I live what might be called a peripheral life – remote from friends and
professional communities. That was brought home to me when I discovered that
the scholar, whose work I was summarising in yesterday’s post, had died a full
year earlier.
Chris Pollitt was one of two Christophers whose writings about public administration so impressed
me that I had opened some time ago a special folder for their articles - the
other being Chris Hood. Both were my age and wrote, in wry and elegant English,
articles to which they would give provocative and exciting titles.
I
remember an early book of his Managerialism and the
Public Services – cuts or cultural change in the 1990s? (1993) which clearly and critically analysed the
ideas and practice shaping the public sector revolution in Britain and America
in the 1980s and explored possible alternatives to this new orthodoxy. Even
better was “The
Essential Public Manager” (2003) which had some friends role-play and
discuss some common dilemmas facing contemporary public services..
And his various articles were a constant delight to anyone looking for
clear expositions of what was going in the reform industry. Here’s how he
summarised things on one occasion – “I would
suggest a number of ‘lessons’ which could be drawn from the experience:
1.
Big models, such as NPM or ‘good governance’ or
‘partnership working’, often do not take one very far. The
art of reform lies in their adaptation (often very extensive) to fit local
contexts. And anyway, these models are
seldom entirely well-defined or consistent in themselves. Applying the big models or even standardized
techniques (benchmarking, business process re-engineering, lean) in a
formulaic, tick-box manner can be highly counterproductive
2. As many
scholars and some practitioners have been observing for decades, there is no
‘one best way’. The whole exercise of
reform should begin with a careful diagnosis of the local situation, not with
the proclamation of a model (or technique) which is to be applied, top down. ‘No prescription without careful diagnosis’
is not a bad motto for reformers.
3. Another,
related point is that task differences really do matter. A market-type mechanism may work quite well
when applied to refuse collection but not when applied to hospital care. Sectoral and task differences are important,
and reformers should be wary of situations where their advisory team lacks
substantial expertise in the particular tasks and activities that are the
targets for reform.
4. Public
Management Reform (PMR) is always political as well as
managerial/organizational. Any
prescription or diagnosis which does not take into account the ‘way politics
works around here’ is inadequate and incomplete. Some kernel of active support from among the
political elite is usually indispensable.
5. PMR is usually
saturated with vested interests, including those of the consultants/advisors,
and the existing public service staff.
To conceptualise it as a purely technical exercise would be naïve.
6. Successful PMR
is frequently an iterative exercise, over considerable periods of time. Reformers must adapt and also take advantage
of ‘windows of opportunity’. This
implies a locally knowledgable presence over time, not a one-shot ‘quick fix’
by visiting consultants.
7. It does work
sometimes! But, as indicated at the
outset, humility is not a bad starting point.
One of his colleagues put up a full tribute to his work which mentions
many of his key books – you can find it in
full here here. I’ve taken the liberty of editing it down a bit-
Christopher Pollitt was one of the most productive
researchers ever in the field of public administration and management. He
wrote, co‐authored and edited nearly 30 books and countless
articles and reports. In “Public Administration”, a journal he edited
between 1982 and 1989, he published 15 articles.
Christopher's books show the enormous width and depth
of his knowledge. First, he produced seminal textbooks like “The Essential
Manager” (2003) or “Advanced Introduction to Public Management” (2016)
that display his ability to synthesize, make central concepts understandable to
students/practitioners and illustrate their applications.
In his most cited work, “Public Management Reforms”,
with Geert Bouckaert, he combines two of his main research interests, studying
public sector reforms in a comparative context. This book is very useful both
for its unambiguous analytic framework and its very impressive overview of
reforms in so many countries. It is not surprising that the book has gone
through several editions and updates.
Christopher's many research interests were reflected in
his key book publications. He was interested in public services, as reflected
in his early “Management and the Public Services: Cuts or Cultural
Change in the 1990s” (published in 1993) and “New Perspectives on
Public Services: Place and Technology”, published in 2001. He was interested in
quality assessment and this led, for example, to the publication, in 1995,
of “Quality Improvements in European Public Services”.
………….
Looking at Christopher's articles over the past decade,
one can distinguish three broad lines of interest. One is an emphasis on taking
stock and reviewing the comparative experiences in public sector reform. These
publications, most of them with Sorin Dan, include ‘30 Years of Public
Management Reform: Has there been a Pattern?’, for the World Bank from 2011;
‘The Impact of NPM in Europe: A Meta‐Analysis’
(2011); ‘Search for Impact in Performance‐Oriented
Management Reform: A Review of the European Literature’ (2014); ‘The Evolving
Narrative of Public Management Reform: 40 years of Reform White Papers in the
UK’, from 2013; and ‘NPM Can Work: An Optimistic Review of the Impact of NPM
Reforms in Central and Eastern Europe’ (2015).
Christopher also took aim at new reform fashions and
institutions; typical examples include ‘Bureaucracies Remember, Post‐Bureaucratic Organizations Forget?’ (from 2009) and
‘Talking about Government: The Role of Magic Concepts’ (from 2011).
Christopher was always interested in and concerned with
developing public administration as a field of study, and this led to some
highly influential papers. Some of these critical contributions are ‘Envision
Public Administration as a Scholarly Field in 2020’ (published in 2010) and
‘Future Trends in Public Administration and Management: An Outside‐In Perspective’, a 2014 paper for the international
COCOPS research project.
Overall, then, what characterized Christopher's profile
as a researcher and scholar? Unlike
many of his colleagues, he had a background as a civil servant, which
influenced him considerably. This outlook is pretty well summed up in the
following sentence from the preface of his 2011 New Perspective book:
‘What I hope to offer, at least on my optimistic mornings, is a new way of
thinking about public service organizations – more concrete and practical than
long analyses of abstract management tools and concepts, and more rooted in locational
specificities of everyday life.’ He really succeeded in this endeavour by
combining well‐grounded and clear concepts with close attention to
empirical data.
Christopher was a great communicator who really enjoyed
telling stories. He brightened up conferences and workshops with well‐constructed presentations that often involved
surprising twists and turns. But he even more liked to entertain his colleagues
and friends with, at times, endless, but never boring stories. His stories
always included an edge that one could learn from, especially as they pointed
to the shortcomings of human nature, something that he had a relaxed attitude
towards.
Let Chris’s own challenging words end this tribute –
“what we see in academic PA is too often a retreat
into scholasticism or, at the other extreme, a kind of highbrow management
consultancy. Of course we need both these types, but we also need a solid core
of PA scholars who practice independent, high-quality critical analysis of big
things which are happening now and will happen in future (climate change,
demographic change, migration). Scholars who will build and find funding for
ambitious projects aimed at those issues, simultaneously growing networks of
concerned scholars across disciplines and fields. And – most importantly – who
communicate, not only in learned journals, but also on websites and blogs,
radio and TV and the press. Many citizens really are interested in why their
schools are failing or their police are corrupt, and far less so in what
celebrity politicians said to each other yesterday. We should be a respected
voice addressed to that appetite”
One of the journals he edited, “Public Administration” has put created
a “virtual
edition” which allows access to several of his articles. Coincidentally I
had already collected a few hyperlinks for sharing….
A Pollitt Resource
Managerialism
Redux; (Keynote address Edinburgh 2014)
Future Trends in European Public Administration and
Management; COCOPS 2014
The changing face of academic Public Administration; 2014
Public Management Reform during austerity 2010
The magic of good
governance C Pollitt and P Hupe (2010)
New Public Management in Europe; C Pollitt, S van Thiel and V Homburg (2007)
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