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This is not a blog which opines on current events. It rather uses incidents, books (old and new), links and papers to muse about our social endeavours.
So old posts are as good as new! And lots of useful links!

The Bucegi mountains - the range I see from the front balcony of my mountain house - are almost 120 kms from Bucharest and cannot normally be seen from the capital but some extraordinary weather conditions allowed this pic to be taken from the top of the Intercontinental Hotel in late Feb 2020

Tuesday, January 7, 2020

Is Organisational Reform really all that sexy?

The last 2 posts have tried to direct readers to posts they may have missed last year - relating to one of the three subjects which most occupied my thoughts viz the nature of the economic beast which had us in its grips. You can read these thoughts more easily on “To Whom it May Concern” – the latest version of which is accessible by clicking on that title in the list in the top-right corner of the blog’s masthead.

Today I want to switch the focus to the section of the collection which is entitled “What is it about Admin Reform which makes it so sexy?” But first I owe my readers some explanation of why I continue to be so fixated about public management reform….Quite simply I find the writings on the subject less than satisfactory because they are produced either by academics (who reify and obfuscate) or by think-tankers (who simplify and exaggerate). It’s very difficult to find material written by practitioners – or, even better, by those who straddle boundaries of discipline, nation or role.

I came to full adult consciousness in the 1960s, getting my first taste of political power in 1968 and of political responsibility and innovation in 1971 when I became Chairman of a Scottish Social Work Committee.
“Reform” was very much in the air – although no one could then have imagined what an industry public administrative reform would become. Indeed, in those days, the only management author you could find in the bookstores was Peter Drucker. And the only books about reform were American….

The opening pages of my How did Administrative Reform get to be so Sexy? try to convey a sense of what it was like to be an early pioneer of organisational change in the country. My position in academia encouraged me to develop a habit of publishing “think-pieces” often in the form of pamphlets in a Local Government Research Unit which I established in 1970 at Paisley College of Technology – this 1977 article gives a good example of the style.
The same year I published a little book about the experience of the new system of Scottish local government and, for the next decade, musings on my experience of running a unique social strategy in the West of Scotland. 

In Transit – notes on good governance (1999) were the reflections which resulted from my first decade living and working in the countries of post-communist central Europe. Eight years then followed in three Central Asian countries and strengthened a feeling about the inappropriateness of the approach we “foreign experts” were using in our “technical assistance”.
In 2007 I tried to interest people in the NISPace network in a critique called Missionaries, mercenaries or witchdoctors – is admin reform in transition countries a religion, business or a medicine? – but to no avail.

I started blogging in 2008 with a website which is still active – publicadminreform - clearly signalling that I wanted to use it to reach out to others. Sadly that has not happened…but it has not stopped me from continuing to “talk to myself” on this blog and from trying to produce a book which does justice to the thoughts and experiences I’ve had in about 10 countries over the past 50 years….

So let me try to summarise why I persevere with this fixation of mine –
-       Authors in this field focus either on students or experts in government, academia and think tanks.
-       I know of only a handful of books which have been written for the general public
-       Most writers about PAR have known only one occupation – whether academic or think-tanker – and one country
-       I’ve occupied different roles (political, academic, consultancy) in different countries and can therefore see the issues from many sides
-       few authors have bothered to try to explore the possible reasons for the stratospheric and continued rise in interest in administrative reform
-       New cohorts of politicians, public servants and even academics arrive in the workforce without a good sense of the history of this subject

Post
What sparked it off
Why it’s worth reading

Oxfam report for Davos


Rereading last year’s draft book about administrative reform
Gives us the encouraging lessons from the experience of those who have rolled back privatisation
Going back to Burnham
Explores the question we rarely ask
My 1999 book “In Transit – notes on Good Governance”
Looks at how reform was seen in the 1990s
Gerald Caiden
A prescient voice
A reminder of the strength of organ inertia
A first stab at an answer to the question
Clarifying professionalism
First we rubbished the professionals
We don’t seem to have learned much in 40 years……
Key lessons are however extracted

Belated acknowledgement of a great scholar
Those who express important truths in a clear language deserve honour

“The Puritan Gift” is a rare critique of how modern management has poisoned us all  
Has a good summary
The Grand Old Man of management says it better

Important proverbs
an article being hyped as “the new practice of public problem-solving

Technocracy is the new enemy
Laloux book
Summary of one of the most important books about organisations in recent years
an article being hyped as “the new practice of public problem-solving
Good references
Workforce management again

Neoliberalism

Hilary Cottam’s book
Time to take this issue seriously


A rare article about translation  should leave us wondering why international summits are not more conflictual..


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