PUBLIC SERVICE VALUES: A NEW APPROACH TO THE STUDY OF MOTIVATION IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE

This article details an approach for empirically eliciting and examining public service values and their impact on decisions made by public servants. The approach involves adaptation of the Schwartz Portrait Values Questionnaire such that it: (1) elicits values relevant to an individual's public service role rather than broad personal values; and (2) incorporates values omitted by the Schwartz framework, including those identified by Jørgensen and Bozeman and others. To examine the impact of public service values on specific public management decisions, we use structured decision context statements similar to those proposed by Tetlock. We find that: (1) the adapted instrument maps favourably to the Schwartz personal value space; (2) the public service values space includes value sets that expand and refine the personal value space defined by Schwartz; and (3) the public service values elicited can be used to predict decisions made by respondents in specific public service decision contexts.     

TRUTH IN GOVERNMENT AND THE POLITICIZATION OF PUBLIC SERVICE ADVICE

Recent controversies over intelligence in Iraq, to give one example, have raised problems about the politicization of official advice from government, particularly what we are led to believe is factual or ‘objective’ advice. Objectivity is a contested value and the lines are often hard to draw between fact, spin and misrepresentation. Public servants are held to higher standards of objectivity than politicians, a fact on which politicians trade when they seek to attribute assessments of evidence to their officials. The growing openness of government documentation is placing pressure on departmental officials who wish to be both loyal to their political masters and honest in their factual assessments. These issues are discussed with reference to recent Australian experience (and also with reference to the UK Hutton Inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly.     

HAVING THE BUN AND THE HALFPENNY: CAN OLD PUBLIC SERVICE ETHICS SURVIVE IN THE NEW WHITEHALL?

The past few years have seen major changes in Whitehall. These include: the encouragement of business values; the erosion of the idea of a career civil service; the Citizen's Charter; the growth of Next Steps agencies; market testing; the rise of political patronage and tensions in ministerial/official relationships. The official view is that this is an evolution of a former tradition and that the old public service ethos can continue. This seems doubtful. At all events there are widely differing normative, evaluations of the recent developments. The article concludes by offering some more historical reflections about the significance of the developments in the context of British public administration.     

NEW MODES OF GOVERNANCE IN ITALY AND THE NETHERLANDS: THE CASE OF ACTIVATION POLICIES

This article discusses the growing importance of operational reforms in the context of welfare state transformation processes, and the role that principles of new governance play in shaping these reforms. It focuses specifically on one social policy area considered crucial in reforming welfare states: the provision of activation services that aim at increasing the employability and labour‐market participation of people dependent on benefits or social assistance. The article argues that besides the reforms of the programmatic aspects of social policies and social services (formal policy reforms), reforms of the way in which policies and services are organized, administered and delivered (operational policy reforms) have received increasing attention as a ’second strand’ of welfare state reforms. It illustrates this by analysing and comparing reforms of the provision of activation services in two European countries: Italy and The Netherlands. The article not only reveals the growing emphasis in both countries on operational policy reforms which are to an important degree inspired by principles of new governance, but also shows significant similarities and differences in their concrete manifestations, which could be interpreted as pointing out processes of ‘path‐dependent convergence’.     

NEW PUBLIC MANAGEMENT IN PUBLIC EDUCATION: A CATALYST FOR THE PROFESSIONALIZATION OF SWEDISH SCHOOL PRINCIPALS

New Public Management (NPM) is one of the most significant reforms in public welfare in recent times. Making individual civil servants more dependent on the directions of the local manager than on common professional standards, previous sociological research argues that NPM results in a ‘deprofessionalization’ of civil servants. Taking a somewhat different approach, recent public administration research indicates that NPM may, at the same time, enhance the professional status of welfare managers. By integrating the literature on the sociology of professions and public administration, this article develops a theoretical framework for understanding the influence of NPM using the example of a professional project for school principals in Sweden. Taking a process‐oriented methodological approach, the result shows that Swedish school principals gained increased support for their professional project by the introduction of NPM. The article argues that NPM can function as a catalyst for welfare managers' professional projects.     

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.     

THE FUTURE OF PORTUGUESE PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AND A NEW AGENDA FOR PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION SCIENCES IN THE 21st CENTURY

This paper addresses the changing role of the Portuguese state, the present priority assigned to the process of reform and the new challenges to be overcome by public administration. Such processes are demanding a new agenda for education and research in public administration sciences, shifting from the public law paradigm to an interdisciplinary problem‐solving approach and giving special attention to 10 key areas of study, which we describe in the final section of the paper. It should be noted here that the opinions expressed in this paper do not necessarily reflect the position of their institutions.     

WILL THE PRIVATIZATION OF PUBLIC ENTERPRISES SOLVE THE PROBLEM OF CONTROL?

The Government's privatization programme has acquired such momentum that hardly any public enterprise is exempt from action or proposals. Evaluation of the programme must recognize the diversity of privatization policies, and the tensions inherent within their objectives. Ideological motivation has been supported by the inability of policymakers to design a viable framework of economic and financial control over public enterprises. This has led to a view that it is impossible to manage business efficiently within the public sector, the constraints of which can only be escaped by ‘setting the enterprise free’. However, decisions now will close future options, only be escaped and may be prohibitive to reverse. A list of unanswered questions remain about future relationships between hybrids and governments, the costs and benefits of the regulatory systems which will replace public ownership, and the balance between public policy and private interests. Can the market succeed where the state has been judged to have failed?     

CUSTOMER CARE AND THE PUBLIC SERVICE ETHOS

The Labour governments that have been in power in the UK since 1997 have reconceptualized the public service ethos. In an apparent departure from their Conservative predecessors, Labour ministers have argued that the distinctive culture of public service can enhance rather than impede service quality and deliver high levels of customer care. This article utilizes interviews and content analysis data to explore the ethical dimension of public service, the significance of the language of customer in relation to ethos, and the implications for service delivery of a customer care focus. Case study findings show that a customer orientation is endorsed by politicians and bureaucrats in both central and local government, although there is a lack of clarity about the service manifestations of such a shift in emphasis. Respondents voiced concerns about the viability of customer care in the public sector as well as the sidelining of the political role of citizen.     

THE DYNAMICS OF PROFESSIONS AND DEVELOPMENT OF NEW ROLES IN PUBLIC SERVICES ORGANIZATIONS: THE CASE OF MODERN MATRONS IN THE ENGLISH NHS

This study contributes to research examining how professional autonomy and hierarchy impacts upon the implementation of policy designed to improve the quality of public services delivery through the introduction of new managerial roles. It is based on an empirical examination of a new role for nurses – modern matrons – who are expected by policy-makers to drive organizational change aimed at tackling health care acquired infections (HCAI) in the National Health Service (NHS) within England. First, we show that the changing role of nurses associated with their ongoing professionalization limits the influence of modern matrons over their own ranks in tackling HCAI. Second, the influence of modern matrons over doctors is limited. Third, government policy itself appears inconsistent in its support for the role of modern matrons. The attempts of modern matrons to tackle HCAI appear more effective where infection control activity is situated in professional practice and where modern matrons integrate aspirations for improved infection control within mainstream audit mechanisms in a health care organization.     

THE PUBLIC SERVICE ORIENTATION: ISSUES AND DILEMMAS

The public service orientation sets service for the public as the key organizational value, providing motivation and purposes both for the local authority and its staff. This article describes the public service orientation before focusing on the major issues which this orientation raises. In particular, it examines service for, not to, the public; the ways in which the public service Orientation differs from consumerism; and the relationship to the political process. Finally, the article surveys the dilemmas posed by the public service orientation.     

NEW PUBLIC MANAGEMENT IN PUBLIC SECTOR ORGANIZATIONS: THE DARK SIDES OF MANAGERIALISTIC ‘ENLIGHTENMENT’

For many years the proponents of New Public Management (NPM) have promised to improve public services by making public sector organizations much more ‘business‐like’. There have been many investigations and empirical studies about the nature of NPM as well as its impact on organizations. However, most of these studies concentrate only on some elements of NPM and provide interesting, but often anecdotal, evidence and insights. Perhaps exactly because of the large amount of extremely revealing and telling empirical studies, there is, therefore, a lack of a systematic identification and understanding of the nature of NPM and its overall relevance. This paper contributes to a systematic identification and understanding of the concept of NPM as well as its multi‐dimensional impact on public sector organizations. First, the paper aims at (re‐) constructing a comprehensive taxonomy of NPM's main assumptions and core elements. Secondly, the paper tries to provide a more comprehensive and meta‐analytical analysis of primarily the negative consequences of NPM‐strategies for public sector organizations as well as the people working in them.     

A STRATEGY FOR FORMULATION AND IMPLEMENTATION OF CODES OF ETHICS IN PUBLIC SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS

Codes of ethics in public service organizations are designed to serve three purposes: provide enduring solutions to existing ethical problems, educate the public about the mission of the organization, and foster an ethical climate in the organization. There is no agreement in the literature as to how useful and effective codes are. This paper argues that codes of ethics can be effective with respect to these three goals, only if careful attention is given to the process of internalization of the code's provisions. Internalization is most likely to occur under two interrelated conditions: when members of an organization clarify, articulate, and establish integrated values systems; and when the ethical code is formulated and adopted as a consequence of a participatory democratic process. When members of the organization are able to relate the code's provisions to their personal integrated values systems, a greater compliance and commitment will prevail.