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Public management reform started in Great Britain, New Zealand, and Australia in the 1980s. In the US, the reform occurred mainly at local level, but the National Performance Review Program ‘Reinventing Government’. Public management reform also advanced in the Scandinavian countries and in the Netherlands. In Canada, the reform had to await a major fiscal adjustment programme that lasted most of the 1990s, but it is today under way. In Italy, it is beginning. Among the developing countries, only in Brazil and Chile has public management reform gained ground. It is lagging behind in countries such as Germany, France, and Japan, where bureaucratic administration was more successfully and formally established.

Returns to the general question of what sort of science public management is or can be and how cultural theory can contribute to that science. Critically discusses the pervasive ideas of modernization and global convergence in a cultural‐theory framework, suggesting there are more forces for divergence and less common ground on what modernity means in matters of organization than is commonly recognized. It argues that modernization is a rhetorically successful idea because when the powerful but implicit metaphor of technological development that underlies it is carried over into human organization it is inherently ambiguous—so it lends itself to quite different and contradictory ideas about the wave of the future that fit with each of the world views identified by cultural theory. Further, it argues that a vision of global transformation of public management into a convergent modern style is likely to be exaggerated because it ignores powerful forces of path‐dependency and self‐disequilibration—i.e. the capacity of management reform initiatives to produce the opposite of their intended result. The main sections of the chapter are: Modern, Global, Inevitable? The Claim of a New Paradigm in Public Management; Public‐Management Modernization as Deep Change; Public‐Management Modernization as Irreversible Change; Public‐Management Modernization as Convergent Change; Public‐Management Modernization as Beneficent Change; and Modernization—or ‘Fatal Remedies’?

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.

In the four chapters of Part II, public management ideas that loosely correspond to each of the four polar world views identified by cultural theory are discussed. Here, the cultural‐theory framework is mixed with a historical perspective to survey recurring approaches to public management that can be loosely characterized as hierarchist (this chapter), individualist (Ch. 5), egalitarian (Ch. 6), and fatalist (Ch. 7). Looks briefly and selectively at four classic hierarchist approaches to public management. Two of them (Confucian public management in classical China and the cameralist tradition of early modern Europe) rarely receive a mention in conventional public‐management books—but those older traditions merit attention from present‐day students of public management, and not just for pietist or antiquarian reasons, for they show some of the different contexts in which hierarchist ideas have flourished, and their fate can help assess the strengths and weaknesses of doing public management the hierarchist way. The other two hierarchist approaches discussed are Progressivism and Fabianism.

In the four chapters of Part II, public management ideas that loosely correspond to each of the four polar world views identified by cultural theory are discussed. Here, the cultural theory framework is mixed with a historical perspective to survey recurring approaches to public management that can be loosely characterized as hierarchist (Ch. 4), individualist (this chapter), egalitarian (Ch. 6), and fatalist (Ch. 7). What can loosely be called individualist approaches to public management start from the assumption that the world is populated by rational egoists who are bent on outsmarting one another to get something for nothing—rivalry and competition are central to the individualist view of what the world of public management is and should be like. The individualist bias embodies at least four basic propositions that contradict the underlying assumptions of hierarchism and of the egalitarian bias: first, an individualist bias does not automatically begin with a view of public management from the apex of the state, it rejects the viewpoint of the chancellory or presidential palace and is not disposed to examine public management in the context of power play among states, and instead is more predisposed to start bottom up; second, instead of assuming that the interests of the rulers and those of the ruled can go together in a positive‐sum game, an individualist bias is more likely to start from the assumption that rulers will tend to look after themselves at the expense of the ruled unless the institutions and incentive structures are very carefully engineered; third, instead of assuming that economic development and social order require hands on state administration guided by an enlightened technocratic elite, individualists will tend to assume that markets will ordinarily produce better results than bureaucratic hierarchies; and fourth, instead of assuming people that are only corrupted by evil institutions, individualists will tend to work on what Thomas Carlyle called the ‘pig principle’—the assumption that human beings, from the highest to the lowest, are inherently rational, calculative, opportunistic, and self‐seeking. These four assumptions taken together make a relatively coherent philosophy of institutional design for government; it is the first two assumptions that mainly distinguish the individualist bias in public management from the hierarchist approach considered in the last chapter, and the second two that mainly distinguish it from the egalitarian approach to be considered in the next.

Returns to the general question of what sort of science public management is or can be and how cultural theory can contribute to that science. If public management is (as suggested earlier) dominated by rhetorical forms of argument, cultural theory can help take one step further than conventional analyses of rhetoric by differentiating rhetorical ‘families’—this theme is explored in this chapter, which looks at what a cultural‐theory framework can add to the analysis of public management as an arena for rhetoric, and aims to do three things. First, it briefly expands on a now familiar argument (noted in the first chapter)—that shifts in what counts as received ideas in public management work through a process of fashion and persuasion, not through proofs couched in strict deductive logic, controlled experiments, or even systematic analysis of all available cases. Second, and more ambitiously, it aims to bring together the analysis of rhetoric in public management with the four ways of doing public management that were explored in Part II, to show how each of those approaches can have its own rhetoric, in the sense of foreshortened proofs, analogies, and parables; the aim is to put a cultural‐theory perspective to work in a different way, to identify multiple rhetorics of public management. Third, it briefly develops the suggestion made in Chapters 1 and 2 that shifts (change) in received ideas about how to organize typically occur in a reactive way, through rejection of existing arrangements with their known faults, rather than through a positive process of reasoning from a blank slate.

This chapter explores the context of the cases, setting out the history of patient involvement initiatives and deliberative experiments in the UK. It highlights the antipathy to interest groups and the ‘research orientation’ of those experiments, and the effects that orientation has had on limiting the scope and agenda of deliberation. It argues that whether deliberation occurs at the local level or at the centre matters a great deal, but that deliberative experiments tend to be at least as much about resource battles between the centre and the periphery as responding to citizens’ needs.

In Chapters 2–3 of the Introduction, the cultural‐theory framework is used to explore two central problems of public management—the analysis of the characteristic ways in which different forms of organization can collapse and fail (this chapter), and the analysis of the range of forms of control and regulation (in the broadest sense) available in public management (the next chapter); in both cases, an examination through the lens of cultural theory can add an extra dimension or an alternative perspective to the analysis. Aims to show how a cultural‐theory perspective can assist the analysis of public management failure and collapse in two ways. First, such a perspective can help bring out some of the varying and contradictory attitudes towards scandal or catastrophe in public management, in the sense of who to blame or how to put matters right. Second, the four basic organizational ways of life that cultural theory identifies (as introduced in the first chapter) can each be expected to have its own characteristic pattern of in‐built failure. The different sections are Responses to Public‐Management Disasters; Four Types of Failure and Collapse; Private Gain From Public Office; Fiascos Resulting from Excessive Trust in Authority and Expertise; Unresolved Conflict and Internecine Strife; Apathy and Inertia: Lack of Planning, Initiative, and Foresight; and Accounting for Failure in Public Management.

Discusses the transition from bureaucratic public administration to public or new public management. Classic bureaucratic administration, based on the Prussian army’s administrative principles, resulted from a series of civil service reforms implemented in the second half of nineteenth century. It revealed a surprising historical persistence. Public management reform is the capitalist state organization’s second major reform. It emerged when globalization and the crisis of the state challenged the legitimacy of state bureaucracies and bureaucratic public administration. Margaret Thatcher launched public management reform in Great Britain, but in the end it was adopted by governments formed by political parties from across the political spectrum, including parties on the traditional left, most notably Labour governments in Australia and New Zealand.

In Chapters 2–3 of the Introduction, the cultural‐theory framework is used to explore two central problems of public management—the analysis of the characteristic ways in which different forms of organization can collapse and fail (the last chapter), and the analysis of the range of forms of control and regulation (in the broadest sense) available in public management (this chapter); in both cases, an examination through the lens of cultural theory can add an extra dimension or an alternative perspective. Aims to build on four important insights by putting them together in a single framework that identifies a set of basic forms of regulation or control linked to a view of what makes different groups cohere. Four generic types of control and regulation in public management are discussed, each of which is loosely linked to one of the polar ways of life identified by cultural theory. The four approaches are bossism (control by oversight); choicism (control by competition); groupism (control by mutuality); and chancism, (control by contrived randomness). Each of these approaches to control and regulation can operate at several different levels of organization: i.e. they can be applied to the ways organizations control their clients, to the way control relationships operate inside organizations, and to the way organizations are themselves controlled by external forces; each is also capable of being linked to a broader view of good government and accountability, these four types will be returned to in Parts II and III of the book.

In the four chapters of Part II, public management ideas that loosely correspond to each of the four polar world views identified by cultural theory are discussed; here the cultural‐theory framework is mixed with a historical perspective to survey recurring approaches to public management that can be loosely characterized as hierarchist (Ch. 4), individualist (Ch. 5), egalitarian (this chapter), and fatalist (Ch. 7). Like individualism and hierarchism, egalitarianism embodies a particular vision of control of public management both within organizations and by the society at large, and that approach to organization can be linked to a broader vision of good government that takes groupism rather than bossism, choicism, or chancism as the point of departure or central organizing principle for co‐operative behaviour. The egalitarian approach to organization involves at least three closely interrelated elements: these are group self‐management, control by mutuality, and maximum face‐to‐face accountability. A fourth idea often associated with egalitarianism is the view that the process by which decisions are reached in an organization or group is just as important, if not more so, than the results or outcomes in a narrow sense—i.e. the achievement of the substantive policy goals of egalitarians is not held to be more important than reaching the process goal of decision‐making through high‐participation weak‐leadership structures. The main sections are: What Egalitarians Believe; The Managerial Critique of Egalitarianism; and Varieties of Egalitarianism.

In the four chapters of Part II, public management ideas that loosely correspond to each of the four polar world views identified by cultural theory are discussed; here the cultural‐theory framework is mixed with a historical perspective to survey recurring approaches to public management that can be loosely characterized as hierarchist (Ch.. 4), individualist (Ch. 5), egalitarian (Ch. 6), and fatalist (this chapter). Starts by asking whether there can be a fatalist approach to public management—cultural theorists have identified fatalism as a viable way of life, but it does not figure prominently in conventional accounts on the provision of public services; Banfield has stated that in fatalist societies (such as Montegrano) public management will be (only) narrowly bureaucratic and statist because only paid officials will be concerned with public affairs, and the citizenry at large will be cynical about the motives of public officials; in spite of this widespread belief, however, there are likely to be few effective checks on public officials in a fatalist society, and Banfield sees fatalism as a social pathology bound to produce social backwardness and stagnation. Cultural theory is ambiguous on whether fatalism can be a viable basis of organization in the sense that a Montegrano‐type society could survive and reproduce itself over time, nor is it clear from the work of cultural theorists exactly what fatalists’ focus on karma amounts to. The last possibility—that fatalism might link to how‐to‐do‐it ideas about organizational design, as distinct from a view of the world as ineluctably ruled by the fickle goddess of fortune—has had little attention: from conventional cultural‐theory accounts, it would seem the most appropriate role, for fatalist social science in public management would be like that of the chorus in classical Greek theatre—and the second section of the chapter examines such a perspective on public management, looking particularly at one influential strain of ‘new institutionalist’ literature, which portrays the functioning of organizations as a highly unpredictable process, involving eclectic decision‐making unavoidably dependent on chance connections. It then moves on to build on the recipe for contrived randomness, and argues that a fatalist perspective can at least in some sense be taken beyond commentary and criticism into a positive prescription for conducting management and designing organizations to operate on the basis of chance.

Returns to the general question of what sort of science public management is or can be and how cultural theory can contribute to that science. Concludes by taking stock of the cultural‐theory approach as a framework for analysing public management, surveying its strengths and weaknesses. It does not claim there are no problems with the approach—on the contrary, there are major gaps and ambiguities and some of the underlying logic needs attention, but in spite of such weaknesses, the claim is that a cultural‐theory framework has much to contribute to a way of thinking about the art of the state that is neither sham science nor mere craft. To assess the cultural‐theory approach, this concluding chapter discusses three sorts of objections to the cultural‐theory framework as a way of analysing public management. One possible line of criticism might be called the ‘nursery toys’ objection—the claim that cultural theory is too simple for sophisticated analysis and is therefore better suited for the elementary stages of understanding than for advanced or professional analysis; a second possible line of criticism might be called the ‘soft science’ objection—the claim that, whatever its level of sophistication or applicability to management, the theory is, even on its own terms, limited, ambiguous, and perhaps even unfalsifiable; a third line of criticism might be called the ‘wrong tool’ objection—i.e. the claim that cultural theory, however sophisticated, cannot be an adequate basis for a theory of management, because ultimately it has little to say about the central what‐to‐do questions of organization that management and managers need to be concerned with—and by this view, it is the wrong tool for the job.

Examines the relationship between new public management (NPM) reforms and regulation inside government. It charts the changes in regulatory style over a 20‐year period. The relaxation of controls associated with NPM has often been accompanied by the tightening of other forms of control.

This chapter has five purposes. First, to provide a general theoretical orientation and framework to analyse changes in UK higher education at the institutional, organizational, and individual academic and manager-academic levels. Second, to provide an analytical narrative about the emergence and subsequent development of ‘New Managerialism’ (NM). Third, to review the discursive strategies and control technologies embodied in different formulations of NM and New Public Management (NPM). Fourth, to identify and assess the endemic contradictions, tensions, and conflicts within and between these discursive strategies and control technologies, as well as their broader implications for longer-term institutional change and organizational innovation. Fifth, to provide an initial interpretation of the process of ‘hybridization’ in public services domains and organizationals, and its wider significance for the development of universities as ‘knowledge-intensive organizations’.