Conclusion: Is competency management a passing fad?

Is competency management a passing fad; is it a catch‐all term to cover diverse national patterns of development or a symptom of wider changes within bureaucracies? As the papers published here suggest, it is more likely to be a passing fad in Europe than the USA. Competency management addresses rather different agendas in different countries and while it does not embrace as diverse a collection of activities as ‘new public management’, there is substantial range in the issues it does address. European experience suggests competency is more likely to be ephemeral and concerned with repackaging rather than bringing something substantially new to personnel management in the upper reaches of civil services. Without taking too rosy a view of US experience, there may be a stronger case for arguing that contemporary competency management approaches there have brought something new to a longer standing debate in public and private management.     

Reflexive Watchdogs? How Supreme Audit Institutions Account for Themselves

Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) such as the UK National Audit Office and the French Cour des Comptes play important roles within the institutional mechanisms of the democratic state. They are given high independence in order to secure public accountability for, first, the probity and legality of public spending and, second, economy, efficiency and effectiveness. During the last twenty years several SAIs’ mandates have been adjusted to reflect the latter, more managerialist, concerns. This article asks two questions: first, what evidence do these SAIs offer as to the quality and effectiveness of their activities in carrying out their mandates and, second, to what extent does their self–reporting appear to have been influenced by the precepts of the ‘New Public Management’ (NPM)? To address these questions an analysis is carried out of the annual reports and other relevant documents of the Finnish, Swedish, French and UK SAIs, and of the European Court of Auditors. The analysis shows considerable differences of approach. These may well be related to the differing constitutional positions and administrative cultures of the SAIs concerned. In conclusion we identify different concerns which are associated with either a fervent embracing of NPM criteria by SAIs or, alternatively, with an apparent rejection of those approaches.