School Management: Norwegian Legacies Bowing to New Public Management

The purpose of the study was to investigate the relevance of school management training programmes to current Norwegian education policies and strategies. A specific question was asked: How relevant is the teaching professors’ understanding of school management competence? The findings indicate a split understanding of policy relevant understanding of school management. A majority of respondents had an understanding of school management coherent with the national policies and strategies. A minority did not. They saw the headmaster primarily as a communicative facilitator for teachers’ work, and an ‘administrative caretaker’. In an international perspective the findings represent a Norwegian particularity. There is a collision between Norwegian anti-management legacies of running schools and the Government’s need for effective and accountable management. This may imply a slower speed of implementing educational reforms in Norway.school, management, training, education, reform policies, pedagogy

New public management and employee share ownership plan in Fiji’s public sector

This article provides insights into the implementation of new public management (NPM) practices in Fiji Telecom and whether the use of the employee share ownership scheme was helpful in the organisational change process. The NPM practices were influenced by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund who were the lenders to Fiji government. The adoption of NPM practices was part of a political, economic and public sector reforms introduced after 1989. The paper discusses the background and obstacles of the reform and how the employee share ownership scheme practice at a privatised Telecom Company assists employees to assimilate commercial business norms. The authors finally make recommendations for policy-makers in Fiji and other developing nations

Devolved school-based financial management in New Zealand : observations on the conformity patterns of school organisations to change

This paper examines the intent and consequences of ‘new’ financial management (the ‘New Public Financial Management’) (NPFM) procedures invoked to facilitate a macro-micro interface within the context of the significant administrative reform of the New Zealand (NZ) state education system. The 1989 administrative reform of the NZ education system was predicated on a particular view of public sector management, which was characterised by the umbrella heading of ‘New Public Management’ (NPM). It was claimed that NPFM provided a link between the sets of values highlighted through the NPM reform process and the internal workings of various public sector organisations. The study provides case studies of the organisational financial management practices of four schools, some ten years after the reform. The observed practices are analysed and interpreted within a theoretical framework comprising two competing theories of change – NPM which provides the ‘normative’ intent for public sector organisational change, and institutional theory that offers an explanation of the ‘operational’ consequences of public sector organisational (i.e. schools) response to change. The findings suggest that accounting and management technologies have served a useful, political purpose, although not in the way espoused by NPM proponents

The organizational change in the italian public personnel management

Premise. The importance of the new human resources management. Evolutionary trends in the personnel management. The Italian Public Administration: structural and organizational differences. The organizational public supply's system. The personnel management in the Public Sector. Evolutionary lines of public personnel management. Conclusive considerations. Bibliograph

Management Accounting Change in the Public Sector: A French Case Study and a New Institutionalist Perspective

In this case study, we analyze in a French public company the adoption mode of a new management control system pertaining to New Public Management principles. We compare the formal system designed and deployed in the organization, the discourses of its promoters and users and the observed practices of the latter. We identify clear decoupling patterns occurring there at the utilization level of the new system. We elaborate on the notion of decoupling and discuss the reasons conducing to the observed decoupling patterns in this organization.Decoupling; New Public Management; Public Sector

Compte rendu

This book is a significant contribution to the understanding of the effects of new public management (NPM)-related reforms on the central civil service systems. It brings together 12 substantial contributions united by a coherent approach. The volume offers theoretical and empirical chapters on the transformative effects of NPM-based reforms, based on a comparison between Antipodean (New Zealand and Australia) and Scandinavian (Norway and Sweden) countries over the past two decades. As editors, in the two introductory and concluding chapters, Tom Christensen and Per Lægreid collaborate to take seriously a threefold dimension of NPM reforms: understanding the processes; analysing the real effects of reforms beyond the managerial talks; and considering the theoretical influences of NPM on democratic theory. [First paragraph

Management of Civil Service Professionalisation in the Knowledge-based Society. Legal and Institutional Framework.

The paper approaches a topic of high actuality concerning the professionalisation of public management, process that could lead to setting up a corps of civil servants, substantiated on meritocratic criteria, political equidistance. In the context of knowledge-based society, the paper presents the organisational perspective and integrates New Public Management in the practice of the public organizations. The evolution from Weberian bureaucracy to New Public Management creates the matrix as basis for structuring in service training strategies of the civil servants as well as for the transfer of knowledge specified in those strategies. The context of the knowledge-based society provides the possibility to describe a structure of the training strategies adapted to the needs and ideals of the new society.: professionalisation of civil servants, knowledge-based society, strategies of in service training, New Public Management

Outsiders within : women in management in the public service in Aotearoa/New Zealand : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Management at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

This thesis explores the management practices of a small number of women in management positions within a large government department in New Zealand, and the factors influencing those practices. Using a feminist standpoint epistemology the study took as its starting point the day to day experiences of managers and their staff. Through analysis of these experiences the context of New Public Management and the reforms of the public sector in New Zealand that took place in the 1980's and 1990's were identified as important features in the management practices of the participants. The study found that the doctrines of New Public Management were embedded within the organisation from which participants were drawn. Within this context, they had an organising or mediating effect on the day to day management practices of the participants, what they valued, how they perceived management and the language they used to talk of their experiences. Overall the participants did not consider that gender relations created either supports or constraints to their management practices or their entry into management positions. They considered that gender-related constraints were a thing of the past. They did, however, note particular events that suggested that women managers continue to be judged in relation to deeply held gender stereotypes. The management practices that the participants valued and/or described as their own practice did not conform to the gendered dichotomies of management that have been prevalent in the literature on successful management and women in management in particular. The participants demonstrated a more androgynous approach to management that is adaptive and sensitive to the wider context

Managerialism and the neoliberal university: Prospects for new forms of "open management" in higher education

The restructuring of state education systems in many OECD countries during the last two decades has involved a significant shift away from an emphasis on administration and policy to an emphasis on management. The "new managerialism" has drawn theoretically, on the one hand, on the model of corporate managerialism and private sector management styles, and, on public choice theory and new institutional economics (NIE), most notably, agency theory and transaction cost analysis, on the other. A specific constellation of these theories is sometimes called "New Public Management," which has been very influential in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. These theories and models have been used both as the legitimation for policies that redesigning state educational bureaucracies, educational institutions and even the public policy process. Most importantly, there has been a decentralization of management control away from the center to the individual institution through a "new contractualism" - often referred to as the "doctrine of self-management" - coupled with new accountability and competitive funding regimes. This shift has often been accompanied by a disaggregation of large state bureaucracies into autonomous agencies, a clarification of organizational objectives, and a separation between policy advice and policy implementation functions, together with a privatization of service and support functions through "contracting out". The "new managerialism" has also involved a shift from input controls to quantifiable output measures and performance targets, along with an emphasis on short-term performance contracts, especially for CEOs and senior managers. In the interests of so-called "productive efficiency," the provision of educational serviceshas been made contestable; and, in the interests of so-called allocative efficiency state education has been progressively marketized and privatized. In this paper I analyze the main underlying elements of this theoretical development that led to the establishment of the neoliberal university in the 1980s and 1990s before entertaining and reviewing claims that new public management is dead. At the end of the paper I focus on proposals for new forms of "the public" in higher education as a means of promoting "radical openness" consonant with the development of Web 2.0 technologies and new research infrastructures in the global knowledge economy

Recent developments in the application of risk analysis to waste technologies.

The European waste sector is undergoing a period of unprecedented change driven by business consolidation, new legislation and heightened public and government scrutiny. One feature is the transition of the sector towards a process industry with increased pre-treatment of wastes prior to the disposal of residues and the co-location of technologies at single sites, often also for resource recovery and residuals management. Waste technologies such as in-vessel composting, the thermal treatment of clinical waste, the stabilisation of hazardous wastes, biomass gasification, sludge combustion and the use of wastes as fuel, present operators and regulators with new challenges as to their safe and environmentally responsible operation. A second feature of recent change is an increased regulatory emphasis on public and ecosystem health and the need for assessments of risk to and from waste installations. Public confidence in waste management, secured in part through enforcement of the planning and permitting regimes and sound operational performance, is central to establishing the infrastructure of new waste technologies. Well-informed risk management plays a critical role. We discuss recent developments in risk analysis within the sector and the future needs of risk analysis that are required to respond to the new waste and resource management agenda