Character, Corrosion and the Civil Servant: The Human Consequences of Globalization and the New Public Management

Abstract

In The Corrosion of Character, Richard Sennett (1998) traces the effects of corporate reengineering, and similar reforms in private-sector management, on the individual worker. He argues that our drive for flexible, efficient business processes has produced a sense of detachment on the part of human actors and a disconnection between firms and society at-large. As such, the reform agenda has forced us to rethink our notions of work, organization and community. In light of the global trend toward public management reform, we may draw important parallels between Sennett’s image of the private sector and the experience of civil servants at the threshold of the twenty-first century. The transformation of government organizations, which in the vernacular of Reinventing Government and the New Public Management are characterized as excessively rule-bound, hierarchic and thus inflexible, has resulted in unintended, deleterious consequences for the public employee. We propose that the effort to break the routines of bureaucracy, create more flexible public organizations, and decentralize decision-making has removed crucial pillars from the foundation of public administration. For the individual, the practice of government has become disorienting. The ethic of service has been displaced by the persistent questfor change and values of commitment and consistency have been cast aside and replaced by the new norms of innovation and risk-taking. We also suggest that reinvention also has changed the system of power in public organizations. While the contemporary reform movement espouses empowerment of civil servants, the net result has been a centralization of control, albeit in entirely new forms.