Public Management and Administration - Owen E.hughes

most basic beliefs of the traditional model. They began to hire economists or
people trained in management instead of generalist administrators, borrowed
management techniques from the private sector, pushed back the dividing line
between public and private sector activity with the aim of cutting costs, and set
out to change working conditions inside the system which were no longer
required. Governments were faced with declining real revenue, but with political
demands to maintain services at the same levels. In these circumstances,
the only avenue was to improve productivity. When theories suggest that
bureaucratic provision is inherently inefficient, when economic studies show
the same thing, it is little wonder that politicians began to ask awkward questions.
Why should public servants have permanent, lifetime employment when
no one else does; why should they not be hired by contracts? If someone is
employed to do a job, what is so wrong in seeing if it is being carried out? The
public services had lost public support to such an extent that governments
found little resistance to changes that would have once been regarded as
destroying the very notion of a public service. And, once change began, the
various aspects of the traditional model of administration were taken apart.
The managerial programme
Public Management 51
There are various ideas of what is involved in the public management reforms.
However, as the process has continued there has been convergence as to what
is involved in the reforms. This can be seen by looking at several views of
them.
The first of these was formulated by the OECD, which claimed in 1991, that
most countries are following ‘two broad avenues’ to improve production and
delivery of publicly provided goods and services (OECD, 1991, p. 11). The
first was:
Raise the production performance of public organizations [to] improve the management
of human resources including staff, development, recruitment of qualified talent and payfor-performance;
involve staff more in decision-making and management; relax administrative
controls while imposing strict performance targets; use information technology;
improve feedback from clients and stress service quality; bring supply and demand decisions
together (e.g. through charging users).
This ‘avenue’ is aimed mainly inside the organization to improve incentives for
individuals, measure performance and the like, as well as improve the relationship
with clients. It is concerned with how the public organization is managed.
The second ‘avenue’ is:
Make greater use of the private sector [to] promote a dependable, efficient, competitive
and open public procurement system for contracting out production of publicly provided
goods and services and contracting in intermediate goods and services; and, end monopoly
or other protection for suppliers.