Christopher Hood
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780198297659
- eISBN:
- 9780191599484
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0198297653.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Comparative Politics
Why does public management—the art of the state—so often go wrong, producing failure and fiasco instead of public service, and what are the different ways in which control or regulation can be ...
More
Why does public management—the art of the state—so often go wrong, producing failure and fiasco instead of public service, and what are the different ways in which control or regulation can be applied to government? Why do we find contradictory recipes for the improvement of public services, and are the forces of modernity set to produce worldwide convergence in ways of organizing government? This study aims to explore such questions, which are central to debates over public management. It combines contemporary and historical experience, and employs grid/group cultural theory as an organizing frame and method of exploration. Using examples from different places and eras, the study seeks to identify the recurring variety of ideas about how to organize public services—and contrary to widespread claims that modernization will bring a new global uniformity, it argues that variety is unlikely to disappear from doctrine and practice in public management. The book has three parts. Part I, Introductory, has three chapters that discuss various aspects of public management. Part II, Classic and Recurring Ideas in Public Management, has four chapters that discuss various ways of doing public management. Part III, Rhetoric, Modernity, and Science in Public Management, has three chapters that discuss the rhetoric, and culture of public management, contemporary public management, and the state of the art of the state.Less
Why does public management—the art of the state—so often go wrong, producing failure and fiasco instead of public service, and what are the different ways in which control or regulation can be applied to government? Why do we find contradictory recipes for the improvement of public services, and are the forces of modernity set to produce worldwide convergence in ways of organizing government? This study aims to explore such questions, which are central to debates over public management. It combines contemporary and historical experience, and employs grid/group cultural theory as an organizing frame and method of exploration. Using examples from different places and eras, the study seeks to identify the recurring variety of ideas about how to organize public services—and contrary to widespread claims that modernization will bring a new global uniformity, it argues that variety is unlikely to disappear from doctrine and practice in public management. The book has three parts. Part I, Introductory, has three chapters that discuss various aspects of public management. Part II, Classic and Recurring Ideas in Public Management, has four chapters that discuss various ways of doing public management. Part III, Rhetoric, Modernity, and Science in Public Management, has three chapters that discuss the rhetoric, and culture of public management, contemporary public management, and the state of the art of the state.
Christopher Hood
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780198297659
- eISBN:
- 9780191599484
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0198297653.003.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Comparative Politics
Discusses three conventional assumptions that are made about public management: that it is in the throes of a millennial transformation to a new style; that today's ‘new’ public management ideas ...
More
Discusses three conventional assumptions that are made about public management: that it is in the throes of a millennial transformation to a new style; that today's ‘new’ public management ideas differ sharply from those of earlier eras; and that the favoured doctrines of contemporary public management tend to be dubbed as economic rationalism. Goes on to point out that the book looks at public management from a different perspective, and reduces its arguments to seven related propositions, discussed in the remainder of the chapter that: grid/cultural theory captures most of the variety in both current and historical debates about how to organize public services; application of a cultural‐theory framework can illuminate many of the central analytic questions of public management; if we look across time and space, we can identify ideas about how to organize government and public services that correspond to each of the four polar categories contained in cultural theory; no one of those recipes for good organization has a clear claim to be considered more modern than any of the others and each has in‐built weaknesses; variation in ideas about how to organize in government is not likely to disappear; the dimensions identified by cultural theory enable analysis of organizational variety to be pursued at a range of levels; and the understanding of cultural and organizational variety, within a historical perspective, merits a central place in the study of public management. These seven propositions overlap, and some of them are given more space than others in the book; this chapter concentrates mainly on the first proposition, and aims to introduce grid/group cultural theory in the context of public management, but the other six propositions are also discussed more briefly, as a way of setting the scene for the remainder of the book.Less
Discusses three conventional assumptions that are made about public management: that it is in the throes of a millennial transformation to a new style; that today's ‘new’ public management ideas differ sharply from those of earlier eras; and that the favoured doctrines of contemporary public management tend to be dubbed as economic rationalism. Goes on to point out that the book looks at public management from a different perspective, and reduces its arguments to seven related propositions, discussed in the remainder of the chapter that: grid/cultural theory captures most of the variety in both current and historical debates about how to organize public services; application of a cultural‐theory framework can illuminate many of the central analytic questions of public management; if we look across time and space, we can identify ideas about how to organize government and public services that correspond to each of the four polar categories contained in cultural theory; no one of those recipes for good organization has a clear claim to be considered more modern than any of the others and each has in‐built weaknesses; variation in ideas about how to organize in government is not likely to disappear; the dimensions identified by cultural theory enable analysis of organizational variety to be pursued at a range of levels; and the understanding of cultural and organizational variety, within a historical perspective, merits a central place in the study of public management. These seven propositions overlap, and some of them are given more space than others in the book; this chapter concentrates mainly on the first proposition, and aims to introduce grid/group cultural theory in the context of public management, but the other six propositions are also discussed more briefly, as a way of setting the scene for the remainder of the book.
