Public Management and Administration - Owen E.hughes

278 Public Management and Administration
In Australia in 1988, the then Secretary of Finance, Michael Keating,
a strong advocate of managerial change, argued that ‘at the extreme there is
even some outright opposition to the reforms although, interestingly, much of
this comes from people in universities who are not directly involved’ (Keating,
1988, p. 123). Although the claim was disputed by Nethercote (1989) there is
at least a perception of a gap between public administration academics and practitioners,
which is worrying by itself. A similar concern was noted in the United
Kingdom with public administration academics uncritical of the old system but
highly critical, in the eyes of the government, of the new (Jordan, 1997). Most criticism
of the managerial model, in other countries as well, has, in fact, come from
academics, mainly those involved in liberal arts training within the universities.
More recently Jones, Guthrie and Steane argued (2001, pp. 23–4):
Critics of NPM appear to outnumber advocates in academe, if not in the practitioner environment.
Some of this may be related to the fact that academics face professional and
career incentives to find fault rather than to extol success … Some criticism may derive
from the fact that it is perceived to draw conceptually too strongly from a ‘business
school/private sector management’ perspective. This conceptual framework threatens the
foundations of much of what is believed to be gospel and is taught about government and
public–private sector relationships to students in public administration programmes, in
political science and related disciplines.
This raises a question as to the extent to which public administration academics
have been out of touch with practice, when, as Borins argues, new public
management ‘is very much a practitioners’ movement, with initiatives being
undertaken all over the world’ (1997, p. 67).
Many within universities were also disadvantaged by the changes. With the
advent of managerialism, there has been a shift away from liberal arts-based
training towards economics and management, which has doubtless been followed
by a shift in resources both from outside and within the university system.
The demand side from government and public services has certainly
shifted towards skills in economics or general management, often without
attention being paid to the special requirements of government work. In the dispute
over managerialism occurring in several countries, public administration
academics are in some danger of becoming irrelevant.
Recent years have seen a number of new journals set up with ‘public management’
in their titles; more books refer to public management in their titles,
fewer delegates go to public administration conferences, while the most venerable
of the public administration journals have been the main venues for articles
critical of the new public management.
Kuhn argues that the passing of paradigms is a generational matter, where
those socialized in the earlier paradigm do not accept a new one but eventually
fade away with the advancing years (1970, pp. 18–19):
When, in the development of a natural science, an individual or group first produces a
synthesis able to attract most of the next generation’s practitioners, the older schools