Strategies for management in the civil service: Change of direction

Abstract

‘Market testing’ has been hailed by the Government as an opportunity to bring enterprise into the management of the civil service. But what about the previous attempts to do that through setting up Executive Agencies? Should we assume that they should be consigned to the dustbin of failed government reforms? This article suggests that market testing is based on a fundamentally different approach to public management and speculates as to whether it has been introduced for reasons of career opportunism or because of a reasoned critique of what has been achieved through past approaches to management change. If there has been a reasoned critique, it has not been shared with the citizens of this country or their representatives in Parliament.