Administrative Leadership, Neo-Managerialism, and the Public Management Movement

Abstract

Scholars in the public community have used a collection of different approaches to advance the understanding of public management research and practice.(1) These approaches may be broadly classified as quantitative/analytic management, management, liberation management, and market-driven management. In recent years, liberation and market-driven management have emerged as the dominant approaches in the field. Consistent with arguments advanced by Kettl (1997) and others (Boston, Martin, Pallot, and Walsh, 1996), I assert that the managerialist ideology or managerialism (Enteman, 1993; Pollitt, 1990) as it is often called, underpins the various public management approaches. I also argue that a more sophisticated form of managerialism, described as neo-managerialism, is more prominent in both liberation and market-driven management. This neo-managerialism consists of an updated version of an older tradition embodied in the work of Frederick Winslow Taylor (Pollitt, 1990), as well as a complex mixture of public choice theory, agency theory, and transaction-cost economics (Boston, Martin, Pallott, and Walsh, 1996). I argue that neo-managerialism has a guiding influence on how public management scholars, especially proponents of liberation and market-driven management, perceive and conceptualize administrative leadership in the U.S. constitutional democracy. The peculiar type of administrative leadership cultivated and fostered by neo-managerialism is troublesome, especially when it is examined within the context of democratic governance.(2) This discussion begins with a brief review of different public management approaches advocated by scholars within the public community. Special attention is devoted to liberation and market-driven management because of their prominence in global governmental reform efforts. I argue that neo-managerialism is the guiding force behind both liberation and market-driven management. Next, I present an argument that neo-managerialism fosters and perpetuates a certain view of administrative leadership. This view is discussed and critiqued from the perspective of democratic accountability and its dominant behavioral assumptions. The article closes with a few brief comments on the implications of neo-managerialism for the study and practice of public administration. Approaches to Public Management The public management approaches mentioned above--quantitative/analytic management, management, liberation management, and market-driven management--are now discussed in more detail. Although somewhat crude, this broad classification scheme does allow us to make progress. Quantitative/analytic management has its intellectual roots in analysis and the discipline of economics. This approach, aggressively marketed by founding faculties of public programs (see Lynn, 1996), places a heavy emphasis on the strategic use of sophisticated analytic techniques such as forecasting and cost-benefit analysis, among others (see Elmore, 1986; Quigley and Scotchmer, 1989). Proponents of quantitative/analytic management assert that systematic analysis reduces uncertainty in the decision-making process, thereby enhancing the effectiveness and quality of executive decision-making in the realm of high policy (Lynn, 1996, 56). Such decision-making is said to make a difference in the success of public and public agencies. The next approach, management, focuses on the politics of public management. This approach rejects outright the politics/administration dichotomy. It assumes that public managers have a legitimate right to exercise power in the making process. During the early 1980s, management emerged as the public management approach of choice for faculty at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. According to Alasdair Roberts (1995), Kennedy School faculty members forcefully argued that a political and activist orientation distinguished public management from traditional public administration (293). …