Public Management: A Vision Statement

1
Public ManagementA Vision Statement

• A self-conscious field of study, organized in
  four subject areas, approached from multiple
  reference disciplines, oriented to improving lay
  probing of theoretical and situational issues,
  with individual works meeting appropriate
  standards of inquiry.

2
Field of Public Management

• Subject areas
• Designing programmatic organizations
• Closely related with organizational aspects of
  policy design in substantive areas of
  governmental action
• Executive leadership in government
• Focus is on the strategic apex of organizational
  units within government as well as on the
  centre
• Closely related to strategic management and study
  of political-bureaucratic relations
• Managing government operations
• Focus is on the design, maintenance, and
  strengthening of the operating core of units
  within government as well as on the planning,
  budgeting, control, execution, and evaluation of
  performed tasks

3
Field of Public Management

• Subject areas
• Public Management Policy
• Focus is on public management policy choices,
  i.e. government-wide institutional rules and
  routines in the areas of
• expenditure planning financial management
• civil service labor relations
• procurement
• organization methods
• audit evaluation
• Traditional subject of public administration, but
  perspective comes from public policy and
  management
• Focus is on central co-ordinating agencies and
  other oversight bodies
• program agencies seen as implementers

4
Field of Public Management

• Reference Disciplines
• Political Science
• Study of institutions within a governmental
  system
• Study of public policy-making processes and
  events within various policy domains
• Traditions of normative argument about such
  topics as responsible and good government
• Organization Science
• Study of organizational learning, error, and
  change
• Broader conceptions of decision-making and
  organizational life
• Management
• Schools of thought, such as strategic management
• Functional disciplines, such as accounting and
  control

5
Field of Public Management

• Reference Disciplines
• Public Policy
• Provides a functional more than institutional
  view of good government
• Oriented to issues of design, control, and
  evaluation of systems of systems that shape
  outcomes of public action
• Sensitive to the public policy-making process,
  while focused on the substance of policy problems
• Historiography
• Provides a framework for studying experiences
• Law
• (see political science)

6
Field of Public Management(Reprise)

• A self-conscious field of academic study,
  organized in four subject areas, approached from
  multiple reference disciplines, oriented to
  improving lay probing of theoretical and
  situational issues, with individual works meeting
  appropriate standards of scholarly inquiry.

7
Your instructor

• Academic centered in the field of public
  management
• Primarily concerned with the subjects of public
  management policy, executive leadership in
  government, and managing government operations
• Interested in theoretical argumentation about
  these subjects
• Includes doctrinal issues arising in varied
  circumstances
• Committed to idea that such argumentation should
  be informed by research and analysis about
  experiences
• Research questions about experiences usually
  drawn from economics and management, especially
  financial management

8
ICPM Goals

• The course pursues a central theme The big
  questions about international public affairs are
  about governancehow markets and political
  systems shape the lives of citizens.
• Identify and explore the major themes in
  international policy. Globalization has emerged
  as one of the touchstones of the 21st century.
  Often lost has been the simultaneous rise of
  devolution. Both trends raise tough questions
  about the role of nation states. The course will
  investigate these trends and their implications.

9
ICPM Goals

• Examine the links between public management and
  international policy.
• To learn how to analyze processes of
  administrative reform and modernization.
• To understand similarities and differences among
  recent experiences with administrative reform and
  modernization, drawing on comparative research
• To develop an appreciation for how public
  policy-making is related to public management

10
ICPM Topics

• How to talk about public management
• Governance Management
• Old public management
• Bureaucracy
• Personnel
• Budgeting
• New public management
• New organizational forms and self definition
• HR Management
• Financial management control

11
ICPM Topics

• Defeating/Overcoming corruption
• Public management in developing nations
• Managing international organizations
• WTO, IMF, WB
• EC, UN

12
ICPM Technology

• Lectures
• Reading
• Seminars
• Formative Essays
• Class Presentations

13
Joining Up

• Access Course Website/Outline
• www.willamette.edu/fthompso/pubfin/ICPM.html
• Register by Sending me an E-mail
• Address fthompso_at_willamette.edu
• Introduce Yourself
• Indicate Preferred Presentation Topic
• Indicate Timetable Clashes for Class

14
A Common Title

• P Aucoin, The New Public Management Canada in
  Comparative Perspective (1995)
• E Ferlie, et. al. The New Public Management in
  Action (1996)
• C. Hood, A Public Management for All Seasons
  (1991) The Art of the State (1998)

N
P
M
15
But What is the New Public Management?
16
Initial Concepts of NPM

• Administrative Philosophy or Doctrine
• Hands-on Management
• Focus on Results
• Consumer Orientation
• Stress on Transparency and Accountability
• Style of Organizing Public Services
• Executive Agencies
• Contracting out
• Quasi-markets
• International Trend

17
An Initial Model
x
3

Style

Doctrine
Trend
Hood (1994)
18
Strengths of Initial Concept

• Recognized that public management had emerged
  on the public policy agenda
• Focused attention on change over time rather than
  on stable properties of executive government
• Invited analysis of ideas and arguments as part
  of the process of change

19
Limitations of Initial Concept

• Focus on international trend was incongruous
  with variation-finding research strategies
• Preoccupation with acceptance of ideas
  downplayed the dynamics of policy and
  organizational change

20
Some Ways Forward

• Understand why change occurs
• Differentiate among policy areas
• Examine the policy-making process in detail
• Employ variation-finding research strategies

21
Comparative Research on Public Management Policy
Research Goal
Understand change in public management policy
Research Style
Case-oriented
Research Objective
Limited historical generalizations
Select case outcome
Select explanatory framework/models
Select cases
Research Design
Research Task
Explain similarities and differences among cases
using explanatory framework/models
22
Disaggregating the NPM Elephant by Policy Domain
Overall Government Policy
State Enterprise
Macro Economy
Public Mgmt
Health
Education
23
Defining Public Management Policies

• Government-wide institutional rules and routines
• that guide, constrain, and motivate the public
  service,
• typically managed by central agencies

24
What is included in public management policy?

• Government-wide institutional rules and routines
  in several areas
• expenditure planning and financial management
• civil service and labor relations
• procurement
• organization and methods
• audit and evaluation

25
Illustration

• Audit and Evaluation
• Rayner Scrutinies
• Value-for-Money Audit Mandate
• Expenditure Management
• Financial Management Initiative
• Resource Budgeting and Accounting

• Organization and Methods
• Next Steps Initiative
• Citizens Charter Initiative
• Procurement
• Competing for Quality
• Private Finance Initiative

26
What Public Management Policies are Not

• Broad Political Reform
• Political Decentralization
• Executive Leadership
• Program Designs
• Reform Themes

27
The Benchmark Cases
NZ
Aus
UK
1979
199?
28
Cases are Essentially Narratives
Prior Events
Contemporaneous Events
Events within the Episode
1980
1998
t
29
Narrative Structure of a Single Experience
Prior Events
Contemporaneous Events
Later Events
The Episode
Related Events
t
30
Studying Public Management Policy Change
Period I
Period II
Prior Events
Contemporaneous Events
Later Events
CE1 Economic Policymaking
PE 1 Election Campaigns
The Episode
PE 2 Economic Events
E1 Expenditure Planning, Financial Management,
Audit, and Evaluation
E2 Civil Service Labor Relations
PE 3 Earlier Reforms
E3 Procurement
Future Reforms
Related Events
RE1 Operating/Reforming Line Agenices
t
31
What do we Achieve?

• Proximate results comparative research designs
  include
• An understanding of why and how change occurs
• In the form of limited historical generalizations
  (Ragin)
• An understanding of technologies of public
  management and policy implementation and
  analysis of smart practices
• In the form of empirically and theoretically
  based claims about relationships between system
  features and performance outcomes (Bardach)

32
How Should we Compare?

• Answering comparative questions requires
  narrating each experience studied in a systematic
  (similar) way
• Apply the same descriptive scheme to classify
  events comprising each experience
• Focus attention on explaining event outcomes
  within the episode
• Decide what is analytically interesting about
  events in the experience
• Characterize event outcomes accordingly
• Perform both cross-event and intra-event analysis
• Use similar theories to explain event outcomes
• Provide analytical narratives that explain what
  led to the event outcomes

33
How Should we Compare?

• Compare the narratives to answer the comparative
  research questions about
• stability and change in policy

34
Experiences Studied

• Public management policy-making in the 1980s and
  1990s
• NPM benchmark cases (UK, Australia, NZ)
• USs Federal government
• Russia, Georgia, Armenia

35
Comparing Narratives

• General research question
• Why did comprehensive public management policy
  change occur in the UK, Australia, and New
  Zealand in the 1980s and 1990s, but not in
  Germany, USA, Spain, Mexico, Brazil, and Thailand?

36
Related comparative questions

• How have linkages between economic policy-making
  and the specialized policy agendas of central
  agencies varied among experiences?
• What have been the mechanisms by which managerial
  and economics ideas have affected the public
  management policy-making process? How have these
  mechanisms varied across cases
• What have been the developmental dynamics of
  public management policy-making?
• How have these been influenced by varied but
  stable factors, such as organization of the
  center of government?
• Have platforming and momentum effects been at
  work?
• What kinds of interference effects have limited
  public management policy change? How varied are
  the sources of these effects?

37
Review

• Public management is a self-conscious field of
  study, organized in four subject areas,
  approached from multiple reference disciplines,
  oriented to improving lay probing of theoretical
  and situational issues, with individual works
  meeting appropriate standards of inquiry.

38
Review

• Designing programmatic organizations
• Closely related with organizational aspects of
  policy design in substantive areas of
  governmental action
• Executive leadership in government
• Focus is on the strategic apex of organizational
  units within government as well as on the
  centre
• Managing government operations
• Focus is on the operating core of units within
  government and their relationship to other parts,
  external co-producers, and clients
• Public management policies
• Focus is on government-wide institutional rules
  and routines, as well as central coordinating
  agencies

39
Review
Prior Events
Contemporaneous Events
Later Events
The Episode
Related Events
t
40
Review
The Field of Public Management
Reference Disciplines
The Work
The Reader
Experiences Studied
The Work