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 Six 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

Rogue Prorogues Parliament

My readers will be expecting me to throw some light for them on the suspension of the British Parliament – and I never like to disappoint. At this time of the year there is normally what is called a “parliamentary recess” (approved by the House) and the current one started only a day or so after Johnson was elected the Leader of the Conservative party and went to kiss the Queen’s hand – at the end of July. According to the House of Commons website, the recess was due to end next week (September 3) – at which point a variety of parliamentary games will be deployed – including a possible “vote of confidence”

On Wednesday, however, the Prime Minister asked and received from the Queen a “prorogation” (ie suspension) of Parliament from 9 September until 14 October – leaving only 2 weeks before the country is scheduled to leave the European Union.

The reaction has been outrage – even from Conservative MPs and ex-Ministers. MPs are given only four days next week to hold the government to account…Although I grant you that MPs have not been able to do much with the additional power they have had for the past 2 years (since we got what is called a "hung parliament" ie one without a clear government majority)

The historian, Richard Evans, has an article in the current issue of Prospect Magazine which puts this action in a useful historical context -

It was to Hitler’s advantage that nobody apart from his own followers took him seriously. An upstart from Austria with a comical moustache and a funny accent, he didn’t fit the image of a normal politician.

Trump and Boris Johnson may not be upstarts in the same way—far from it—but it is striking that neither possesses the gravitas the electorate used to expect of its leaders. Many voters are amused by these showmen. And in Britain, many lend Johnson (and perhaps the equally convention-defying Nigel Farage) support because they imagine, as many German voters did in the early 1930s, that they will do whatever is necessary—including breaking the rules of politics—to resolve the crisis into which the nation has got itself, in Johnson’s case bypassing the elected representatives of the people.

But if Hitler’s rise teaches us anything, it’s that the establishment trivialises demagogues at its peril. One disturbing aspect of the present crisis is the extent to which mainstream parties, including US Republicans and British Conservatives, tolerate leaders with tawdry rhetoric and simplistic ideas, just as 
Papen, Hindenburg, Schleicher and the rest of the later Weimar establishment tolerated first Hitler and then his dismantling of the German constitution. He could not have done it in the way he did without their acquiescence. Republicans know Trump is a charlatan, just as Conservatives know Johnson is lazy, chaotic and superficial, but if these men can get them votes, they’ll lend them support.

Weimar’s democracy did not exactly commit suicide. Most voters never voted for a dicatorship: the most the Nazis ever won in a free election was 37.4 per cent of the vote. But too many conservative politicians lacked the will to defend democracy, either because they didn’t really believe in it or because other matters seemed more pressing. 

On a lighter note, Fin O’Toole has an excellent piece in “The New York Review of Books” which catches an important aspect of the Etonian public school fool who is now UK PM

The anthropologist Kate Fox, in her classic study “Watching the English”, suggested that a crucial rule of the national discourse is what she called The Importance of Not Being Earnest:

 “At the most basic level, an underlying rule in all English conversation is the proscription (banning) of ‘earnestness.’”

Johnson has played on this to perfection—he knows that millions of his compatriots would rather go along with his outrageous fabrications than be accused of the ultimate sin of taking things too seriously.

“Boris being Boris” (the phrase that has long been used to excuse him) is an act, a turn, a traveling show. Johnson’s father, Stanley, was fired from his job at the World Bank in 1968 when he submitted a satiric proposal for a $100 million loan to Egypt to build three new pyramids and a sphinx.

But the son cultivated in England an audience more receptive to the half-comic, half-convincing notion that the EU might be just such an absurdist enterprise.

What he honed in his Brussels years is the practice of political journalism (and then of politics itself) as a Monty Python sketch. He invented a version of the EU as a gigantic Ministry of Silly Walks, in which crazed bureaucrats with huge budgets develop ever more pointlessly complicated gaits. (In the original sketch, the British bureaucrats are trying to keep up with “Le Marché Commun,” the Common Market.)

Johnson’s Brussels is a warren of bureaucratic redoubts in which lurk a Ministry of Dangerous Balloons, a Ministry of Tiny Condoms, and a Ministry of Flavourless Crisps. In this theatre of the absurd, it never matters whether the stories are true; what matters is that they are ludicrous enough to fly under the radar of credibility and hit the sweet spot where preexisting prejudices are confirmed.

This running joke made Johnson not just highly popular as a comic anti-politician but, for many of his compatriots, the embodiment of that patriotic treasure, the English eccentric. There is a long tradition of embracing the eccentric (though in reality only the upper-class male eccentric) as proof of the English love of liberty and individualism in contrast to the supposed slavishness of the European continentals. No less a figure than John Stuart Mill wrote in “On Liberty” (1859) that

“precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric.”

Mill associated eccentricity with “strength of character,” but Johnson has been able to turn it upside down—his very weakness of character (the chaos, the fecklessness, the mendacity) provides for his admirers a patriotically heartening proof that the true English spirit has not yet been chewed up in the homogenizing maw of a humourless and excessively organized EU.

For those who want to know more about the constitutional issues involved, the same magazine has this useful note on the issue

Update

For the political junkies who want to know the full story behind the plot to suspend parliament, it’s here

Will Hutton is a respected economics writer who has analysed and mapped the choices open to the British people to bring it into the 21^st Century in a variety of books – starting with The State We’re In” (1995), He also has a useful article in today’s Guardian on the constitutional issues behind the suspension.

Chris Pollitt RIP

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

Politics, administration and performance – a continuing search but no one best way? 2012

The Impacts of the new Public Management in Europe – a meta-analysis; (COCOPS 2011)

Cutbacks and innovation; PMR in an age of austerity; 2011

Not odious but onerous; comparative public administration 2011

Public Management Reform during austerity  2010 

The magic of good governance C Pollitt and P Hupe (2010)

Talking Governance – the role of magic concepts (2009)

New Public Management in Europe; C Pollitt, S van Thiel and V Homburg (2007)

Public Management reform - reliable knowledge and international experience; 2003

Justification by Works or by faith? Evaluation of public management reform; 1995

"Not with a bang, but a whimper" - part VI

The previous post ended – as did my little book In Transit – notes on good governance – in 1999, when New Labour’s programme of “modernising” government was just getting underway……I’m still proud of its 20 page summary of the reform experience to that point - which you can read for yourself in chapter 4, pp 70-90 simply by clicking on the hyperlink above….

For some reason, it’s not easy to find much on the internet about the decade that followed – although I remember the Cabinet Unit being fairly prolific in its production of strategy papers. “The Meaning of Modernisation; new labour and public sector reform” gives a good flavour of those frenetic years.

Not forgetting that the point of this series is to explore how on earth we have been persuaded to surrender so much power to managers, I want in this post simply to pose the blunt question of what 40 years of reform experience has given us….A lot of words certainly…but what, as the Americans would ask, has been the “bottom line”?

Chris Pollitt was one of the most respected of European public management scholars and did a fascinating presentation in 2012 of “40 years of public management reform” which you can watch here.  It focuses on the UK experience of national government reform and is quite withering, revealing

·       an absence of clear statements of reform objectives

·       Prescription before diagnosis. 

·       Failure to build a sufficient coalition for reform, so that the reform is seen as just the project of a small elite

·       Launching reforms without ensuring sufficient implementation capacity

·       Lack of interest in evaluation

·       Haste and lack of sustained application

For more on this, see page 34 of the current version of my How did Admin Reform get to be so sexy? This leads back to the article on the administrative reform industry I’ve mentioned previously -

Pollitt noted that there was massive reform action in some (not all) other UK governance sectors, and noted also that, for constitutional reasons, UK governments have more freedom to move than most comparable democratic government systems. For this reason, the UK experience taught some valuable lessons. He attributed the great volume of reform action in part to ‘the rise of the managerial reform community’, with ‘change management experts’ everywhere, in the public service, in the big consultancy firms, and so on. And, compared with other things they might be doing, they and the political leaders they advised saw that ‘reorganization can be undertaken rather quickly’; doing it conferred on them ‘a badge of modernity’, and was a kind of ‘virility symbol’. But it was also a ‘beautifully clear example’ of the lack of any stable, scientific basis ‘for the long-term organizational redesign of complex public services’ 

What the reform designers did not do anywhere near adequately was to consider the consequences of what they were doing. The rate of change – the state of ‘permanent revolution’ – made it impossible to find out which designs worked well and which did not. And the transition costs were minimized if not neglected altogether: as well as the costs of office redesign and so on, they included the disruption of staffing and relationship patterns and routine housekeeping systems that had worked well enough in the past, the loss of organizational memory, and ‘a general loss of faith in stability and an accompanying diminution of willingness fully to commit oneself to a particular organization’.

A few years back, Dutch-Australian academic Paul ‘t Hart compiled his own set of rules for reformers - proposers of reform activity are more likely to achieve some success if they take note of these rules and seek, as far as possible, to follow them. 

What follows paraphrases ‘t Hart’s treatment (you can find the piece on pages 203–210 of Delivering Policy Reform – anchoring significant reforms in turbulent times; ed E Lindquist, S Vincent and J Wanna (2011)

_ Don’t overdo the rhetoric of reform, and concentrate on areas of greatest need.

_ Don’t let a ‘good crisis’ go to waste, for it may provide the best opportunity for serious change.

_ ‘Keep the bottom drawer well stocked’ with developed reform proposals, so that you are ready to run when an opportunity presents itself.

_ You should invest in an ongoing ‘brains trust’ to be constantly thinking about such matters, and don’t ignore knowledge available outside government circles.

_ Be prepared for ‘push-backs’, and find ways of talking meaningfully to reform opponents.

_ Impeccable analysis is crucial to the power to persuade.

_ Know the system you propose to change inside out, so that you are prepared to cope with resistance from within.

_ Give careful attention to implementation and long-term management.

_ Create behavioural incentives to encourage those operating the new or changed system to conform.

_ Be sure to incorporate mechanisms that make the reforms self-sustaining.

Amazing that 40 years can produce such anodyne lessons as this!

The Managerial Turn - part V

I started this series wanting to explore 3 basic questions –

-       Why and how, all of 30 years ago, did the “managerial turn” get underway, contaminating our everyday experiences and discourse?

-       How have we allowed managers to gain such unaccountable power?

-       What we can now do to bring them to heel?

Some of you may not remember the days when managers hardly existed in the public sector - so I therefore used extracts from the intro to the little book I wrote in the 1990s In Transit – notes on good governance to convey a sense of the strength of institutional inertia as I experienced it in the 1970s (even as some major reforms were taking place)…

It was at that point I realised how amazingly prescient Gerald Caiden’s “Administrative Reform” had been. It came out (in the US) in 1969, just after some of the UK Royal Commissions presaging major reforms (in fields such as the civil service, trade unions, local government, broadcasting) had published. But, for all the buzz there was then about “future shock”, few organisations (public and private) showed any sign of changing and the excerpts of Caiden’s book I can access don’t really explain what experiences moved him to select reform as his theme....

I also noticed that my references to the 1970s said more about professionalism than managerialism….hardly surprising since, under the influence of Illich and Alinsky, I had made a bit of a reputation for myself in the early 70s for my critique of professionals…

The Scottish professional class (of teachers, social workers, planners etc) had strong prejudices and myths about the people who lived in the disadvantaged housing estates. “Born to Fail?” was a national document which appeared in 1973 revealing the scandal of the concentration of “multiple deprivation” in a few such urban areas (including the Region covering half of Scotland which came into being a year later). This gave a few of us who were working on that issue a unique opportunity to forge for the Region a rare social strategy of empowerment.

This involved building – through pamphlets and training - what was almost a “counter culture” not only amongst the community workers but amongst younger managers in the various Departments.

It was only in the early 90s, after I had left the Region, that I recognised that we had perhaps been missing a bit of managerial discipline in the strategic work we did in the West of Scotland from 1975. This was the third of 5 messages I left with the urban committee of the OECD in a paper about the Strathclyde experience I presented in 1993 (see para 4.2 of the hyperlink) viz

- Resource social inclusion work with mainline money – not the marginal pennies

- give “change agents” proper support

- Set detailed targets for departments

- Establish free-standing community development agencies

- Be realistic about the timescale of change

So let me be more precise in my charge against managerialism. And let me start by pointing to the fact that Public Administration is the name of the study of the management of the public sector – reflected in the titles of the two flagship journals of the relevant US and UK academic communities – Public Administration and Public Administration Review, respectively.

I have vivid memories of discussions in the mid 1980s about the difference between management in the public and private sectors. My notes from those days show that - Some authors suggested the following distinctive features for public administration bodies -

·       accountability to politicians

·       difficulty in establishing goals and priorities

·       rarity of competition

·       relationship between provision, demand, need and revenue

·       processing people

·       professionalism and line management

·       the legal framework.

But, when you think about it, these features (apart from the first) are true of very many large private companies – where competition can be minimal or “fixed” (ie manipulated).

The definitive book on the subject - Bureaucracy - what Government Agencies do and why they do it  was written by JQ Wilson in 1989 and points out that MacDonald’s – the burger makers - is a bureaucracy par excellence – a uniform product produced in a uniform way.

So what makes a government bureaucracy behave so differently and be seen so differently? Three reasons - according to Wilson. Government agencies –

- can’t lawfully retain monies earned;

- can’t allocate resources according to the preferences of its managers;

- must serve goals not of the organisation’s choosing, particularly relating to probity and equity.

They therefore become constraint-oriented rather than task-oriented. He goes on to suggest that agencies differ managerially depending on whether their activities and outputs can be observed; and divides them into four categories (“production”; “procedural”;  “craft”; and “coping agencies”).

It was Chris Hood who popularised (in spring 1991 in the first of the journals mentioned above) the term “New Public Management” (NPM) when he presented A Public Management for all Seasons. This article stressed just how ruthless and relentless the attack of commercial management practice was on the hallowed turf of the public sector…No activity – even in the universities - was off limits to the managers

This was also the period when the term “the audit explosion” was coined

Those interested in trying to identify where the inspiration for NPM came from are invited to dip into this short intellectual history of its origins and theoretical basis

1992 saw the publication of Reinventing Government; Clinton’s election; and, in 1993, Gore being given the task to “reinvent American government”!! The term was so laughable – but no one was laughing!!

At this point, the floodgates of writing on the subject opened….New Labour’s programme of modernising British government (1999 – 2010) was just the icing on the cake….