Peripheral Vision: Management of Public Services

what you get here

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, May 30, 2023

Management of Public Services - Best Reading on Reform

It’s remarkable how few titles are available to help the concerned citizen (or official) make sense of the “reforms” which have deluged the public sector in the past few decades – whether privatisation, restructuring or austerity. There are, of course, thousands of academic books – but they have a weird focus on arcane and incestuous matters and simply don’t ask the sort of questions most people are interested in….An ex-civil servant, Martin Stanley, has ploughed a lone furlow in his writing about government and civil servce reform on his great site

Last year I spent a lot of time trying to identify what we had learned from 50 years of efforts to improve our public services (see Change for the Better? A Life in reform) The key group acting as a bridge between the public and the (extensive but generally arcane) writing on the subject are journalists too many of whom choose to titillate readers with tales of blunders and corruption. Whether they mean it or not, this only serves to develop cynicism and fatalism

It’s interesting that the book which helped spark off the global interest in what became known as New Public Management – Reinventing Government (1992) was written by a consultant and journalist (David Osborne and Ted Graeber respectively).
I've offered reading lists before on this subject - but this is my most up-to-date and considered shot yet....Interesting that there are more by activists and journalists than I had imagined!

The following may appear a long list – of the generalist books from the past 30 years I would recommend to the activist. But it works out as one significant book every 2 years!!

Title	Author’s profession	Takeaway
Short-term thinking in a long-term world;	B Spurling (2020) public servant	an Australian public servant reflects on his experience
“STRATEGIES FOR GOVERNING - reinventing Public Administration for a dangerous century”	Alasdair Roberts (2019) Canadian public admin academic	what will hopefully be the start of a long overdue reassessment of the subject
A New Politics from the left	Hilary Wainwright (2018) Activist	a rare defence of Public Admin from one of the British left’s most creative thinkers
“Radical Help – how we can remake the relationships between us and revolutionise the welfare state	Hilary Cottam (2018) activist	should be read in conjunction with the recent Demos' pamphlets on the social state and the preventative state.
Dismembered – the ideological attack on the state	Polly Toynbee and D Walker (2017) journalists	a clear analysis of the tragic UK situation by two british journalists
“The 21st century public manager – challenges, people and strategies”	Z van der Wal (2017) Dutch academic and consultant	who has spent the past 7 years as a Prof at the University of Singapore
Reclaiming Public Services – how cities and citizens are turning back privatisation;	TNI (2017) a radical Dutch Think-tank	An excellent overview by the radical international think tank of this very welcome trend
How to Run a Government so that Citizens Benefit and Taxpayers don’t go Crazy;	Michael Barber (2015) consultant	A clearly written book about the approaches favoured by who became Tony Blair’s favourite "go-to" fixer. His optimism is a bit underwhelming
The Fourth Revolution – the global race to reinvent the state;	J Micklewaithe and A Woolridge (2015) journalists and Editors of no less a journal than The Economist	a breathless neoliberal analysis
The Tragedy of the Private – the potential of the public;	Hilary Wainwright (PSI 2014) activist	an important little pamphlet
Public Sector Reform – but not as we know it;	Hilary Wainwright (Unison and TNI 2009) activist	A rare readable case study (Newcastle) of a bottom-up approach to reform. We need much more of this....
Leadership for the Common Good;	Crosby and Bryson (2^nd edition 2005) academics	Probably the most comprehensive of the practical guides to getting the public services working well. Clicking the title gives the entire 500 pages!
The Essential Public Manager;	Chris Pollitt (2003) political scientist	A great and very practical analysis of the political and technical aspects of the search for effective public services
The Values of Bureaucracy	Paul du Gay (2003)	“ Proceedings of an academic conference on du Gay's 2000 book which was a rare attempt to rescue aspects od this all-too-easilymaligned institution. Full book acessible by clicking the title

The Captive State – the corporate takeover of Britain;	George Monbiot” (2000) journalist	“A powerful critique of the nature and scale of corporate involvement in our public services which first alerted me to the nature of public-private partnerships
In Praise of Bureaucracy - weber, organisation, ethics;	Paul du Gay (2000) political scientist	It may be academic, but is clearly written and has become a classic defence of a much maligned institution. Well reviewed here
Change the World;	Robert Quinn (2000) management academic	Simply the best analysis of the process of social and organizational change
Creating Public Value – strategic management in government;	Mark Moore (1995) Harvard acacemic	One of the few books which actually looks at examples of effective leaders in the public sector. Started a wave of (in-house) discussion which led to what could be the third stage of public admin
Reinventing Government;	David Osborne consultant Ted Graeber, journalist (1992)	The book which started the New Public Management revolution