Managerial reforms, Public Service Bargains and top civil servant identity

Abstract

In the past couple of decades, a wide range of managerial reforms have been witnessed in many OECD countries. These reforms may have significantly affected the identity of top civil servants. This change in identity may, in turn, have an impact on the performance of top officials, their roles, their views, their relations with political personnel and their expected competencies. Within a sample of countries (Belgium, Canada, Denmark, and the Netherlands) we explore these reforms, the changes that have occurred in top officials’ identity (personal, role and social) with document analysis and a series of interviews. We conclude that in all cases, regardless of the goals or the intensity of the reforms, there is now more individualization, more mobility, fixed-term contracts and more accountability. We did not find a full-blown managerial or any unambiguous evolution towards a pure managerial identity. Points for practitioners Managerial reforms certainly affect the relationships between politicians and top civil servants. Role perceptions of top civil servants are, depending on the context, more resistant to change than expected. Despite the omnipresent managerial discourse, the role of policy advisor remains very important. Corporate management designs tend to facilitate corporate identification, the type of employment relationship, contract and level of goals, thus affecting the social identity of top civil servants.