public management: public sector reforms wrt higher education institutions peter maassen 14-03-2011

Public Management: Public sector reforms wrt

Higher Education Institutions

Peter Maassen

14-03-2011

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Public sector reforms

Management reform is a means to multiple ends.

However, matters are not that simple. Management reforms can easily go wrong.

It is said to make savings in public expenditure, improving the quality of public services, making the operations of government more efficient and increasing the chances that the policies which are chosen and implemented will be effective.

Public sector reforms (1)

“Deliberate changes to the structures and processes of public sector organizations with the objective of getting them (in some sense) to perform better.” (Pollitt & Bouckaert 2004: 8)

Public management may denote the activity of public servants and politicians. It may also refer to the structures and processes of the executive government or the systematic study of either activities or structures and processes.

Management is seen as a new kind of activity and is contrasted with the older form, administration.


• Relationship between public management and generic management. Last 20 years there was extensive borrowing by public sectors of management ideas and techniques which originated in the private sector.

• Management is not neutral, technical process. It is value-laden and influenced by ideologies.

• The claims to run things better should be tested empirically rather than assumed.


• Management reforms can be initiated top-down, but also bottom-up.

• Management reforms in any particular country will almost certainly be shaped by the local preoccupations (‘local frames of reference’, path dependency).

• ‘To run better’ may mean different things to different individuals and groups; there may be winners and losers.

• Reforms occur at different levels and may vary in scope.

New Public Management / Managerialism

There has been a large optimism about the potential of management itself. Few boundaries seem to be envisaged for the exercise of this set of dynamic and purportedly generic skills.

This means that also the regime of new public management faces trade-offs, contradictions and dilemmas.

However, “while management practice and discourse have been transformed, the perennial questions of public administration remain.” (Halligan 1997:43)

Contradictions in New Public Management?

1. Increase political control of the bureaucracy / free managers to manage / empower service customers.

From: Pollitt & Bouckaert 2004:chapter 7

2. Promote flexibility and innovation / increase citizen trust and therefore governmental legitimacy

3. Give priority to making savings / give priority to improving the performance of the public sector

Contradictions of New Public Management? (2)

4. “Responsibilize” government / reduce the range of tasks government is involved with (‘privatization’)

5. Motivate staff and promote cultural change / weaken tenure and downsize

6. Reduce burden of internal scrutiny and associated paperwork / sharpen managerial accountability

Contradictions of New Public Management? (3)

7. Create more single-purpose agencies / improve policy and programme co-ordination

8. Decentralize management authority / improve programme co-ordination

10. Increase quality / cut costs

9. Increase effectiveness / sharpen managerial accountability

Strategies to reform the public sector (Pollitt & Bouckaert 2004)

1. Maintain:

Tighten up traditional controls, restrict expenditures, freeze new hirings, ‘squeeze’ the public sector

2. Modernize:

Bringing in faster, more flexible ways of budgeting, managing, accounting and delivering services to their users (e.g. deregulation)

Strategies to reform the public sector (Pollitt & Bouckaert 2000)

3. Marketize:

Bringing in market-type mechanisms such as competition

4. Minimize:

Handling over tasks to the market sector (privatization, contracting out)

New public management:New public management:

The academic response The academic response

1. Victory of managerial values over professional ones; de-professionalization; end of self regulation and control

2. Victory of academic values; academics can still be in the driver’s seat in the case of management by contract; conditional funding

3. A blend of academic and managerial values; adaptation of traditional values; soft monitoring of academic work with professionals still in control and implementing new forms of self policing

More complete organizations: why? More complete organizations: why?

1. Top down regulation has lost legitimacy in public sectors. Multi actor governance is seen more effective, efficient and democratic. It assumes that there is an addressee who is enabled to receive advice and to act on it. Universities ‘as strategic organisational actors’ fit this picture better than traditional ones (too fragmented)

2. Decentralising authorities (NPM) require social entities to have the room to act, to make strategic choices and to become responsible for them.

More complete organizations: why? More complete organizations: why?

3. Introduction of market-like mechanisms and conditions. Markets need actors. Universities are seen as important actors on higher education markets

Concepts for transforming Concepts for transforming universities universities (what organizations do to become more tightly (what organizations do to become more tightly coupled systems)coupled systems)

Constructing identity:

what is the organization and what would it like to be?

Constructing hierarchy:

co-operation guided by the ‘visible hand’ of leadership and management

Constructing rationality:

goal achievement through rational, formal means

(Brunsson and Sahlin-Andersson, 2000)

Transformation of universities?Transformation of universities?

Measuring change through the three mentioned concepts of identity, hierarchy, and rationality.

Has the image changed? Is there more hierarchy? Are universities ‘rationalized’?

If the answers are positive, we speak of transformation. If not, we should speak of ‘no change’, or of ‘gradual change and adaptation’

The answer differs of course across countries, across sectors and across time

Universities as loosely coupled systemsUniversities as loosely coupled systems

Hierarchical control in universities?

Relative academic autonomy and academic freedom Sanctity of the class room and the lecture hall Organizational and disciplinary autonomy Educational organizations as loosely coupled systems


Weick:

1. People in HEIs do not work through organized sets of procedures passed down from leadership / management or technical experts.

2. Business models simply cannot explain a large part of what is going on inside HEIs


Weick:

Four properties are needed for conventional(hierarchical, professional) management to be effective: 1. interdependent people working under a rational,

self-correcting scheme; 2. consensus on goals and means; 3. effective dissemination of information;4. predictable problems with calculable responses.

HEIs, however, do in general not show these properties


Weick:

Differences between HSOs (Human Service Organisations) andprofit-focused businesses. One of the differences was that themain business of HSOs takes place between professionals(teachers) and ‘clients’ (pupils, students). This primary business issupported by a backbone of administrative and resource services.However, contrary to the assumptions underlying NPM, in HEIsadministration is not the main source of expertise and decisionmaking, disseminated through a hierarchy of management andworkers. Rather, administration and the academic staff tend to havedifferent roles, independent authority, low levels of standardization,and even different agendas. The name for the operational linkswithin such a structure is loosely coupling.


Weick:

Fifteen indicators of loosely coupling: slack times a variety of means produce the same end richly connected slow networks poor coordination reduced regulations planned unresponsiveness causal independence difficulty in observation infrequent checking within the system decentralization delegation of discretion absence of theoretically supposed linkages structures that do not map the actual activity resistance to change open entry to courses or units


Taking the concept of loosely coupled systems as a framework for research activities, the following brief examples of research questions can be given:

1.The persistence of loosely coupled education systems. The question can be raised in what ways and to what extent the state of loosely-coupledness is indeed a given for HEIs. Have HEIs become more tightly coupled as a result of NPM? Using Weick’s set of 15 indicators a sample of universities can be examined in order to assess their loosely-coupled nature, and the extent to which this is attempted to be changed.


2. The relationship of institutional leadership/management/administration with academic staff.

How does institutional management affect the motivation, involvement, commitment, and results of academic staff’s activities? A loosely coupled systems approach emphasizes the importance of the role of academic staff in HEIs. Much of the craft of teaching, e.g., is about teachers’ tacit knowing of ‘what works’ in a classroom situation (Evans 2001). Tacit knowing arises from the complex interplay between teachers’ experience, formal theory, culture, leadership style and HEI structures and possibly community contexts. It is unlikely that a central leader/manager, from a distance will have the depth of insight needed for identifying and imposing incentives to regulate micro-behavior of teachers.


2. The relationship of institutional leadership/management/administration with academic staff (cont.).

Yet the notion of steering teachers from a distance through incentives and other systems is exactly what the NPM approach stands for, thereby assuming that professional leaders/managers would be able to develop schools, i.e. traditionally loosely coupled systems, into tightly coupled systems. Evidence suggests that the latter does not happen in practice. What are the consequences? How do the tight hierarchical leadership/management practice and the loosely coupled teach (and research) practice relate in a university?


3. The role of information in improving staff effectiveness. Dinham and Scott (2000) suggest that provided that academic staff are expected to focus on (and provided with rich information about) progress towards desired social and individual outcomes, their intrinsic concern for student learning furnishes a powerful incentive to use that information for system improvement. Is information on student progress gathered and distributed in HEIs and if so, how? How are teachers stimulated to use information in the improvement of their teaching activities?


4. The effects of quantitative output tests. Lately performance of HEIs has become more emphasized in government steering, especially in the form of quantitative output standards/indicators. As a result performance has become counterfeit and more visible. Emphasizing short-term tangible outputs over longer term social and individual benefits can be expected to affect the teaching and research activities of HEIs, as is indicated, for example, by Lumley (1997, p. 19) “rewarding only quantitative results tends to drive the system back towards the “fabricative” pole and suppresses both creativity and organizational learning”. Do academic staff use longer term goals to structure and adapt their education and research activities, or do they focus the teaching/learning and research process on the realization of the short-term results?

public management: public sector reforms wrt higher education institutions peter maassen 14-03-2011

Documents

management reforms

public expenditure

generic management

management practice

potential of management

activity of public servants

quality of public services

private sector