THE MANAGEMENT OF CHANGE IN WHITEHALL: THE EXPERIENCE OF THE FMI

The Conservative government announced the Financial Management Initiative in 1982. This article is based on research into the genesis, development and impact of the FMI. The findings suggest that the FMI has contributed significantly to the institutionalization of resource management in general and cost awareness in particular. Implementation has been influenced, however, by the differentiation of departmental tasks and contexts, the inevitable tension between management and politics, and the difficulty of meeting the conditions for the successful engineering of cultural change.     

THE DYNAMICS OF POLICY CHANGE: WBBYING AND WATER PRIVATIZATION

The privatization of the water industry was one of the most controversial and turbulent privatizations of the 1980s. The government undertook the project somewhat reluctantly, then the first plans had to be withdrawn, but eventually, the privatization of the industry was successfully completed in 1989. In this article, we first set out to provide a thorough account of the process of privatizing water, based on primary sources and exhaustive interviews. In doing so, we identity some major problems of established theories of British policy making: the process of water privatization clearly does not conform to any single model of policy making. Instead, individual 'episodes' of the policy process conform to different models. Arguing that existing theories of British policy making may have focused too narrowly on routine decision-making processes, we propose that a theory of the transformation of policy communities is required to understand the dynamics of radical policy change in Britain.     

CHANGE IN THE MANAGEMENT OF PUBLIC SERVICES

This article identifies the main themes in recent changes in public sector management and shows the extent of the challenge to past organizational assumptions. While recognizing the objectives of the changes could bring benefits if realized, it argues that there are a series of issues that are unresolved. The language of consumerism, the development of government by contracts, the form of performance management and the use of quasi-markets are seen as creating problems. These are seen as deriving from an attempt to apply approaches drawn from the private sector to the public domain. It is argued that they need to be balanced by approaches that recognize the values of the public sector.     

THE IMPACT OF THE EFFICIENCY STRATEGY: POLITICAL CLOUT OR CULTURAL CHANGE?

The initial impact of the efficiency strategy owed much to the determined backing of the Prime Minister. A lasting change in public management, however, relies on a more fundamental Change in the culture of Whitehall, not only to give more attention to management, but to redefine the concept in terms appropriate to government. One of the obstacles to change is that the civil service operates with an impoverished concept of management which over-emphasizes routine control and understates other dimensions, such as managing change and managing relationships within organizations. A broader concept of public management pushes up against the limits of the existing framework of constitutional myth and ritual.     

CONTINUITY AND CHANGE: THE ROLE OF THE HR FUNCTION IN THE MODERN PUBLIC SECTOR

As the public sector has modernized and sought to become more efficient and cost‐effective, the effective and strategic management of people has received increasing prominence and there have been calls for the Human Resource (HR) function to play a more strategic role. However, not much is known about whether the role of the HR function has changed substantively. In this paper, we present empirical evidence from six matched‐pair public sector organizations in the UK to assess whether HR functional roles have changed, as envisaged, into a model more akin to the private sector. The findings highlight the complex and often contradictory nature of HR functional roles, and suggest that new and more strategic roles have not replaced traditional approaches but, rather, have been grafted on, giving rise to a variety of hybrid HR forms.     

THE MANAGEMENT OF CHANGE IN PUBLIC ORGANIZATIONS: A LITERATURE REVIEW

This article presents a review of the recent literature on change management in public organizations and sets out to explore the extent to which this literature has responded to earlier critiques regarding the lack of (public) contextual factors. The review includes 133 articles published on this topic in the period from 2000 to 2010. The articles are analysed based on the themes of the context, content, process, outcome, and leadership of change. We identified whether the articles referred to different orders of change, as well as their methods and theory employed. Our findings concentrate on the lack of detail on change processes and outcomes and the gap between the common theories used to study change. We propose an agenda for the study of change management in public organizations that focuses on its complex nature by building theoretical bridges and performing more in‐depth empirical and comparative studies on change processes.     

THE SHIFTING STATE: PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN A TIME OF CHANGE

This is the keynote address given by the Right Hon The Lord Scarman, OBE, Lord of Appeal in Ordinary and the RIPA's President, at the Institute's Conference on'The Shifting State: Rules, Roles and Boundaries in the 198s', held at the University of Aston, 14–15 September 1984.     

MODELLING BUREAUCRACY: THE CASE OF THE AUSTRALIAN FEDERAL BUDGET SECTOR 1982-1992

A substantial literature exists on the economic analysis of bureaucracy, which includes formal models of bureaucratic behaviour by Niskanen (1971) and Dunleavy (1991). This article develops hypotheses from those models about changes in size of bureaux over time and tests them against data on the Australian federal budget sector in 1982–83 and 1991–92. The models predict that bureaucrats usually will be able to influence the size or structure of their bureaux in line with their personal preferences. However, the Australian data suggest that the extent of such influence may be less than is assumed in either model and that the preferences of politicians are more influential than the models allow. One conclusion is that, if bureaucracy is to be modelled, a principal-agent approach will have more to offer than the neo-classical maximizing framework adopted by Niskanen in particular. A further conclusion, at odds with those of Niskanen and weakening his case for wholesale privatization, is that bureaucratic dysfunctions may be amenable to reform of the political and bureaucratic rules and systems.     

THE NATIONAL COORDINATION OF EU POLICY IN HUNGARY: PATTERNS OF CONTINUITY AND CHANGE

Although European Union (EU) membership generates similar functional pressures for national administrations, member states developed institutional arrangements that show marked cross‐country variation in the coordination of EU policy. This article examines and assesses the institutions and mechanisms established in Hungary for formulating policy positions on the domestic level. In line with the general features of central government, the system is highly centralized and hierarchical, and has been characterized by a comprehensive coordination ambition from its inception. The case confirms the primary importance of national institutional factors for shaping coordination systems, but also the relevance of more actor‐centered explanations for accounting for changes in the top decision‐making tier. At the same time, the Hungarian experience also draws attention to power relations within governing parties and prime ministerial involvement as important variables so far relatively neglected in the literature.     

ADMINISTRATIVE REORGANIZATION AND POLICY CHANGE: THE CASE OF HER MAJESTY'S INSPECTORATE OF POLLUTION

Environmental protection nowadays is a major issue of policy and administration. It is well recognized that an effective approach to pollution control requires it to be integrated, but UK governments have been slow to respond to this need. The creation of a new unified pollution inspectorate in England and Wales must be set in the context of a general transition in British pollution control practice, where the incorporation of more formal procedures is taking place within a tradition of emitter self-policing, client-regulator mutual respect, and regulatory adaptability. This article examines the circumstances that led to the formation of the new pollution inspectorate and considers the challenges that it faces.     

THE LIMITS OF CHANGE: LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES FOR WOMEN

Women make up the majority of local government employees in Great Britain but are not, however, evenly represented throughout the employment structure. Rather, women are overwhelmingly concentrated in low paid, low status and often part-time jobs, and are under-represented as decision makers, either as managers or elected council members. The situation of black and ethnic minority women is one of even greater marginalization. From 1982–7 over 200 local authorities adopted equal opportunity (EO) policies, both for employment practice and service delivery, the aims of which included redressing this inequitable situation for women. The achievements of these EO policies have proved to be very limited. Most have been introduced with few resources and little managerial or political support and without mechanisms for implementation or management accountability. EO reforms have been contained within the existing relationships and structures of local authorities when by definition, successful EO policies will upset the status quo. Nevertheless important lessons have been learned from this first pioneering phase of EO policy development.     

CLUMSY SOLUTIONS FOR A COMPLEX WORLD: THE CASE OF CLIMATE CHANGE

Successful solutions to pressing social ills tend to consist of innovative combinations of a limited set of alternative ways of perceiving and resolving the issues. These contending policy perspectives justify, represent and stem from four different ways of organizing social relations: hierarchy, individualism, egalitarianism and fatalism. Each of these perspectives: (1) distils certain elements of experience and wisdom that are missed by the others; (2) provides a clear expression of the way in which a significant portion of the populace feels we should live with one another and with nature; and (3) needs all of the others in order to be sustainable. ‘Clumsy solutions’– policies that creatively combine all opposing perspectives on what the problems are and how they should be resolved – are therefore called for. We illustrate these claims for the issue of global warming.     

EXPLAINING RADICAL POLICY CHANGE: THE CASE OF CLIMATE CHANGE AND ENERGY POLICY UNDER THE BRITISH LABOUR GOVERNMENT 2006–10

An innovative framework combining the ‘multiple streams’ (MS) and ‘punctuated equilibrium’ (PE) models of agenda‐setting is used to explain the transformation of UK climate change and energy policy under the Labour Government between 2006 and 2010. The coupling of the problem, politics and policy streams by policy entrepreneurs (MS), and changes in policy image and institutional venues (PE), were critical in opening a policy window, disrupting the existing policy monopoly and enabling radical policy initiatives. The case study suggests two revisions to the models: (1) policy windows can remain open far longer than either model typically predicts; and (2) party politics, especially where party competition generates a ‘competitive consensus’, can be important for both initiating and prolonging policy change in parliamentary systems. An important factor typically overlooked by both models is the significant policy entrepreneurship role that government ministers can play, particularly when an issue becomes part of their ‘narrative identity’.     

THE DYNAMICS OF DEVOLUTION PROCESSES IN LEGALISTIC COUNTRIES: ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE IN THE ITALIAN PUBLIC SECTOR

The devolution of authority from central to regional and local governments is a widespread trend in many countries. Differences in the outcomes of devolution reforms are often significant, between countries as well as within a country. The work reported in this paper assumes that the dynamics of the implementation process and the way it is affected by the national tradition of governance and by the features of the politico‐administrative system is important in explaining such differentiation. The paper investigates devolution in Italy and proposes explanations for the substantial differentiation of outcomes that can be observed. The case of devolution in agriculture in Lombardy, investigated in depth in the article, is striking for the magnitude and rapidity of change as well as for the way the reallocation of the workforce to the lower levels of government has occurred. This case study provides the basis for some theorizations about the dynamics of devolution processes in countries that have a legalistic administrative tradition, especially those nations which have a ‘Napoleonic’ administrative tradition.     

THE DYNAMICS OF IRONY IN ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE: COPING WITH A SCHOOL MERGER

The potential of an ironic perspective for understanding public service change is portrayed through a re‐analysis of data on a merger between two English primary sector schools, an extreme change involving organizational termination alongside phoenix‐like emergence. The ironic perspective focuses on synchronic dissonance and diachronic divergence in meaning underlying verbal and situational forms of irony respectively, endemic sources of organizational ambiguity, its exacerbation by change which creates conditions favouring irony, and the dynamics of their relationship. The case illustrates how ironic consequences flowed iteratively from diverse sources of ambiguity for those managing the merger, often recursively generating further irony. It is suggested that an ironic perspective can deepen theoretical understanding of the relative unmanageability of public service change, within structural parameters delimiting its scope. This perspective also offers a generic heuristic for organizational analysis with potential to inform efforts to cope with ambiguity and consequent irony in the change process.     

THE FIGHT OVER DANISH NATURE: EXPLAINING POLICY NETWORK CHANGE AND POLICY CHANGE

The policy network approach is widely recognized for its ability to describe different networks. Adding the concepts ‘policy image’ and ‘cleavage in the party system’ makes it possible to explain policy network change as well as policy change. This argument is supported by a comparison of the Danish decision in 1960 to straighten Denmark's largest river, the Skjern River, to gain farmland, and the 1987 decision to restore the river and recreate the wild nature of the river valley. The fight over Danish nature has historically been a fight between a land reclamation network and a nature protection network – two networks trying to promote different policy images. Coupled with a new (environmental) cleavage in the party system, new policy images connected to the Skjern River decisions led to radical policy changes.     

STRUCTURAL CHANGE AND PUBLIC SERVICE PERFORMANCE: THE IMPACT OF THE REORGANIZATION PROCESS IN ENGLISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT

Organization theory suggests that structural change has disruptive effects on managerial behaviour and organizational outcomes, and that these effects are likely to emerge in the period between the announcement and the commencement of the new structure. We evaluate the validity of this argument by analysing the performance of English county councils in the transition period before the voluntary restructuring of a sub‐set of these organizations. Disruptive effects are tested while controlling for a range of other variables, including the relative prosperity of the local population and the diversity of their service needs. The empirical results indicate that the performance of local authorities facing reorganization deteriorated prior to the onset of the new structures, and support the view that structural change has disruptive effects on organizational outcomes.     

MEETING THE CHALLENGE OF TECHNOLOGY‐DRIVEN CHANGE WITHIN AN INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXT: THE GREEK CASE

Propelled by the driving forces of globalization and technology explosion, public institutions face the challenge of rapid and discontinuous change. Such change has come to undermine the relevance of traditional approaches on how an institution should be managed. We analyse a technology‐driven change effort, the implementation of an Integrated Information System (IIS), that unfolds within the boundaries of the institutional context of the Hellenic Parliament. The purpose of our research, which reports on a qualitative field study, is to explore and understand how the particularities of technology‐driven change on the one hand, and institutional change on the other, can be integrated, paying particular attention to how the different actors involved in the process interact and affect the unfolding of such a change effort. Our findings show that strong friction did indeed occur between old and new institutional factors, but that the key factor enabling the change effort to advance and finally gain legitimation was the encouragement and support in the institutional change process of opportunity‐based and emerging changes, as proposed by the technological change literature.