Managerialism in Local Government

Abstract

The manifestations of managerialism in State and Federal public services have been discussed by Considine (1990), Guthrie (1993), and Zifcak (1997). While this literature is often critical of managerialism the reasons for its apparent failure are examined in a limited way. This paper looks at managerialism in Victorian local government by examining the introduction and impact of program budgeting and performance indicators. Two issues are focused on in this paper: 1) the limited success of Planning Programming Budgeting (PPB) and performance indicators; 2) the reasons for their ineffectiveness. The data used in this paper were gathered and analysed for a larger project. All 210 councils in Victoria were sent a questionnaire, of which, 60% were completed and returned. The findings suggest that the introduction and development of PPB and performance indicators is dominated by management. The findings also indicate that these technologies have little impact on resource allocation or decision making, however, there does appear to be a greater emphasis placed on planning. It is argued that the limited success of the managerialist technologies can be attributed to the domination of management over the development and implementation process.