Public Sector Restructuring Research Articles

Alternatives to Competitive Tendering and Privatisation: A Case Study from the Australian Health Industry

The international trend towards economic and financial management reforms is well documented with most governments now being involved in public sector restructuring programs, which have at their core the aim of improving the quality of administrative functions through a more responsive approach by state agencies (OECD 1996). In nations with administrative systems derived from British models these efforts may be generally referred to as ‘the de-Sir Humphreying of the Westminister model’ (Hood 1990:105). In essence this approach has had three aims. First, it has attempted to diminish the role of thestate and make the bureaucracy more responsive to political leaders. Second, it has aimed for greater efficiency through the use of private sector management techniques. Third, it has focused on the citizen as a customer and service recipient (Aucoin 1990:16).

Wo-managing Further Education; gender and the construction of the manager in the corporate colleges of England

This article suggests that alongside the seeming remasculinisation of UK further education management reported recently in Gender and Education, there is also a little-reported but prevalent feminisation of lower level managerial positions across this sector. To support this assertion the article draws on empirical work done by the Further Education Development Agency, and two interview-based studies of woman and men college 'managers'. Conceptually, the article draws on both labour process and post-structuralist understandings of feminisation. In general the article suggests that, as with public sector restructuring more generally, some limited recruitment of women to management posts is involved. In further education, such recruitment cannot be simply seen either as celebrating the proof of increasing equity between men and women in educational work, or of demonstrating the desire by women to secure career advancement. The article suggests that, as with the feminisation of other forms of work, this recruitment of women to middle level management posts is a key aspect of restructuring itself. In part it is suggested that women's previous 'outsider' positioning provides a basis for recruitment to such positions in the context of new job descriptions and tasks. Yet as well as taking on much of the new managerial work of the sector, often alongside heavy teaching loads, these postings also demand what is, for some women, a highly problematic loyalty to the commercial ethos of the corporate colleges.

Coercive Bargaining: Public Sector Restructuring under the Ontario Social Contract, 1993-1996

Economic restructuring, which is difficult to engineer even in the private sector, poses particularly serious challenges in highly unionized public sector environments. In 1993, the Ontario New Democratic Party government, which relied on labor support and was committed to collective bargaining, enacted the Contract, a bill that mandated spending reductions. The Social Contract has been widely criticized for failing to obtain a negotiated consensus between labor and management. This analysis of data from a survey of 1,225 employers finds, however, that the law, as administered, succeeded not only in preserving key elements of collective bargaining and an open and accountable relationship between management and labor, but also in giving those elements a positive role in economic restructuring. The authors conclude that creatively altering the collective bargaining process remains a viable economic restructuring policy option in jurisdictions with highly unionized public sectors.

Coercive Bargaining: Public Sector Restructuring under the Ontario Social Contract, 1993–1996

Economic restructuring, which is difficult to engineer even in the private sector, poses particularly serious challenges in highly unionized public sector environments. In 1993, the Ontario New Democratic Party government, which relied on labor support and was committed to collective bargaining, enacted the “Social Contract,” a bill that mandated spending reductions. The Social Contract has been widely criticized for failing to obtain a negotiated consensus between labor and management. This analysis of data from a survey of 1,225 employers finds, however, that the law, as administered, succeeded not only in preserving key elements of collective bargaining and an open and accountable relationship between management and labor, but also in giving those elements a positive role in economic restructuring. The authors conclude that creatively altering the collective bargaining process remains a viable economic restructuring policy option in jurisdictions with highly unionized public sectors.

Welfare-State Retrenchment Revisited: Entitlement Cuts, Public Sector Restructuring, and Inegalitarian Trends in Advanced Capitalist Societies

In recent years it has become commonplace for comparativists to emphasize the resilience of welfare states in advanced capitalist societies and the failure of neoliberal efforts to dismantle the welfare state. Challenging some tenets of the resilience thesis, this article seeks to broaden the discussion of welfare-state retrenchment. The authors argue that a sharp deceleration of social spending has occurred in most OECD countries since 1980, that welfare states have failed to offset the rise of market-generated inequality and insecurity, and that welfare programs have become less universalistic. They stress the distributive and political consequences of market-oriented reforms of the public sector.

Not-So-New Public Management and the Denial of Geography: Ontario Health-Care Reform in the 1990s

New public management (NPM) has become the mantra for public sector restructuring in OECD nations. We critically examine NPM in the context of recent public sector restructuring initiatives in the province of Ontario, Canada. Two NPM-inspired reform mechanisms employed by the Ontario government—the benchmarking of hospital-utilization indicators and the offloading of a greater share of patient-care responsibilities to the private sector—are examined as they impact on the economically disadvantaged city of Thunder Bay in the province's remote Northwestern region. We argue that the health reforms pursued by the Ontario government are focused on a one-dimensional notion of efficiency which denies important socioeconomic and health-service-environment dimensions that account for local differences in health-services utilization. Although this type of reform approach achieves short-term cost savings, we question whether the longer term effects on health and social services are efficient and equitable from a systemwide perspective. Ultimately, we question whether NPM will solve the problems inherent in publicly supported health and social services or will generate a new set of problems linked to the belief in the primacy of market mechanisms.

Gain and Pain: The Effects of Australian Public Sector Restructuring

Downsizing and delayering have been central aspects of organizational restructuring in recent years. However, most of the data are North American or European, leaving it unclear as to the extent of applicability of these practices in other areas. The article reports the results of a major survey of downsizing and delayering in the Australian public sector. Data are provided on their reported causes, objectives, and outcomes. The results suggest significant implications for the management of public sector organizations.

Health care reform. To integrate of deintegrate? Fitting public health into New Zealand's reforming health system

The relationship between public health and clinical medicine has been the subject of international debate. In New Zealand successive restructurings of the health sector have seen significant changes in this relationship and the status of public health. The paper traces these changes over a decade of public sector restructuring (1984–1993) and shows how public health policy and the purchasing and delivery of public health services have been subject to integration, deintegration and reintegration with clinical and treatment services. Some advantages flowed from integrating policy, purchasing and delivery, including a comprehensive approach to tackling problems through national health goals and targets. On the other hand, there is evidence that public health was financially disadvantaged by this association. A separate public health structure, set up in 1992 and led by an independent Public Health Commission, brought some benefits. These included a specific budget and a high profile for public health. It also created tensions between competing policy agencies, a fragmented purchasing system for public health and exposed public health to political interference. This led to the abolition of the Commission in 1995 and the reintegration of policy making at the national level and purchasing at the regional level. At the end of 1996 a new coalition government formally abandoned the commercial elements of its predecessor's health reforms. The new policy requires the main providers of hospital and related services, which continue to include public health, to focus on health gains for their defined populations. With the integration of policy and purchasing this should lead to the promotion of better integration at the service delivery level.

Problems of accountability in reinvented government: a case study of the Teacher Training Agency

This paper has as its focus the Teacher Training Agency (TTA), its structure and working practices. The Agency will be placed in context of the policy of ‘reinvented government’ which has been emerging in the UK over the last decade. Restructuring the organisational and administrative framework of public policy has given rise to issues concerning principles of accountability and representation. Such concerns are reflected in commentaries and evaluation of the TTA. In this sense, a central aim of the paper is to articulate the specifics of the TTA with the wider social policy literature which addresses the effects and democratic implications of public sector restructuring and the consequences for policy analysis.

Multi-track approach to public-sector restructuring in Europe: impact on employment relations; role of the trade unions

The article discusses a) restructuring trends in Europe's public sector (in an employment relations perspective), b) the response of the trade unions to this process, and c) the overall impact of these developments on employment relations in the sector. We present an analysis emphasising the differences in the regulatory systems applied to public-sector restructuring processes in the EU Member States, arguing that there are significant variations in the development dynamics in employment relations, and, further, that these dynamics can be traced to at least three different regulatory regimes. The first regime of the three posited regimes emerged from the unique pattern of development observed in the UK's public sector, featuring large-scale privatisation schemes, the introduction of elements of competition and new forms of management. The second type of regime is evident in the Nordic countries, in the Netherlands and - albeit in modified form - in Italy, characterised by a certain measure of restructuring of the public-sector labour market, and based largely on co-operation between public-sector employers and the trade unions. The third type of regime is represented by Germany and France, with their independent regulatory systems in which centralism and sets of rules are paramount, with very few changes in the general pattern of employment relations. While identifying the significant variations listed above, we also argue that a common trend is evident in the EU Member States: a trend towards centralised decentralisation of relations on the public-sector labour market. Our study suggests that, viewed in a broad West European perspective, decentralisation - despite the many attempts to achieve it and despite its adoption, in principle at least, by politicians and the social partners - has been on a modest scale. This is clearly evident if decentralisation is considered in relation to wage-development. The tight budgetary constraints felt by West European governments may well be the single deter mining factor in what can be regarded as rather rigid control, at centralised level, of the framework for wage development in Western Europe. Admittedly, collective agreements can be nego tiated and concluded at decentralised level - but preferably within the framework determined at centralised level.

Beyond ideology: the emerging roles of New Zealand's crown health enterprises.

New Zealand has experienced radical public sector restructuring over the last decade, including the corporatization and subsequent privatization of state trading units and the reform of social services, including health. In 1991 a new government proposed and then implemented more radical health reforms, which included the corporatization of state-owned provider units (23 crown health enterprises) and the creation of an internal market with purchasers (four regional health authorities) separated from providers. Interviews with chief executives of crown health enterprises suggest that provider units are seeking a wider role than envisaged, with an interest in the health needs of their populations and undertaking some purchasing on their behalf. The purchasers see a narrower role for crown health enterprises. Both purchasers and providers report that competition between providers is not particularly helpful (and with only limited opportunities for this to occur), with collaboration being seen as more useful. Providers are critical of purchasers ability to adopt a strategic approach. Unlike other aspects of New Zealand's restructuring, there appears to be a retreat from some of the more radical facets of the reforms, reflecting both the resistance of the health sector and a newly uncertain political climate.

Local agenda 21, compulsory competitive tendering and local environmental practices

Abstract This paper focuses on the issues arising from Local Agenda 21 where the role of local authorities is seen as vital in promoting and achieving sustainable development. The implications of the current forms of public sector restructuring for local authorities, and in particular the consequences of the requirement to contract out the delivery and management of traditional environmental services such as grounds maintenance are considered. The paper concludes that the ongoing processes of local government restructuring, together with the removal of many functions from local democratic control, are reducing the capacity of local communities to respond positively to the demands of Local Agenda 21.

Managerial Discourse and the Restructuring of a District Authority

This paper arises out of continuing debates on the class position of managers and professionals in the context of public sector restructuring. Recently, attention has been focused on the self-sustaining and autonomous character of ‘professionalism’ in organisational dynamics. Such an approach underplays the cultural significance of managerial discourse as this is active in the reconstitution of professional work. In a case study of a district authority it is possible to highlight the complex nature of managerial discourse in its relations to both central and local government. This relation is above all mediated by shifting conceptions of public service on the part of managers and those in non-managerial positions. The paper concludes that due to the structural constraints under which local authorities operate directly managerial discourse is becoming increasingly significant in the reconstitution of professional and semi-professional identities.

When the pieces don't fit: A stakeholder power matrix to analyse public sector restructuring

This article provides a broad overview of the changes taking place in public service organization and presents a model for investigating these changes. The analysis focuses on the concept of stakeholder power. The approach described provides insights which will increase understanding of these changes, and will help in identifying and resolving problems in practice.

The management of tertiary educational institutions in New Zealand

Abstract It is argued that, as a result of recent restructuring, the state in New Zealand has paradoxically become minimalized as well as more powerful and pervasive. This paper presents public sector restructuring as the policy context of the reforms and neo‐liberalism as the critique of state reason that has been used to explain the reduction of the state in terms of the numbers of people it employs and the scope of its direct control. Reforms to tertiary education are seen to follow the restructuring of the core public sector. Michel Foucault's (1991a) notion of governmentality, it is argued, is a powerful critique of neo‐liberalism through focusing on practices rather than theories of state. One element of the reforms to tertiary education ‐ the practices of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) ‐ is presented as a counter instance of neo‐liberalism. The account of the governmental practices of NZQA illustrate that neo‐liberalism is an inadequate account of state reason because it cannot explain the increasing power and pervasiveness of the state. The paper concludes that the practcies of management of tertiary educational institutions under these conditions are seen as a useful agenda for further research.

GOVERNMENTAL ACCOUNTING IN TRANSITION: THE POLISH EXPERIENCE

Poland belongs to the group of countries undergoing a unique process of transition from centrally controlled to a market-based economy. This paper provides an overview of the background of changes as well as already effected reshaping of governmental accounting involved in the restructuring processes which were extremely accelerated in 1989. It also gives a brief outline of public sector restructuring, discusses changes in accounting regulations and generally binding accounting principles, and presents budgetary accounting systems, including plans of accounts and the question of accountability. Furthermore, fixed assets valuation in the context of privatisation has been examined briefly, and the project of new accounting regulations has been described. Finally, the paper presents controversy over accounting restructuring in Poland.

Human capital theory and the industry training strategy in New Zealand

This paper begins with the assertion that the regime of ‘perpetual training” (Deleuze 1992) will become the new regime and system which now motivates and integrates education and industry in the western world. This notion is located in the national industry training strategy for New Zealand. The first section serves to provide the policy context, focusing on public sector restructuring and the significance of the Employment Contracts Act (1991). The industry training strategy is outlined and described in some detail within the main body of the paper. This strategy is explained in terms of the underlying human capital theory, in particular, with reference to a recent OECD survey of New Zealand's economy and in terms of general workplace reform. The paper then addresses the problems inherent in human capital theory and the way it legitimizes present Government policy in education and training. Human capital theory is the most influential economic theory of education, setting the framework of government poli...