, would be easier to implement.
• Devolved management is more likely to be successful in a cultural climate that emphasises individualism, competition and the acceptance of individual responsibility.

The context helps to explain not only the different management arrangements in place but also the different goals and problems in achieving them. If we want to understand the processes involved in changing management in the public sector we need to take account of the context.

• Basic political positions about the role of the state and the market strongly colour the attitude to big questions about state-private boundaries.
• Positions on motivation and attitudes to the workforce also effect the types of management arrangements that are put in place.
• In addition to political positions or attitudes, the degree of patronage, the relative strength of ministries and professions may affect the process of managing changes.
• Inertia would seem to have the best chance of success. Path dependency taken to extremes allows no options.

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Source: Flynn, N., 2002, ‘Explaining the New Public Management: The Importance of Context’ in New Public Management: Current Trends and Future Prospects eds. K McLaughlin, S Osborne and E. Ferlie, Routledge, London