Reforming the public sector for leaner government and improved performance: The New Zealand experience

Over the 10 year period from 1984 to 1994 New Zealand has gone through an intense period of restructuring, both of the public sector and of the wider economy. In the process New Zealand has been transformed from a highly protected and regulated economy with a range of intrusive and expensive interventions, to an open and deregulated economy with an efficient and leaned down public sector. The article presents the “New Zealand experience” in restructuring, not necessarily as an example to be copied but as a benchmark to be used in examining the most appropriate restructuring to apply in other circumstances. The stages in the reform are described and the three key success factors set out. One of the key factors is the establishment of a set of clear principles which are then applied with determination. The principles developed in the New Zealand context are set out. The article examines the restructuring of the science sector in New Zealand as one case study; in part because of the author's personal involvement but also because it is a particularly complete example. Areas where work remains to be done are identified including the reforms in education and health and the need for collective action across government. Finally lessons to emerge from the New Zealand experience are discussed. These include especially putting time into fully understanding market characteristics before a market oriented reform is started, carrying reforms through to their conclusion rather than stopping partway, and establishing clear principles to guide the reform process.     

New public management reform in New Zealand: The collective strategy phase

This paper examines the New Public Management movement in New Zealand. Specifically the focus is on the financial management of central government departments and the shift in emphasis from management in the public sector to management of the public sector, that is, from defining management in terms of where it takes place to defining it in terms of the nature and outcome of the task.     

The meaning of strategy in the public sector

Strategic management remains under-theorised in the public sector, because the issues it raises straddle three distinct but related fields of analysis—the political, the policy-related and the managerial. At the theoretical level, making progress requires teasing out all three potential dimensions of the term. In the practical sense, there is a need to define a roomier organisational 'space' (and time frame) within which strategy can be formulated.
The article argues for a more ambitious conceptualisation of the place of strategic thinking in the public sector, one that combines the agency's need to sustain its position in its bureaucratic and political environment, with the 'strategic conversation' that is needed to link the political and the bureaucratic executives.     

Incentives and their dynamics in public sector performance management systems

We use the principal‐agent model as a focal theoretical frame for synthesizing what we know, both theoretically and empirically, about the design and dynamics of the implementation of performance management systems in the public sector. In this context, we review the growing body of evidence about how performance measurement and incentive systems function in practice and how individuals and organizations respond and adapt to them over time, drawing primarily on examples from performance measurement systems in public education and social welfare programs. We also describe a dynamic framework for performance measurement systems that takes into account strategic behavior of individuals over time, learning about production functions and individual responses, accountability pressures, and the use of information about the relationship of measured performance to value added. Implications are discussed and recommendations derived for improving public sector performance measurement systems. © 2010 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

New Zealand's public sector management reform: Implications for the United States

This article describes the reforms to the functions of central government in New Zealand that have been introduced since 1985. It sketches the political and economic situation which motivated the changes to the systems of public management. Some of the theoretical influences that provided insights to the advice given to the government by its officials are noted. The essential elements of the system are described briefly. The results are summarized in terms of how the ideas were implemented, the extent of their acceptance, the impact on managerial behavior, and the effects on government in terms of the objectives that were originally set out. Some tentative suggestions are made regarding the messages that might be drawn from the New Zealand experience that are relevant to the reforms of the government of the United States.     

The provocative public sector: Domestic political protest and public sector growth in the OECD, 1965–1982

The results shown in Tables 1 through 8 above are consistent in that %GG is repeatedly shown to be significant whether making cross-national comparisons of DPP or predicting intra-national variations over time. Therefore, Hypotheses 1a and 1b are confirmed. The confirmation of Hypotheses 2a and 2b shows that, taking into account public sector size, government growth is most provocative in countries where it represents a major socio-economic change (i.e., where the public sector is small). Government growth has a neutral impact where the role of the public sector is long-established (i.e., where the public sector is large).Hypotheses 3a and 3b posited that average and annual rates of economic growth would be inversely associated with domestic protest. These hypotheses, too, were confirmed. The belief that economic growth rates would clearly provide the margin of affordability for public sector growth was not confirmed, as the coefficient of the interaction term (%GG*%GDP) was not statistically significant.     

Understanding the changing role of public sector performance measurement in less developed countries

This article develops a framework for understanding changes in the demand for and supply of performance information in public sector organizations in less developed countries (LDCs). New Institutional Sociology (NIS) is used to argue that pressures from specific stakeholders stimulate organizations to produce particular performance information. The article distinguishes three groups of stakeholders (i.e. funding bodies, statutory boards and purchasers), and elaborates on the performance dimensions these stakeholders are interested in. The group of funding bodies, with their interest in financial performance information, used to be the most important group of stakeholders. However, statutory boards and purchasers are gaining importance as a result of recent public sector reforms, which include decentralization, marketization and the implementation of anti‐corruption programs. As a consequence of pressures coming from these stakeholders, new performance dimensions, such as the quality and quantity of services and the political governance structure, will be added to organizations' performance measurement (PM) systems. Whether these and other—often more traditional financial—performance dimensions will be balanced and integrated throughout organizations depends on the power positions of the various stakeholders. The arguments presented in this article intend to stimulate public sector organizations in LDCs to design and redesign PM systems as a response to changing stakeholder interests. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Towards virtuous and ethical organisational performance in the context of corruption: A case study in the public sector

With the increasing number of ethical violations reported across the public sector, the emphasis on ethics and values in governance is on the rise. Corruption is widely accepted as a form of unethical behaviour that can have detrimental effects on organisations as well as society at large. Research calls for empirical studies focusing on the contextual factors surrounding corruption. Based on the Contextually Based Human Resource Theory and using the case study method, this paper examines the role of context through a systematic analysis of corruption in a public sector organisation. We integrate corruption and human resource literature to understand employee behaviour, employee relations, HRM strategies, and organisational outcomes in the context of organisational corruption.     

Controllership in the public sector.

Ineffective or incompetent controllership is, perhaps, the most common managerial failure found in the public sector. This failure affects outcomes and achievements in every area of public policy--often profoundly. Controllers design and operate management control systems. The effectiveness of alternative control system designs depends upon the cost and production behavior of the good or service in question. But control strategies are seldom consciously or effectively matched to circumstances. As a consequence, public programs are too often simultaneously overcontrolled and out of control.     

Citizen perceptions of public management: Hybridisation and post‐new public management in Japan and New Zealand

An older body of research claims variously: a world‐wide transformation from new public management (NPM) to new public governance or post new public management (post‐NPM); a ‘layering’, where new management rhetoric and techniques are layered upon existing ones; or a ‘hybridisation’ synthesised from competing systems. More recent studies, particularly in central and Eastern Europe, suggest a nuanced and context‐specific degree of transformation. Influenced by a growing research interest in citizen perceptions of public management, this study expands this more nuanced approach by surveying local government public management perceptions of 1,140 New Zealand and 3,100 Japanese citizen online survey respondents. Using principal component analysis, we show both New Zealand and Japan exhibit degrees of hybridisation of public management paradigms, with Japan exhibiting a higher degree of eclecticism.     

Symposium on public management teform in New Zealand:: Reflections on the international public management network/victoria university workshop

The genesis of the workshop on public management reform in New Zealand, held in Wellington on March 10, 2000, was an invitation from the International Public Management Network to the Graduate School of Business and Government Management at Victoria University to organize and co-host a one-day event in Wellington following the Network’s Sydney 2000 Conference. Approximately sixty people attended the workshop. The majority of attendees were senior public servants in the New Zealand government. In addition, there was a representation of academics from New Zealand and Network members who came on from the IPMN conference in Sydney at Macquarie Graduate School of Management March 4–6.The mix of speakers was strongly weighted towards practitioners, as is reflected in the articles in this symposium. The three central agency contributions are all from officials who have a reputation for thinking creatively and critically about the future of New Zealand public management, Derek Gill, Andrew Kibblewhite and Anne Neale. Graham Scott kindly agreed to provide the keynote address. Robert Gregory, a well-known critic of the New Zealand reforms, was the sole academic voice in this small chorus of practitioners. Gregory would be the last to claim that he is “representative” of anyone’s opinion other than his own.     

Research and development project selection in the public sector

This article argues for an innovative methodology to appraising (ex ante) longer-term strategic research and development (R&D) investments. This methodology reflects the inherent value of such R&D in terms of opening up opportunities (but not obligations) for investment in new technological areas with potentially substantial returns. Although corporate R&D managers and public administrators describe the merits of long-term research on these grounds, only recently has the qualitative argument been replaced by the foundations of a methodology capable of quantifying this inherent value of R&D. Such a methodology could also facilitate a transition toward the use of more appropriate discount rates other than the unvarying rates of traditional methodologies.     

National security and surveillance: the public impact of the GCSB Amendment Bill and the Snowden revelations in New Zealand

Abstract

In New Zealand, Edward Snowden’s revelations about the extraordinary scope of the National Security Agency’s surveillance capabilities and the facilitating role of the Five Eyes alliance converged with increasing public concerns about the Government Communications Security Bureau Amendment and Related Legislation Bill in 2013. This generated an intense and sustained debate in the country about surveillance policy. It was a debate in which Prime Minister John Key has featured prominently. While apparently unable to clearly refute Snowden’s claims concerning mass surveillance in New Zealand, Key’s vigorous public interventions helped counter the short-term political and diplomatic fallout. However, the long-term impact of public concerns over the surveillance policies of the Key government may be much harder to predict in what is an intimate democracy, and the prospect of substantial political blowback cannot be ruled out.     

Developments in public affairs in Australia

• This paper discusses the integrated public affairs model most common in Australian companies, and its rationale. It describes some key characteristics of the function, drawing on a comprehensive survey of public affairs departments in late 2003. The function has become more senior and strategic, more closely aligned to business imperatives and with stable or growing budgets. It identifies areas of increased attention for practitioners, including support for organization transformation and culture change, stakeholder relations as a line, as well as staff function, reputation management and sustainability reporting.

Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.