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
Time to reclaim public services Time to get the Finger out	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
The invisible power of managerial ideology	Going back to Burnham	Explores the question we rarely ask
How did it happen? part II	My 1999 book “In Transit – notes on Good Governance”	Looks at how reform was seen in the 1990s
a Rare voice of clarity – part III	Gerald Caiden	A prescient voice
Machiavelli’s Warning – part IV	A reminder of the strength of organ inertia	A first stab at an answer to the question
The Managerial Turn - part V	Clarifying professionalism	First we rubbished the professionals
“Not with a bang, but a whimper” - Part VI	We don’t seem to have learned much in 40 years……	Key lessons are however extracted
Chris Pollitt RIP	Belated acknowledgement of a great scholar	Those who express important truths in a clear language deserve honour
Looking for purpose	“The Puritan Gift” is a rare critique of how modern management has poisoned us all	Has a good summary
Peter Drucker’s Deadly Sins of PA – part VII	The Grand Old Man of management says it better	Important proverbs
Wresting politics back from the technocrats	an article being hyped as “the new practice of public problem-solving”	Technocracy is the new enemy
Workforce management – an idea whose time has come	Laloux book	Summary of one of the most important books about organisations in recent years
Let the Fingers do the Talking	an article being hyped as “the new practice of public problem-solving	Good references
Real Control	Workforce management again
The Virus affecting the world	Neoliberalism
Blowing up departmental silos	Hilary Cottam’s book	Time to take this issue seriously
Plain speaking - words and PAR	A rare article about translation  should leave us wondering why international summits are not more conflictual..

The Beast – part II

The penultimate post of 2019 surveyed the critical state in which the economics “discipline” has found itself in this past decade. Despite having an Economics degree and actually teaching the subject for a few years in a Polytechnic in the 1970s, I readily admit my confusions - globalisation - the new tools of financial engineering and IT have introduced totally new dimensions to the economic world and left me (and most others) very conscious of our ignorance.

I knew I had to put my distaste for economics books aside and take time try to understand not so much the financial crash but rather the true nature of this turbulent system

So, a couple of years ago, I produced two rare annotated lists of books. First of the key books written before the 2008 financial crash; then of those I judged worthy of mention which had appeared after the crash. How, you might reasonably ask, did you select these books? Why should we trust your judgement? I try to answer such questions here

One thing I noticed was how differently the various academic disciplines dealt with the subject. Economists seemed the obvious people to start with – but their texts were remarkably dry and clearly oblivious to a lot of important factors. For people who had failed to anticipate the crash, their tone was also a bit too cocky and self-assured. 

The sociologists had a more plausible story to tell but generally seemed too ready to critique it all. I was most impressed with the smaller numbers of political economists (Blyth, Collier, Stiglitz, Streecken and Varoufakis), economic historians (Tooze) and even a few journalists (Mander)

Honing the recommendations

The two lists I did in 2017 dealt with more than 100 books – and I realise my readers don’t have time for this. So last September I had another look at the lists and came up with clear recommendations first of 15 important books which were written before the crash; and then of about 20 which appeared after it   

Somehow, however, the books never satisfy – after all they tend to convey the same message –

- The system is voracious, never satisfied

- It’s unstable – boom and then bust

- It leads increasingly to more and more inequality – the 1% have been replaced by some 25 families who control 99% of the wealth

- markets are naturally “oligopolistic” – ie tending to be controlled by a few massive companies which engage in billion dollar marketing and destructive pricing

- markets display none of the characteristics on which economists base their claims about the benefits of markets   

But this doesn’t stop my belief that the next book will give me the answers I’m seeking… eg the latest Stiglitz or Milanovic. Just as the Minotaur has an unquenchable thirst for profit and development, so as readers we are never satisfied. …Somehow we have to resist this temptation….to learn when we have had (or know) enough

Is it the system – or us?

The posts take an interesting turn toward the end of the year when Robert Greene’s latest book sparked some thoughts about human nature; and Zuboff raised the issue of surveillance capitalism. The posts about human nature reminded me of a book which had made a big impact on me as far ago as 1978 – “The Seventh Enemy” by Ronald Higgins. It was one of the first to look at six looming issues - viz of the population explosion, food shortages, raw materials exhaustion, environmental degradation, nuclear power; and abuse of science and technology. And to suggest that the real enemy was the seventh – us, the human race! Higgins’ book is no longer available but you can get the gist from this BBC documentary.

The table in yesterday’s post contained the first half of last year’s posts about the economic system. The table below completes the job – with the first 8 being those most concerned with economics…..

Post title	What sparked it off	Why you should read it
Selecting a Brains Trust for the End Times	The best of the authors are invited to a dinner before the crash	All selections are invidious – I’ve chosen here the individuals who had the ability to write clearly about the nature of our economic system BEFORE the 2008 crash
For Serious Activists only	And after the crash	Those who helped our understanding most after 2008
Another World is Possible	Erik Olin-Wright	Few authors have dealt properly with utopia
What’s in a Name?	Searching for the best book to recommend about “capitalism”	An American journalist wins by a long chalk – with his “The Capitalist Papers”
New Economic Thinking	Some promising new perspectives	Some great hyperlinks
Capitalism – by academic discipline	I realised how rarely I have tried to define the beast	Very rare table which uses 3 different lens to find how 11 different academic disciplines try to define the beast
A rare example of interdisciplinarity	A book from a global institute for social progress	Most writing on the subject suffers from being written from a single discipline
Can Economics change its Spots?	Review of 5 books	Explains why noone should take economists seriously these days
How did we let them get away with it?	Mount’s “The New Few”	A brave right-winger admits exposes the new oligarchy
Human Nature	Robert Greene’s latest book	An assessment of our frailties which is superbly written
Generational Cycles	Robert Greene again	How the 1970s American Democrats killed a great populist tradition
Turning Points	Alt history	we need to push back more against social forces which are presented as irresistible..
Building Character	David Brooks “The Road to Character”	An unfashionable subject these days!
Is our social DNA  changing?	Daniel Bell, Richard Sennett, Fukuyama; Davis “Reckless Opportunists ”	Is 1980s’ greed and opportunism; and social media changing our behaviour?
More surveillance than capitalism	Zuboff’s trilogy	Why I have my doubts about an overly-hyped book from an author I used to admire
Bullshit Jobs	David Graeber’s latest	Explains the importance of a book the academics would like to ignore

The Beast Destroying the World

 “Capitalism”…I started, but the barman hopped out of a pipkin

“Capitalism”, he countered…”That’s a flat and frothless word

I’m a good Labour man, but if I mentioned capitalism

My clientele would chew off their own ears

And spit them down the barmaid’s publicised cleavage”

“All right” I obliged “Don’t call it capitalism

Let’s call it Mattiboko the Mighty

……..

The poem finishes…

This was my fearless statement

“The Horror World can only be changed by the destruction of

Mattiboko the Mighty,

The Massimataxis Incoporated Supplement

And Gumbo Jumbo the Homely Obblestrog Spectacular”

Audience Reaction was quite encouraging

Adrian Mitchell “Come on Everybody Poems” 1953-2008

 Almost a quarter of my blogposts last year wrestled with various aspects of the economic system which now looks set to destroy the planet.

In my youth, the nuclear threat was what kept us awake at night – and that was particularly the case for those of us who lived a mere couple of kilometres from the US nuclear submarine base on the Clyde. Many thought that the collapse of the Berlin Wall had ended such existential fear - but global warming has now taken its place.

The year started with a couple of posts about important books with “capitalism“ in their title before trying to make amends for the failure of the blog to dealt properly with the ecological issue.

It was, however, Paul Collier’s “The Future of Capitalism – facing the new anxieties” which really got me scribbling last year – initially with a series of posts which reminded me that I had still not managed to complete a book which has occupying me for several years.

Writing a book about a subject you don’t understand is an activity I’ve recommended for everyone to help dispel the confusions we all have (if we’re honest enough)…More challenging is when the topic proves to be more amorphous - and changes shape as you work on it. Such has been my experience with text I started almost 20 years ago – long before the financial crash of 2008…It started with a critique that went as follows –

- Consumerism is killing the planet – and making people miserable.

- The poor are getting poorer

- political culture is getting ever more centralised (notwithstanding Scottish devolution).

- Social democrats like New Labour have sold the state to corporate interests.

- don’t blame individuals such as Tony Blair – it’s in the nature of modern politics. Note the political corruption in Italy, Belgium, Germany, France and even Britain.

- The EU is selfish and lacks vision

The paper then looked at the organisations and people I admired; what they were achieving; where they seemed to be failing and why; and went on to raise the question of how someone of my age, experience and resources might better contribute to society.

Many, of course, will scorn such an aspiration – seeing it as typical of a western “do-gooder”…

I readily admit my natural inclination to intervene in social processes (ie my “activist” mode) and that a lot of the recent writing on “chaos theory” and even “systems theory” seems to me to run the risk of encouraging fatalism – one of the four world views Mary Douglas introduced us to and which Chris Hood’s The Art of the State (1999) analyses so brilliantly

The world is getting increasingly complex these days – so it’s hardly surprising that we increasingly hear the argument for “leaving well alone” (or “laisser-faire” as it used to be called). But we do need to look carefully at who makes - and indeed funds - such arguments. They are the right-wing US Foundations funded by such billionaires as the Koch brothers..

One of my favourite writers - AO Hirschmann – actually devoted an entire book (”The Rhetoric of Reaction”; 1991) to examining three arguments conservative writers use for dismissing the hopes of social reformers:

- The futility thesis argues that attempts at social transformation will be unavailing, that they will simply fail to “make a dent.”

- the perversity thesis holds that any purposive action to improve some feature of the political, social, or economic order only serves to exacerbate the condition one wishes to remedy.

- the jeopardy thesis argues that the cost of the proposed change or reform is too high as it endangers some previous, precious accomplishment.

Have a look at any argument against a proposed reform - you will find it a variant of these three. But such fatalism offends my sense of what we used to call “free will” (and now “agency theory”). Powerful people exist – whether in corporations, international agencies or governments – who can and do influence events. Our job as citizens is to watch them carefully and protest when we can..

In the 1930s it was not difficult to identify the enemy…Today the enemy is a more voracious and complex system which we variously call “globalisation” or “neoliberalism” and only more recently “capitalism” - whose disastrous consequences the activists of Porto Allegro had exposed……although it took the crash of 2008 to prove the point…

Yanis Varoufakis used the highly appropriate term “the Global Minotaur” for his brilliant 2011 story of how surplus capital had sought its rewards – with all the destructiveness that Joseph Schumpeter had first described in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942) – but minus the “creativity”

The Minotaur not only survived but managed the amazing trick of transferring bank losses onto state exchequers and bringing on austerity and further vilification of the state…It was the poisoning of the state I first noticed – thanks to George Monbiot’s The Captive State – the corporate takeover of Britain (2000) and started to blog about in 2009. But within a few years such a critique of the political class had become commonplace.

So, to tempt you into flicking through “To Whom it may Concern” (for which just click the title in the list at the top-right corner of the blog masthead) here is a table with a selection of relevant posts with brief explanations…

Selected Posts about the Beast

Post	What sparked it off	Why it’s worth reading
How will it all end?	Wolfgang Streeck’s “The End of Capitalism?”	Has hyperlinks which cut to the core of the discussion
Why the reluctance to seek consensus?	“Club of Rome” report “Come on! Capitalism”	It’s a definitive report and my post tries to summarise other key texts about the turning point the world seems to have reached
What is wrong with us?	An article in NYRB about the ecological disaster we face	Exhaustive reading list
Populist – and proud of it!	Pelican book sparks off an Old Labourist reflections	The post puts the present concerns in an historical context
The Global Minotaur	Finding an internet version of a political economy book I had read in 2012	The book is one of the best explanations of the financial crash… but now reread as if for the first time
A Better Economics	Finding an internet version of a little-known but superbly-written economics textbook	May have been produced 21 years ago but clearly written by someone very sensitive to readers’ needs
The Future of Capitalism – facing the new anxieties”	Paul Collier’s new book	Explains why the book was so good it inspired 5 posts
Communitarianism, anyone?	Which failed to explore this underlying theme	An agenda is sketched out
Can the genie be put back on the bottle?	Are we no longer masters of our fate?	Some good reviews are summarised
The future of capitalism part IV	Acknowledgements page reminds me how important friends are to drafting process	As well as some critiques
The Beast needs fixed! Part V		A final assessment of Collier – with some suggestions for further reading