Peter Drucker's "Deadly Sins in public administration"

Management books sell like hot cakes – their stacked titles at airport and High street bookshops appealing to your inner cowboy spirit beating off the enemy to achieve success and admiration.

“Management of change” used to be particularly popular – with the various steps for undermining resistance and achieving catalysing coalitions identified with exclamation marks. I should know because this Annotated Bibliography for change agents has been part of my In Transit – notes on good governance since 1999

But managing change in the public sector is another matter….it just doesn’t seem to be sexy…But why is this? There are actually more management positions in the public sector than in the private – whether as Directors or policy makers on both the political and official sides of what is a dual system. So that translates into more potential readers if not buyers than in a tightly hierarchical private company where the focus is so often the boss. Are publishers that myopic or stupid?

Or do we snap up the management book in an imaginative flight of fantasy – to create a magic world in which we are the respected leader and people jump to our wisdom??

The real reason for the paucity of books on reform of public services in the bookshops, I suspect, is caught by what the man who invented modern management said in 1980 about “the deadly sins in public administration”. That was Peter Drucker and the sins were –

• giving lofty (unspecified) objectives without clear targets which could be measured, appraised and judged

• doing several things at once without establishing, and sticking to, priorities

• believing that "fat is beautiful" ie that abundance not competence gets things done

• being dogmatic, not experimental

• failing to learn from experience

• assuming immortality and being unwilling to abandon pointless programmes

Some people read management books to help them become better managers but I suspect that those are a small minority and that the main reason these books fly off the shelves is for the good feeling of vicarious success they give their readers. It’s like a detective story – everyone likes to see the mystery explained…

Whereas books on public management reform simply bore on about the problems…..and publishers are not stupid – they know that the public prefers more uplifting stuff. And that’s surely why Reinventing Government was, in 1992, the first (and still only) best-seller of that genre. Like “In Search of Excellence” of a decade earlier, it gave us a winning formula

And I suspect that’s why Penguin publishers were willing to take a risk in 2015 and publish no fewer than two books on public management reform - Michael Barber’s How to Run a Government so that Citizens Benefit and Taxpayers don’t go Crazy (2015); and  The Fourth Revolution – the global race to reinvent the state; by John Micklethwait and Adrian Woolridge (2015). Both books tell a largely positive story of the promise of reform…Barber was Tony Blair’s “Head of Delivery” in the British Cabinet but has now reinvented himself as a "Deliverology" Guru.

“The Fourth Revolution – the global race to reinvent the state”

Micklethwait and Woolridge are managing editors of “The Economist” weekly and, given my hostility to the “smart” simplistic commentary of that journal, I have resisted buying the book for the past 4 years… But, on the basis that it's better to know your enemy, I relented last week and have now read their “Fourth Revolution” which they helpfully summarised on the ultra-neoliberal Cato Institute website

I could have saved myself the trouble because the Peter Drucker quote above conveys the negative part of their message so much better.

But let me remain true to the fair soul that lies within me – for this is a rare popular book and should be treated with respect - and rehearse their argument…

The book’s Introduction starts promisingly with a tour of the China Executive Leadership Academy in Shanghai and mentions the Central Party School in Beijing which I remember visiting….But before we reach the present, we are treated in the next hundred pages to an explanation of the three (or 3 ½) previous revolutions - embodied in the names of Hobbes (of Leviathan fame); Locke and JS Mill; and the Webbs. Hobbes legitimized the State as force; the second stage

began with the American and French revolutions and eventually spread across Europe, as liberal reformers replaced regal patronage systems — “Old Corruption,” as it was known in England — with more meritocratic and accountable government.

English liberals took a decrepit old system and reformed it from within by stressing efficiency and freedom. They “stole” China’s idea of a professional civil service selected by exam, attacked cronyism, opened up markets, and restricted the state’s rights to subvert liberty. The “night-watchman state,” advanced by the likes of John Stuart Mill, was both smaller and more competent.

Even though the size of the British population rose by nearly 50 percent from 1816 to 1846 and the Victorians improved plenty of services (including setting up the first modern police force), the state’s tax revenues fell from £80 million to £60 million. And later reformers like William Gladstone kept on looking for ways to “save candle-ends and cheese-parings in the cause of the country.”

The Fabian Webbs gave us the Third revolution - providing the theoretical grounding for the British welfare state...even if Bismarck's Germany beat them to it. 

Then follows a short chapter entitled “Milton Friedman’s Paradise Lost” whose message is –

during the 1980s, when Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, inspired by classical liberal thinkers like Milton Friedman, temporarily halted the expansion of the state and privatized the commanding heights of the economy. We dub this a half revolution because, although it harked back to some of the founding ideas of the second “liberal” revolution, it failed in the end to do anything to reverse the size of the state.

The next 60 pages look at the lessons we should take from California, Singapore and China.

The American lessons are negative – ironically summarised as “seven deadly sins” – and relate to union power. Given all the hype from Al Gore’s programme from 1993 of Reinventing Government, you would have expected some mention – let alone exploration - of this experience, not least for the veiled reference in the sub-title. But not a single one! And no mention either of Osborne and Graeber’s 1992 best-seller of the same name. On the other hand, when it comes to Singapore and China you can sense the relish and admiration – and also in the chapter about the transformation of the state in Nordic countries;

Finally 30 pages on “Fixing Leviathan” – basically through “outsourcing”, decentralisatiom and experimentation; and 30 pages on the role of the state – taking us back to Peter Drucker.

But what I find most curious is the absence of a single reference (even in the notes!) to any of the voluminous academic (or consultants) literature on public management reform....I can well understand their journalistic judgement that the academic "reform industry" has nothing sensible to say to anyone....

Final Thought

But the state spends about 40% of our GNP – that’s our taxation! Surely we deserve to know what’s going on there – we certainly have a fair number of “special correspondents” for subjects such as education, economics, social policy, health, environment. Of course there are some subjects which have journalists salivating and publishers eagerly approving titles - Government “waste”? Ah, now you’re talking!!…..Government “blunders”?….even better!!!…..”Who runs this country?” That sounds suitably paranoiac!!!!….

My recommended reading below is restricted to books aimed at the general public (rather than academics and students) and is therefore light on examples of efforts in government reform……

Useful Reading
Some of the books in this list are included simply to illustrate a genre. The titles in italics are those I have found readable and useful in thinking about managing change in the public sector over the past 30 years. I have tried in each case to explain why…..

- Radical Help – how we can remake the relationships between us and Revolutionise the Welfare State; Hilary Cottam (2018) an inspiring example of experimental work discussed here

- Dismembered – the ideological attack on the state; Polly Toynbee and David Walker (2017) An angry call to action written by 2 journalists. This is the book which inspired me to write a series of blogs which blossomed into How did Admin Reform get to be so sexy?

- Called to Account – how corporate bad behaviour and government waste combine to cost us millions; Margaret Hodge (2016). Written by the woman who was, until recently, the indomitable Chair of the powerful parliamentary Public Accounts Committee. I have still to read it so include simply to demonstrate that such books exist (and in paperback!)

- How to Run a Government so that Citizens Benefit and Taxpayers don’t go Crazy; Michael Barber (2015). Interesting – if a bit self-serving – series of advice notes from the guy who became Tony Bliar’s management guru in the UK Cabinet

- Creating Public Value in Practice – advancing the common good in a ….noone in charge world; ed J Bryson et al (2015),  The great update of their fantastic 1995 book (see below)

- Who Governs Britain?; Anthony King (2015) A typical academic take on the issue which I include simply as an example of the genre

- Stand and Deliver – a design for successful government; Ed Straw (2014) A rather partial management consultant’s perspective which again I include as a rare example of the genre

- The Establishment – and how they get away with it; Owen Jones (2014) a withering critique of the British power elite

- The Blunders of our Governments; Anthony King and Ivor Crewe (2013) A bit disappointing and put into context by this excellent review by Matt Flinders

- People, Politics and Change - building communications strategy for governance reform (World Bank 2011). May be a bit technocratic but, at the time, it was like a breath of fresh air….You get the entire book here….

- Public Sector Reform – but not as we know it; Hilary Wainwright (Unison and TNI 2009) A rare readable case study of a bottom-up  approach to reform based on a case study of one city

- Governance Reform under Real-World Conditions – citizens, stakeholders and Voice (World Bank 2008). Very clearly written – with excellent analyses and diagrams. Again the entire book

- Managing Change in OECD Governments - an introductory Framework; O Melchor (OECD 2008)

A useful statement from the other global body
- An International Comparison of UK Public Administration (National Audit Office 2008) a typical consultants' analysis

- Systems Thinking in the Public Sector – the failure of the Reform regime and a manifesto for a better way; John Seddon (2008) Seddon was a rare voice of common sense – although I include this more as another rare example of consultants actually trying to justify themselves

- Squandered – how Gordon Brown is wasting one trillion pounds of our money; David Craig (2008). Not one I would recommend – there are quite a few of these books around.

- British Government in Crisis; Chris Foster (2005). A very good analysis by an experienced consultant

- The Essential Public Manager; by Chris Pollitt (2003) is, by far and away, the best book to help the intelligent citizen make sense of this field

- Leading Change – a guide to whole systems working; M Attwood, M Pedlar, S Prichard and D Wilkinson (2003). This one I have yet to read – although I have always found Mike Pedlar a good analyst. The link gives the entire book

- Governance in the 21st Century (OECD 2001). A useful analysis of the challenges facing state systems in the new millennium. The chapters by Perri 6, Sabel and Albrow are particularly stimulating. A click on the title gives you the entire book  

- Change Here – managing change to improve local services (Audit Commission 2001) The full 100 pages are here – and it’s a great read

- The Captive State – the corporate takeover of Britain; George Monbiot (2000) The best critique of its time

- Banishing Bureaucracy – the five strategies for reinventing government; D Osborne and P Plastrik (1997) 5 years on from “Reinventing Government”, Osborne had another go. This is part I of his book and looks at how Thatcher and Major tried to understand and manipulate the DNA of the State

- “The State Under Stress – can the hollow state be good?” Chris Foster and F Plowden (1996) Easily the best analysis of its time of the different ways in which the state was being broken up

- Leadership for the Common Good – tackling public problems in a shared power world; S Crosby and J Bryson (1995) One of the best – and the entire book accessible by clicking the title

- Really Reinventing Government; Peter Drucker (The Atlantic 1995). The guru’s reflections on the Reinvention game…. 

- The Deadly Sins of Public Administration; Peter Drucker (1980) The grand old man of management socks it to the American Society of Public Administration just as Thatcher and Reagan get underway

How did administrative reform get to be so sexy?

After some months of inertia but now back in the mountain house, I’m now able to take a fresh look at drafts which have been lying untouched since the end of last year eg the material on the global efforts to make state organisations more effective which I’ve been working on for quite some years. So I have to be ruthless in my editing – particularly since a lot of new material was I introduced last autumn – both a series of posts in the autumn and reflections from my last 4 projects. A method I’ve found effective in this editing is to -

·         stop reading when the text breaks away to pursue another idea

·         reduce the argument of that section to a short and distinctive statement

·         develop a table whose middle column reproduces those statements

I find this both helps sharpen the text and ensures the material flows more smoothly. I applied the method to the autumn series and got this result -

·         At least 8 very different groups have been active in shaping our thinking about “reform” efforts

·         These are - academics, journalists, politicians, think-tankers, global bodies, senior officials, consultants and an indeterminate group

·         each uses very different language and ideas – with academics being the most prolific (but tending to talk in jargon amongst themselves; and therefore being ignored by the rest of us)

·         In 1989 “the state” crumbled – at least in eastern europe…   20 years on. how do we assess the huge efforts to make its operations more “effective”??

·         15 question offer a key to the most interesting writing on the matter.  

·         Different parts of the world have their own very different approaches and ways of talking about reform. English language material has tended to dominate the literature; but Scandinavians, Germans and French let alone South Americans, Chinese and Indians have also developed important ideas and experience - of which English-speakers tend to be blithely unaware.

·         Two very different “world views” have held us in thrall over the past 50 years….a “third” and more balanced (eg the “new public service”) has been trying to emerge

·         We seem to be overwhelmed by texts on reform experience – but most written by academics. Where are the journalists who can help the public make sense of it all ?

·         Some old hands have tried to summarise the experience for us in short and clear terms. The lesson, they suggest, is that little has changed…

·         Perhaps the time has come to give the doers a voice?  

I’m still working on the material – which is currently about 110 pages long and called How Did Administrative Reform get to be so sexy? 

Crafting effective public management - why so few practitioner perspectives?

If you want to understand a subject, would you rather have one written from a theoretical standpoint – or from a practitioner’s? Most people, I suspect, would choose the latter….and yet, in reality, land up with the former. Who, for example, trusts political memoirs? For an understanding of politics we look to academics – or at least to those few who write clearly and coherently. And I have to say these rarities tend to be found in history departments rather than departments of politics (or of social sciences such as economics, geography). Although there are honourable exceptions such as David Runciman, Mark Blyth and Danny Dorling)

Management literature is slightly different – despite its pretensions, it is hardly a social “science”, offering an inter-disciplinary approach. Which means a highly selective one which uses case-studies to weave plausible narratives and “theories” (ie tell stories). And that’s before we encounter the large number of autobiographies by - and hagiographies - about the business elite.

Tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of books have been produced in recent decades about efforts to reform state structures globally. When I started my own reform efforts in the early 1970s we had only Peter Drucker (and perhaps Machiavelli) to guide us – there were literally no books available on the question of managing government bodies…..Now we are swamped by the literature – which I tried to summarise recently in a booklet “Reforming the State” (which is actually a trailer for a couple of books I am putting together to try to give a practitioner’s view of reform).

For every thousand of academics writing about public management reform, there will be at most one with practical experience. I actually know of only a handful of consultants who have written about their craft – Michael Barber, John Seddon and Ed Straw – all of whom are strongly selling their particular version of the truth Why is this?…..Are we consultants just too busy? Or perhaps too overwhelmed by the complexity of everyday events to feel able to offer theories? Or perhaps lacking the necessary discipline in writing and language???

Crafting Effective Public Administration – reflections from central europe (2018) is my attempt to meet this huge gap in the literature. It’s been almost a decade in the making and opens with an account of the circumstances which led me to develop this strange passion for organizational interventions…..It then moves to an overview of the writing about reforming government systems before outlining how reform got underway in the UK and US from 1965-1995. Then follow some 60 pages of “Notes on key readings” which can be skimmed or skipped for a first reading…

“State Building in “impervious regimes” 1995-2015” is the paper I presented to  a NISPAcee Conference at the Black Sea in 2011. “Back to the Balkans - Why are the new EU member states so impervious to public concerns?” are some more recent thoughts I had on training and Structural Funds in the Lower Danube area.

…It is in fact one of two texts I'm writing on the subject - the next one summarises my various reform efforts of the past 50 years and tries to draw the lessons from them....

What If???

As I suspected, I’m still worrying away at some of the issues raised by the series of posts about the massive changes to our public services in recent decades – and how they have been covered in “the literature”. I realize that I left out an important strand of thinking – and that the series leaves the impression of inevitability….

The last post paid tribute to some of the people who, in the 1960s, most clearly articulated the demand for a major shake-up of Britain’s public institutions – the “modernization” agenda which initially brought us huge local authorities and merged Ministries with well-paid managers operating with performance targets.

Scale and management were key words – and I readily confess to being one of the cheerleaders for this. The small municipalities I knew were “parochial” and lacked any strategic sense but – of course – they could easily have developed it……

Were the changes inevitable?

I have a feeling that quite a few of the early voices who argued for “reform” might now have major reservations about where their institutional critique has taken us all – although it was a global discontent which was being channeled in those days…..

However not all voices sang from the same hymn sheet……The main complaint may then have been that of “amateurism” but it was by no means accepted that “managerialism” was the answer.

1968, after all, had been an expression of people power. And the writings of Paolo Freire and Ivan Illich – let alone British activists Colin Ward and Tony Gibson; and sociologists such as Jon Davies and Norman Dennis – were, in the 70s, celebrating citizen voices against bureaucratic power.

The therapist Carl Rogers was at the height of his global influence. And voices such as Alain Touraine’s were also giving hope in France…..

The managerialism which started to infect the public sector from the 70s expressed hierarchical values which sat badly with the egalitarian spirit which had been released the previous decade….

But, somehow, all that energy and optimism seemed to evaporate fairly quickly – certainly in the British “winter of discontent” and Thatcher rule of the 80s. What started as a simple expression of the need for some (private) “managerial discipline” in the public sector was quickly absorbed into a wider and more malevolent agenda of privatization and contracting out…..And, somehow, in the UK at any rate, progressive forces just rolled over….  Our constitutional system, as Lord Hailsham once starkly put it, is an “elective dictatorship”.

The core European systems were, however, different – with legal and constitutional safeguards, PR systems and coalition governments – although the EC technocracy has been chipping away at much of this.

Just why and how the British adopted what came to be called New Public Management is a story which is usually told in a fatalistic way – as if there were no human agency involved. The story is superbly told here - as the fatal combination of Ministerial frustration with civil service “dynamic conservatism” with a theory (enshrined in Public Choice economics) for that inertia….  A politico-organisational problem was redefined as an economic one and, heh presto, NPM went global 

In the approach to the New Labour victory of 1997, there was a brief period when elements of the party seemed to remember that centralist “Morrisonian” bureaucracy had not been the only option – that British socialism had in the 1930s been open to things such as cooperatives and “guild socialism”. For just a year or so there was (thanks to people such as Paul Hirst and Will Hutton) talk of “stakeholding”. But the bitter memories of the party infighting in the early 80s over the left-wing’s alternative economic strategy were perhaps too close to make that a serious option – and the window quickly closed…..Thatcher’s spirit of “dog eat dog” lived on – despite the talk of “Joined Up Government” (JUG), words like “trust” and “cooperation”  were suspect to New Labour ears.

Holistic Governance made a brief appearance at the start of the New Labour reign in 1997 but was quickly shown the door a few years later.…

“What if?,,,,,”

The trouble with the massive literature on public management reform (which touches the separate literatures of political science, public administration, development, organizational sociology, management….even philosophy) is that it is so compllcated that only a handful of experts can hope to understand it all – and few of them can or want to explain it to us in simple terms.

I’ve hinted in this post at what I regard as a couple of junctures when it might have been possible to stop the momentum….I know the notion of counterfactual history is treated with some disdain but the victors do sometimes lose and we ignore the discussion about “junctures” at our peril.

The UNDP recently published a good summary of what it called the three types of public management we have seen in the past half century. There are different ways of describing the final column but this one gives a sense of how we have been moving..

	Old Public Admin	NPM	New Public Service
Theoretical foundation	Political theory	Economic theory	Democratic theory
Model of behaviour	Public interest	self-interest	Citizen interest
Concept of public interest	Political, enshrined in law	Aggregation of individual interests	Dialogue about shared values
To whom civil servants responsive	client	customer	citizen
Role of government	rowing	steering	Serving, negotiating
Mechanism for achieving policy	programme	incentives	Building coalitions
Approach to accountability	hierarchic	market	Public servants within law, professional ethics, values
Admin discretion	limited	wide	Constrained
Assumed organisational structure	Top down	decentralised	collaborative
Assumed motivation of officials	Conditions of service	Entrepreneurial, drive to reduce scope of government	Public service, desire to contribute

Those who Went Before

For the past 3 weeks I’ve been trying to compress the thoughts I (and many others!!) have had over the past few decades about administrative reform into a table whose columns list core questions; narratives; and key texts …..

It was all sparked off by the book published earlier this year on Dismembering (the State) – although the subject has been a lot in my thoughts this year

There may now be hundreds of thousands of academics and consultants in this field but, when I started to challenge the local bureaucracy in Scotland in the late 60s there were, astonishingly, only a handful of people challenging public bureaucracies – basically in the UK and the US.

In the US they were following (or part of) Johnston’s Anti-Poverty programmes and included people such as Peter Marris and Martin Rein whose Dilemmas of Social Reform (1967) was one of the first narratives to make an impact on me. 
In the UK it was those associated with the 1964-66 Fulton Royal Commission on the Civil Service; with the Redcliffe-Maud and Wheatley Royal Commissions on Local Government; and. those such as Kay Carmichael who, as a member of the Kilbrandon Committee, was the inspiration for the Scottish Social Work system set up in 1969.

In the 70s, people like John Stewart of INLOGOV inspired a new vision of local government…my ex-tutor John MacIntosh focused on devolution; even the conservative politician Michael Heseltine had a vision of a new metropolitan politics…..

It was people like this that set the ball of organizational change rolling in the public sector…. tracked by such British academics as Chris Hood, Chris Pollitt and Rod Rhodes – and who have supplied a living first for thousands of European academics who started to follow the various reforms of the 1970s in the civil service and local government; and then the privatization and agencification of the 1980s. Consultants then got on the bandwagon when british administrative reform took off globally in the 1990s.

Working on the tables incorporated in the past few posts has involved a lot of googling - and shuffling of books from the shelves of my glorious oak bookcase here in the mountains to the generous oak table which looks out on the snow which now caps those mountains……

Hundreds of books on public management reform (if you count the virtual ones in the library) – but, for me, there are only a handful of names whose writing makes the effort worthwhile. They are the 2 Chris’s – Chris Hood and Chris Pollitt; Guy Peters; and Rod Rhodes. With Chris Pollitt way out in front……Here’s a sense of how he has been writing in recent years - 

There have been many failures in the history of public management reform – even in what might be thought of as the best‐equipped countries.
 Six of the most common seems to have been:
 · Prescription before diagnosis.  No good doctor would ever do this, but politicians, civil servants and management consultants do it frequently.  A proper diagnosis means much more than just having a general impression of inefficiency or ineffectiveness (or whatever).  It means a thorough analysis of what mechanisms, processes and attitudes are producing the undesirable features of the status quo and an identification of how these mechanisms can be altered or replaced.  Such an analysis constitutes a model of the problem.  This kind of modelling is probably far more useful to practical reformers than the highly abstract discussions of alternative models of governance with which some academics have been more concerned (e.g. Osborne, 2010).   [For a full exposition of this realist approach to programme logic, see Pawson, 2013.  For an explanation of why very general models of governance, are of limited value in practical analysis see Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2011, pp11‐25 and 208‐221]
 · Failure to build a sufficient coalition for reform, so that the reform is seen as just the project of a small elite.  This is particularly dangerous in countries where governments change rapidly, as in some parts of the CEE.  Once a government falls or an elite is ousted, the reform has no roots and dies.
 · Launching reforms without ensuring sufficient implementation capacity.  For example, it is very risky to launch a programme of contracting out public services unless and until there exists a cadre of civil servants who are trained and skilled in contract design, negotiation and monitoring. Equally, it is dangerous to impose a sophisticated performance management regime upon an organization which has little or no previous experience of performance measurement.   And it is also hazardous to run down the government’s in‐house IT capacity 6 and rely too much on external expertise (Dunleavy et al, 2006).  In each of these cases in‐ house capacity can be improved, but not overnight.
 · Haste and lack of sustained application.  Most major management reforms take years fully to be implemented. Laws must be passed, regulations rewritten, staff re‐trained, new organizational structures set up, appointments made, new procedures run and refined, and so on.  This extended implementation may seem frustrating to politicians who want action (or at least announcements) now, but without proper preparation reforms will more likely fail.  Endless reforms or ’continuous revolution’ is not a recipe for a well‐functioning administration
 · Over‐reliance on external experts rather than experienced locals.  As management reform has become an international business, international bodies such as the OECD or the major management consultancies have become major players.  A fashion has developed in some countries to ’call in the external experts’, as both a badge of legitimacy and a quick way of accessing international ’best practice’  Equally, there is perhaps a tendency to ignore local, less clearly articulated knowledge and experience.  Yet the locals usually know much more about contextual factors than the visiting (and temporary) experts.  .
 · Ignoring local cultural factors. For example, a reform that will work in a relatively high trust and low corruption culture such as, say, Denmark’s, is far less likely to succeed in a low trust/higher corruption environment such as prevails in, say, some parts of the Italian public sector.  In the EU there are quite large cultural variations between different countries and sectors……………

  

I would suggest a number of ‘lessons’ which could be drawn from the foregoing analysis:

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.