The impact on officials of public sector restructuring

Abstract

There has been limited examination of the impact of public sector restructuring on affected officials. This paper seeks to address the imbalance. It discusses the case of the New Zealand Health Funding Authority, dissolved and merged in 2000 as part of a major health sector restructuring programme. The paper overviews literature on change management and organisational mergers, outlines New Zealand's succession of public health sector changes through the 1990s, and details the procedures involved in the health funding authority restructuring. The impact on senior health funding authority staff and their impressions of the change process studied through the lens of a survey conducted in August 2000 are discussed, along with lessons from the New Zealand case.