Artikler

Indhold nr 1, årgang 11, 2008

Tema

Forvaltningspolitiske reformer: kontinuitet eller brud?

af Hanne Foss Hansen

Erhvervsministeriet i forandring

af Jørgen Rosted

New Public Management under ud- eller afvikling? Resultatbaseret styring i danske kommuner

af Andreas Østergaard Poulsen, Steffen Bohni Nielsen & Mads Sinding Jørgensen

Den transnationale dimension i dansk (kommunal) offentlig ledelse – om ’det udvidede ledelsesunivers’

af Dorte Salskov-Iversen

Systemisk evalueringsstyring: Potentialer og udfordringer

af Hanne Foss Hansen

What Difference do Governments Make?

af Anne Reff Pedersen & Gerry McGivern

Kommunikasjonsbetingelser og varsling i en endret offentlig sektor

af Sissel C. Trygstad & Marit Skivenes

Lean i Japan: New Public Management og Lean i offentlig administration

af Lau Blaxekjær & Jesper Schlæger

For 25 år siden søsatte Poul Schlüter-regeringen sit Moderniseringsprogram for den offentlige sektor. Det var startskuddet på store forandringer og omvæltninger i den danske forvaltning. Man kan med rette sige, at en forvaltningsreformbølge har været over os. En lang række styrings- og ledelsesredskaber fra den private sektor er blevet introduceret i den offentlige sektor og der er ligeledes sket en ’markedsgørelse’ af den offentlige serviceproduktion. Fællesnævneren for de mange tiltag er øget effektivitet og bedre kvalitet i den offentlige sektor. New Public Management (NPM) er den akademiske samlebetegnelse for de reformer, som har fundet sted. NPM startede som et neoliberalt projekt og vandt genklang i stort set alle OECD-landene på det tidspunkt. Efterfølgende blev reformerne videreført af Poul Nyrup Rasmussen og har vundet fornyet kraft under Anders Fogh Rasmussen-regeringen. I dag er der ingen tegn på, at reformerne i den offentlige sektor er gået i stå. Tværtimod er reformer af det offentlige fortsat højt på den forvaltningspolitiske dagsorden. Kvalitetsreformen er kun et eksempel blandt mange.

I dette temanummer af Tidsskriftet Politik lægger vi NPM på vægtskålen: Tiden er inde til en statusopgørelse. Hvordan har reformprocesserne udformet sig i Danmark? Hvad er resultaterne? NPM-reformer er i tidens løb blevet præsenteret som tiltag, der skulle forbedre den offentlige sektor og sikre dens fremtidige legitimitet. I de senere år er der imidlertid blevet stillet spørgsmålstegn ved reformernes hensigtsmæssighed. Hvor mange problemer har NPM-tiltag egentlig løst? Hvor mange problemer har de selv samme forvaltningsreformer medført? Vi spørger også: Hvor er vi på vej hen? Fortsætter vi på NPM-sporet eller er vi ved at skifte retning? Mens nogle forskere mener, at forvaltningen befinder sig i et post-NPM regime, proklamerer andre, at NPM allerede har set sit endeligt.

Bidragydere i dette nummer analyserer, om det er stadig sæson for NPM i Danmark. Artiklerne behandler både NPM’s rolle i dansk forvaltning samt reformernes konkrete værktøjer og implementering. Udenlandske erfaringer sætter de danske tiltag i perspektiv. I dette temanummer giver vi plads til forskere, embedsmænd og konsulenter, som giver deres svar på de spørgsmål.

 

 

 

 

Abstracts

 

Public Sector Reforms: Continuity or Discontinuity?

 

Hanne Foss Hansen, ph.d., professor, Institut for Statskundskab, Københavns Universitet

 

25 years ago the first public sector reform programme inspired by New Public Management (NPM) was born in Denmark. Since then reform programmes have been part of normal life in the development of the public sector. The article analyses the content of successive Governments’ reform programmes focusing on the relation between talk and action. In relation to talk the Danish programmes have been characterized by continuity. The move from talk to action has however to some extent been characterized by implementation slackness. In recent years action (but to a lesser degree talk) has been characterized by new reform elements inspired by international post-NPM thinking.

 

Kommentar: Erhvervsministeriet i forandring

 

Jørgen Rosted, Udviklingsdirektør, Erhvervs- og Boligstyrelsen

 

(Manchet)

I den følgende kommentar fortæller tidligere departementschef i Økonomi- og Erhvervsministeriet, Jørgen Rosted, sin personlige beretning om baggrunden for og resultatet af de reformer, der undergik ministeriet op igennem 1990’erne.

 

Is New Public Management evolving or unwinding? Results-based management in Danish local authorities

 

Andreas Østergaard Poulsen, Bac.scient.pol., Aarhus Universitet, Rambøll Management

Steffen Bohni Nielsen, Ph.d. i antropologi, Aarhus Universitet, Rambøll Management

Mads Sinding Jørgensen, Kandidatstuderende på Politik og Administration, Aalborg Universitet, Praktikant hos Rambøll Management under udarbejdelsen af nærværende artikel.

 

Coined as modernization of the public sector, the issue of management has been the focal point for administrative and institutional reform in the past decades. A core theme has been a new orientation towards managing for results as opposed to managing for budget or for outputs. One of the more recent branches of New Public Management has been results-based management. More recently, debates have centered on the demise of New Public Management; therefore the authors pose the question whether results-oriented management approaches are in decline or undergoing change. Using qualitative evidence, the authors explore the technical capability to manage for results in five frontrunner local governments.

 

The Transnational Dimension of Public Management in Danish Local Governments – On the ‘expanded universe in management’

 

Dorte Salskov-Iversen, lektor og institutleder, Institut for Interkulturel, Kommunikation og Ledelse, Copenhagen Business School

 

This article discusses the transnational dimension of (Danish) public management, in particular the way it can be observed in the world of local government. Specifically, it is concerned with transnational activities that public managers proactively initiate. It appears that an increasing number of local authorities today have ‘an international strategy’ which sets out how to engage the world beyond the national borders in order to further their local agenda. The article argues that this development is part and parcel of an emerging post-NPM rationality, which – without doing away with traditional NPM – rests on the imperative of continuous change. This in turn also requires sub-national government institutions and their managers to become inserted into the global (knowledge) economy, learning and sharing best practices, accessing new knowledge, managing their identity and reputation as they compete – worldwide - for attractive (corporate) citizens, investments, tourists and employees. Theoretically, the analysis is inspired by Foucault and the literatures of global governance and governmentality.

 

Systemic Evaluation for Control: Potentials and Challenges

 

Hanne Foss Hansen, ph.d., professor, Institut for Statskundskab, Københavns Universitet

 

The introduction of evaluation for control, defined as control systems building on systematic evaluation, has been and still is important in public sector reforms in Denmark. Evaluation for control is enacted in several ways. The article analyses how evaluation for control has developed from being introduced as a tool for development at the organisational level to becoming more systemic and regulating organisational competition in organisational fields. The article discusses the potentials of this, e.g. a strengthening of transparency and user’s influence, as well as the challenges, e.g. how to secure relevance of and confidence in evaluative information.

 

What Difference do Governments Make? New Public Management Reforms in British and Danish Health Care

 

Anne Reff Pedersen, Associate Professor at the Department of Organization (IOA), Centre for Health Management, Copenhagen Business School

Gerry McGivern, Dr. Research Fellow in the Centre for Public Service Organisations (CPSO), School of Management, Royal Holloway, University of London

 

Few studies have addressed the influence of political parties and elected governments on the development of NPM, particularly comparing different countries. We examine trends in NPM in the British and Dan¬ish national health services from the early 1980s until today. Despite the initially controversial neo-liberal political origins of NPM, both right and left-of-centre governments in both countries appear to have continued the same trajectory in terms decisions-making and rhetoric about NPM. Our contribution to recent NPM literature is a comparison between the development of NPM in the two countries’ health care reforms. Our aim is not to compare the impact of NPM, but to illustrate the historical development of NPM-ideology and its adoption into public services in both the UK and Denmark. We argue that there appears to be convergence in the way both left and right-of-centre governments talk and make decisions about NPM in both Denmark and the UK, suggesting that governments make little difference to trends affecting public services.

 

Kommunikasjonsbetingelser og varsling i en endret offentlig sektor

 

Sissel C. Trygstad, Dr. polit og forskningsleder ved Fafo, Institutt for arbeidslivs- og velferdsforskning

Marit Skivenes, Dr. Polit., Researcher Unifob Health, University of Bergen

 

Norwegian municipalities are to a large extent organized in accordance with New Public Management (NPM) principles. The paper explores the significance of communication, information and whistle-blowing in NPM both theoretically and empirically. We establish four criteria for ensuring reasonable communication in an organization; meeting places, openness, and mechanisms for making sure every employee have opportunities to express their opinion about topics concerning different aspects of an employee's role. We find that NPM has some structural weaknesses related to information streams, leader function, political leadership, meeting places and what roles employees can use. Looking into whistle-blowing data in Norwegian municipalities, we find that employees experience communication structures as good; however, there are tendencies that political leaders do not get sufficient information, that it's demanded high loyalty from leaders and employees. These tendencies can affect the employees’ willingness to use voice and the result can be silent organizations. We cannot identify a causal connection between NPM and results on communication in Norwegian municipalities, e.g. we do not have time series data from the period before NPM came in to use, but we find reasons to believe some of the negative tendencies are related.

 

Lean in Japan: New Public Management and Lean in public administration

 

Lau Blaxekjær, cand.scient.pol., MSc Asian Politics, NIAS – Nordisk Institut for Asienstudier

Jesper Schlæger, cand.scient.pol

 

Lean management was invented in Japan, but the Japanese public administration has not adopted it. In an attempt to understand why not, this article examines enabling and constraining factors applying a discoursive institutionalist perspective. The root explanation is hypothesised to be found at the cognitive ideational level. In conclusion, the article argues that the Japanese public administration has been able to resist Lean and other New Public Management tools as they do not present a fit with the existing institutional setup. Lean is thus shown to be reliant on the prevalence of an open organization and an institutionalised neoliberal paradigm for its application. In more general terms, also relevant for the Danish public administration, the analysis illustrates the context sensitivity of Lean management when used as a tool.