THE AMBIGUITY OF RESULTS:
ASSESSEMENTS OF THE NEW PUBLIC MANAGEMENT(1)
B. Douglas Skelley
Department of
Political Science
James Madison
University
This
article embraces Guy Peters’ suggestion that those assessing organizational
reform must distinguish between the theories of reform used by organizational
members and the theories of reform used by social scientists in their efforts
to understand reform phenomena. An
examination of the findings of recent assessments of the New Public Management
is guided by Peters’ categories of reform models. This study concludes that the institutional perspective may offer
the most promise in understanding the ambiguous results of these appraisals. This ambiguity, however, should be neither
surprising nor dismaying, for reforms are likely to have cumulative effects
that make managerial and institutional differences over time.
The
public sectors of the developed world have undergone a remarkable two decades
of public management reform(2) variously labeled “the New Public
Management,” “managerialism,” and “reinventing government.” This reform movement has been most extensive
in the Anglo-American democracies, but significant efforts to change public
management practice on the European continent and in the most developed states
of Asia have also been undertaken (Peters
and Savoie, 1998; Kettl, 2000; Politt and Bouckaert, 2000). The current new public management (NPM)
movement is wedded to substituting business management and market mechanisms,
“good things,” for “evil and failing” government bureaucracy. Reform prescriptions are by their nature
normative, even when they rely on empirically established principles of
structure or behavior. Such reforms may
be guided by good science, ideological commitment, or both. To better understand reform as an
organizational phenomenon, researchers need theoretical tools that distance
them from prescriptions and aid in explaining the kind of phenomena that public
management reform may represent.
Similarly,
the literature assessing reform efforts such as the NPM needs to be read from
such a perspective. As Peters (1994) observes, in order to understand
reform as an organizational phenomenon “we will need to be extremely careful to
distinguish the theories (implicit or explicit) that have guided practitioners
who constructed the reorganizations from those theories which political
scientists and other organizational analysts have utilized in their attempts to
understand, ex post facto, the changes imposed” (Peters, 1994, p. 166). Barzelay (2001) draws a similar distinction between the study of the
“political and organizational processes” of making “public management policy”
and the “substantive analysis of public management policy” (pp. 157-158).
This
paper examines the perspectives and findings of three recent examples of an
emerging literature that appraises the effects of the global NPM movement. This
critique uses categories of reform models, proposed by Peters (1994), to inspect the tools of assessment
used by their authors and to draw conclusions about the ambiguity of results
found in the assessment literature under review. Peters’ approach is used here because it takes a comprehensive
view of reform theories while categorizing and evaluating these as political
and organizational processes rather than opportunities for prescription. The
paper also reflects on Peters’ categories as a basis for furthering study of
reform and the significance of the ambiguity of these results.
Reviewing
the literature on reform theories, Peters (1994)
identified three useful categories of reform models that can assist in the
interpretation of recent reforms installed in the developed world (see Exhibit
1 below). The first set of models he
dubs “purposive.” Essentially these
reform theories are endogenous to the organization in objective and
guidance. Leaders may perceive a “need”
for change and seek pragmatically to adjust structures and procedures to
satisfy this need. Theory here may be
implicit in leadership’s choice of a solution, as it is, for example, in the
effort to “straighten out” the public sector by having it imitate aspects of
the private sector. In its more extreme
form such managerialism assumes that the problems of bureaucracy arise largely
from bad management, not bad constitutions, policy or programs. Another
purposive slant is the economic view that the utilities of bureaucratic
officials motivate bureaucratic behavior, and these must be manipulated by
incentives to effect desired change. Change decisions associated with the
purposive models stem from rationalistic analyses of problems that lead to
optimized solutions. Peters concludes
that remedies “may be related to common ideological and/or professional beliefs
about good government and good administration, but there will be a basic belief
that the actors in government themselves are central to identification,
selection, and implementation of administrative changes” (p. 170).
Peters’
second set of models embraces those approaches to reform that depend on
environmental change. Although the type
of environment may be conceptualized in different ways, all rest on the belief
that “over time structures adapt, or perhaps whole groups of structures adapt,
to the environment and construct patterns of organizations that are functional
for the fulfillment of their collective goals” (P. 171). This
interpretation suggests that organizational history is necessarily
efficient. Environmental approaches may
take several forms: (1) government
creates new organizations to exploit economic or technological innovations in
its environment; (2) over time the structures of organizations come to reflect
the tasks posed by their environments; and (3) the nature of a type of
organization is best discovered by looking at a “population of similar
organizations.” Organizations seek
their niches, Peters says, and the effect of the environment on their behavior
can be seen as learning. Where
“populations” are concerned, it is collective learning (p. 175).
The
third category of models identified by Peters is institutional in nature. Institutional models take a collective
perspective rather than an individual one.
The institutional approach explains behavior in terms of organizational
history, members’ shared values, as well as rules and practices. “Rather than requiring only the wishes of an
organizational leader, or significant changes in the environment, to occur
reform in this mode of analysis requires to some extent altering the internal
values of the organization. It
therefore requires modifying the operative values of organizational members as
well" (p. 176). Although this
point of view is similar to that of organizational culture, the mutability of
an institution is constrained by the inertia of the constitutive beliefs,
relationships, and processes of its members.
“Once a successful pattern of functioning is established, it becomes
difficult for an organization (institution) to reform itself” (p. 177). Not only may reformers of organizations be faced with
intransigence, but the outcome of change may prove unpredictable, dispelling
any idea of “the efficiency of history” or “positive developmental aspects of
organizational responses” (p.177). Reform action is expected to have
unanticipated consequences. Institutionalism, moreover, accommodates the notion
that reform may be largely a political event, not a managerial one.
Exhibit
1 summarizes Peters’ categories and the characteristics of the theories they
classify. These categories should not be taken uncritically. Undoubtedly they reflect Peters’ own concern
with issues of structure, process and their relevance for governance (see Peters, 2001) as well as his
|
Purposive
Models |
1. Leaders identify need for change, type of
reform, direct implementation. 2. Reforms are endogenous in objective and
guidance. 3. Reforms are guided by either implicit or
explicit theory, commonly managerialism and/or economic theory of individual
incentives. 4. Reforms reflect rational analyses with
optimized solutions. |
|
Environmental
Dependency Models |
1. Organizational change or reform
constitutes adaptation to environmental factors by a.
exploiting economic or technological innovations in the environment; b.
structures coming to reflect environmentally imposed tasks; c.
finding niches where they can survive. 2. Historical efficiency is at work in the
adaptive process. |
|
Institutional
Models
|
1. Organizations are collectives that reflect
history, shared values, norms and rules. 2. Change requires altering internal
organizational values and, therefore, members’ operative values. 3. Organizational mutability is constrained
by constitutive beliefs, relationships, and process. 4. Outcomes of reform are unpredictable. 5. Reform leads to unintended consequences. |
(Adapted from Peters, 1994)
interest in
institutional theory as an approach for examining the behavior of governmental
organizations (see Peters, 1999). Exhibit 1 reflects his considerable
compression of a range of theoretical ideas into the purposive category. The other categories contain more distinct,
more narrowly drawn theories although they have their own variants. Peters’ approach gives emphasis to “new”
institutional theory and offers up environmental dependency somewhat as a straw
man. That said, the institutional view bridges the gap of explanation between
internal causes and external causes. On
the one hand, organizations do attempt to adapt, as suggested by the environmental
dependency perspective, but members come to hold views of their work and the
environment that are conditioned by the way the organization has done business
in the past. Organizational leaders and
members respond to new and unexpected demands and threats from established
assumptions reinforced by existing structure, processes, and experiences.
Peters favors the institutional interpretation largely because it fits
government organizations and the complexity of reform events in them so well. While the institutional perspective suffers
limitations regarding what is cause and what is effect in organizations, it
accommodates complexity and particularly provides an understanding of ambiguity
in outcomes, which is useful to this analysis.
Three assessments of the public
management reform movement in developed nations have recently appeared (Kettl, 2000; Peters and Savoie, 1998;
Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2000).
Whereas one of these works, Kettl’s reduces NPM to two models and
evaluates them in a mere eighty-six pages, another, Peters and Savoie’s edited
volume, requires 417 pages to address a broader range of issues. Pollitt and Boukaert’s study offers a
comparative analysis of reform in ten countries. Despite their diversity in size, style, and analytical approach,
remarkable similarities are found among the conclusions of these studies: (1)
the NPM ideology has taken hold, to varying degrees, in most developed
countries prompting efforts at reform; (2) the efforts at reform, in some cases
have been comprehensive and in others selective; (3) some of these reforms have
been successful in their own terms; (4) nonetheless, it is often difficult for
reform results to equal unambiguously their promise; and (5) in any case, overall
results are indeterminable.
Kettl’s (2000) spare volume claims a global perspective, but largely pits
the Westminster model of reform, exemplified by the New Zealand experience,
against the National Performance Review (later National Partnership for Reinventing
Government) model in the United States.
While pointing to some “hard” measures such as changes in government
employee pay and citizens’ opinions of government performance, Kettl must admit
that “any assessment of the global reform movement is ultimately unsatisfying” (p. 57). As we might expect, he observes
that administrative form and action is wrapped up in political decision-making.
Similarly, Savoie (1998) asserts that
there are valuable lessons learned from the reform experience, “but beyond
that, it is difficult to be certain about anything” (p. 394). Pollitt and Bouckaert (2000,
Chapter 5) provide considerable comparative measurement among ten countries
that have embraced, to some degree, the ideology of management reform to. They conclude, however, that the
applications of various models of reform are “only occasionally backed up by
results data, and, when they are, the attribution of effects is usually
disputable” (p. 133). These analysts, too, recognize the
“contentious” relationship between politics and administration which
contributes to the paradox of “freeing managers to manage,” on the one hand,
and controlling them through “accountability by results” and “citizen
ownership,” on the other (Chapter 6). What are we to make of the uncertainty of
such assessments and the political nature of reform? Is there a theoretical framework of reform that can
accommodate—even explain—the ambiguity of such evidence and the political
nature of reform?
Kettl’s (2000) assessment attributes the impetus for the Westminster-style
reforms in New Zealand to environmental causes. Largely there are economic in nature. The extensive and expanding New Zealand welfare state appears to
have reached its limits in the 1980s when competition from Pacific Rim economies
and declining agricultural exports to the United Kingdom caused economic
stagnation and inflation (p. 8). The cost of welfare state appeared to be too
much, and dependency on the world economy forced a rethinking of policies and
the mechanism for delivering them. To this end change can be seen as adaptation
to environmental factors. To discover
the efficiency of this adaptation, however, more time may be required to
ascertain to what degree environmental forces have been at play. Government surely did act, if Kettl is
correct, to exploit economic innovations (e.g., accrual accounting). Thus there is considerable evidence that
“environmental dependency” may explain the impetus for reform, but does it explain
the shape and nature of reform itself?
Be that as it may, Kettl’s
assessment clearly reflects the purposive model in his account of New Zealand’s
reforms: “They resulted from a
carefully thought-out plan of what the reformers wanted to do and how they could
accomplish it. The New Zealand reforms
began with a top-down approach . . . .” (p.
8). The object of the reform wasn’t
the environment that had made the economy go sour; rather, it arose
endogenously as a need for changes in policy regarding what government should
do and how it should go about doing it.
Leadership’s reform decisions were distinctly neoliberal with “a
commitment to competition, a belief in using market processes to shape the
incentives of government employees, and an approach to reform heavily shaped by
new institutional economic theories” (p.
8). This belief in the efficacy of the market mechanism was coupled with
“management reform ideas borrowed from the private sector” (p. 9). The use of planning
and results-based control mechanisms reflect both the managerial and rationalistic
aspects of the New Zealand approach.
Kettl’s
assessment recognizes that the thrust of the New Zealand reforms were to reduce
government and change the way it does business. As these changes affect values, norms, and rules in governmental
structures, they have an institutional impact.
Yet, Kettl seems to suggest that the effect has been more “instrumental”
than “constitutive,” to use Cook’s (1996)
terminology. As yet it may be too soon to assess the instrumental impact of
these reforms.
The
American NPR, Kettl’s contrast to the New Zealand model, can be seen as having
strong purposive characteristics.
Leaders Clinton and Gore embraced the need for “reinvention” articulated
by Osborne and Gaebler (1992) and
attempt to implement some of the reforms indicated by them. These reforms employ managerialism and
market mechanisms. From the perspective
of Osborne and Gaebler, the reform received its stimulus from organizational
disfunction within government, which fits the purposive scheme. At the same time, environmental dependency,
in its most general sense, comes to bear:
the large debt generated by the Republicans along with a declining
dollar abroad, complicated by the recession of the late 1980s and early 1990s,
make government appear more expensive than ever and reinforce the popular
American belief that government is too big.
In
many ways, though, Kettl’s (2000) appraisal suggests institutional change. There were relevant and influential
environmental, political and economic factors that created circumstances for
reform. In addition, Kettl
observes,”[A]merica’s sweeping reforms touched more parts of government more
quickly than the reforms elsewhere. On
the other hand because of the political conflict it engendered, the reforms
focused on changing bureaucrats’ behavior rather than transforming the
fundamental fiber of government’s structure and process”(p. 5). Structure and
processes weren’t attacked, but attitudes about how to manage were. Kettl concludes, “Six years of reinvention left
the federal government about the same size in scope and scale” (p. 32). But it devolved some responsibilities to state and local
government, while making the federal government function better. “American reforms are perhaps most
distinctive for their integration of governance deeply into the very fabric of
civil society” (P. 65). From Kettl’s perspective American reforms
have had a constitutive, institutional effect on U.S. governments, more so
perhaps, than in New Zealand.
Peters and Savoie’s (1998) Taking Stock brings together the
work of a number of analysts whose assessments of various aspects of NPM
reforms fall into several of the model categories. Some aspect of almost all these appraisals reflect the three
theory categories, but the purpose here is to find which they satisfy
most. Of the chapters in this volume
Peters’ (1998) is largely
philosophical regarding the nature of reform and managerialism
specifically. The other articles assay
reform and reform processes. Several,
Ingraham’s (1998), Rainey’s (1998) and Caiden’s (1998), reflect the purposive approach, focusing on reform
practices and policies affecting budgeting and human resource management. Ingraham addresses managerialist issues
concerning the higher civil service and identifies three models of the higher
civil service that states may employ in the future. Using an organizational change model for personnel systems,
Rainey compares the NPR personnel reforms to this model to discover their
likely success. Caiden finds reform governments
trying to contain expenditures, largely brought on, she believes, by expansive
policies and process flaws, through new management processes.
The notion of environmental
dependency matches the thrusts of other assessments in this collection. Pierre (1998),
looking at citizen participation in the policy process, asserts that “trends
and developments beyond national political control have seriously challenged
these [existing representative] systems” (p.
137). For Pierre these challenges
consist of increasing political, institutional, and policy-oriented (technical)
complexities (p. 143). NPM is a response to these challenges, and
it “has prompted—or at least encouraged—experimentation with new models of
citizen participation (p. 158). Paquin’s (1998)
study of innovation is a less obvious fit into the environmental-dependent
category. Because Paquin discusses
reforms drawn from the private sector or the practices of other states and
promulgated as “solutions” in the public sector, they appear to fit Peters’
second category. “Thus waves of reform
appear,” says Paquin, “and reach administrations at every level: local, state or provincial, and national. Managers therefore have no choice to change the way they operate" (emphasis added; pp. 221-222). Compelled
by environmental forces, innovations, tested elsewhere, are adopted.
Finally, the institutional
perspective appears to guide the remaining studies in the book. As Peters (1994) observes, his institutional category overlaps the previous
one in that the institution’s relationship with the environment serves as a
primary analytical tool.
Institutionalism also accepts the notion that reform may be pragmatic
and rational in form as well as endogenous in origin, but institutionalism is
not so optimistic about the effects of change, which may be unpredictable and
can create unintended consequences.
This last group of assessments addresses values, roles, and
structures. All recognize that
significant environmental influences have impinged on the administrative
systems of advanced countries, and that these institutions are under pressure
from reasserted neoliberal values to shift roles and restructure
themselves. These works find signs that
this value shift is going on to some degree and that change is occurring even
if its effects on service and citizens remain uncertain. The pieces by Aucoin (1998), de Montricher (1998),
Pollitt (1998), and Thomas (1998) speak directly to the ideological
shift that has swept the developed world and points to evidence, such as
devolution, decentralization, customer service practices, and privatization
that have become accepted practice among national bureaucracies. Although all the writers question the
coherence and assumptions of NPM, they admit that these ideas have penetrated
public sectors rapidly and have become part of the parlance of everyday
work. Thomas’ (1998) discussion of accountability and the revision of
accountability processes focuses on a central constitutive value of the public
service as well.
Pollitt
and Bouckaert’s (2000) ambitious
comparative assessment, appraising ten governments’ reform activities, is
avowedly institutional in its approach: “we find that institutionalist
explanations carry considerable power. . . . We are probably closer to a mildly
constructivist historical institutionalism . . .” (p. 22). This
institutionalism evidences itself in the authors’ model of public management
reform where socio-economic and political events in the environment of the
administrative system dictated and determined the nature of reform. A major feature of their analysis attempts
to discover how the contextual characteristics of different
“politico-administrative regime types” might account for the nature of reforms
within them. They trace the “trajectories”
(chain of implementing events) that connect the initial situation to be
reformed with the anticipated future.
They find a pattern suggesting “that there are some usually-continuing
broad differences between different groups of countries” which can be related
to politico-administrative regime types (p.
96). As for results, they find that
“what you look for is what you see” (p.
129). This pattern-finding and
regime-typing is typical of the institutional approach as is their
identification of tensions in the reform ideology that result philosophically
and practically in contradictions and paradoxes. Pollitt and Bouckaert see much of the reform effort as an
exercise in rhetoric intended to reassure publics and inspire some
changes: “The pressure, the rhetoric,
the loosening of the old ways—all these have combined to give many public servants the opportunity to make
changes which make local sense to them”
(p. 191; emphasis in the original).
The application of Peters’ (1994) typology helps make sense of
reform assessments, but it also has its limitations. His models offer objective perspectives from which to examine
such evaluations as well as the reforms themselves. The impetus for reform may be explained purposively in endogenous
terms by leadership. The evaluator may
accept these terms at face value or may look beyond the
political-administrative system for the factors that trigger reform. As we have seen, few evaluators and few
leaders are likely to simply dwell on internal weaknesses of structure and
process, although these may be the objects of attack. Their inappropriateness is usually attributable to their
inability to cope with change, which may be internal or external to the
political-administrative one, and economic factors are particularly significant
here. This is not to say that purposive
leaders are likely to talk in terms of “adaptation,” but some evaluators are
inclined to use this interpretation.
Knowing whether an adaptation is efficient, in the sense that it will
sustain the political-administrative system over a considerable period of time,
requires a longer time span, perhaps, than the fifteen or so years in which
some systems have been implementing NPM reforms.
While the environmental dependency
model can be used to “explain” reform, there are problems deciding which system
or subsystem is dependent and adapting.
Is it just a national bureaucracy that is adapting or is it the
political institutions as well as the bureaucracy that are adapting? Are the environmental pressures coming from
within the state or without the state or both?
Where do we draw the line for causal assessment?
How are we to know, moreover, that
“authoritative decision-makers” are being pushed toward the best adaptation? When looking at leader’s motives, how do we
know whether they are prompted endogenously or by a greater environmental
context or both? A significant problem
with the dependency approaches is that all successful change over time may be
attributed to niche finding and environmental pressures, and all unsuccessful
change can be seen as a learning experience in the search for an optimum
adaptation. Both perspectives assume
that theories of reform have fairly predictable consequences, which is a questionable
assumption.
The institutional explanation is
useful to both reformers and appraisers.
Institutional theories alert reformers to barriers thrown up against
change and the prospects for easy success. Reformers must contend with institutional
inertia that confronts them when they seek to change familiar patters of
interaction, norms, written rules of work, symbols of organizational identity,
and access for client and constituency groups. Intentional change commonly
involves more than a change in behavior among a few members. By definition
reform is sweeping in scope and likely to bring into question prized values and
ways of getting things done associated with an organization. Surely this is true where NPM is
concerned. It challenges the modus operandi
of the welfare state built up over a century.
It attempts to install in the place of welfare-state assumptions an
eclectic set of reforms largely supported by neoliberal values.
Institutional
theory also alerts reformers to the prospect that intentional change may
generate unintended outcomes for the political-administrative system as well as
the broader society. Reforms, like
programs in general, are hypotheses to be tested. Experience with a set of techniques in the private sector, in the
market, does not necessarily predict the effect of these reforms in the public
sector context. The institutional point
of view, moreover, should remind reformers of reform’s political nature, and
that politics directs reform actions toward more than avowed goals of
efficiency and effectiveness. Rather, reforms are initiated to secure political
power as well. It is this political
nature of reform, as Brunsson (1998)
has shown, that typically leads to disappointment in reform results. Reforms, while addressing the “action”
mechanism of institutions in the name of efficiency and effectiveness, are
largely intended for the consumption of the many contending forces in the
environments of political-administrative systems. They may create a tone within organizations that encourage
change, but change, if Brunsson is correct, is unlikely to be abrupt and
successful.
The
use of the institutional model may lead to more effective assessments of reform
efforts by providing a comprehensive analytical framework that makes sense of
the reforms and their effects both within and without the
political-administrative system. Simply
looking at individual initiatives and managerialist changes ignores the greater
organizational context of change.
Restricting an analysis to the purposive perspective limits the
appraiser’s ability to judge the intervening “institutional” variable at play
in the reform situation and the full impact of an attempted reform. As we have
seen the environmental dependency model expands the list of explanatory
variables, but suggests an unwarranted determinism that belies the conclusion
of reform success. There is considerable evidence that “historical efficiency”
is a specious notion (March, 1999).
Pollitt and Bouckaert’s (2000)
institutional approach is particularly revealing because it begins from a rich
theoretical perspective that identifies organizationally significant variables,
guides the analysis, categorizes the findings, and makes meaningful the
conclusions.
Peters and Savoie (1998), Kettl (2000) as well as Pollitt and Bouckaert (2000) find that the NPM ideology has taken hold to varying degrees
in most developed countries. Proponents
of the new institutionalism would not find this interpretation surprising on
two counts. First, public organizations
have their political sides. They must
present themselves as addressing the concerns of their constituencies and
clients. One way to address many
concerns and maintain legitimacy with environmental actors is to appear to be
progressive or modern (Brunsson and
Olsen, 1993a; Forssell, 1993). One
way to do this is to be “fashionable” (Brunsson,
1993b; Czarniawska and Joerges, 1989). The NPM can be seen as a modern
idea, even though most of its content has been around for some time and are
modulations on existing practices. The
fact that Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, dynamic and successful, became
leader-symbols of the shift to neoliberaism made NPM highly attractive. Second, as observed in all three works under
review here, Anglo-American countries were more open to acceptance of NPM and
embraced it more fully than Continental and Asian regimes. Since the NPM fashion is founded in liberal
assumptions, it is not surprising that institutions in the British liberal
tradition should prove hospitable to its development and growth. Elements of organizational culture
supportive of this view were already in place by virtue of this tradition. Thus the reforms have tended to be more
comprehensive in these countries than in others.
Some reforms appear successful in
their own terms to their evaluators.
First, reforms often belong more to the world of ideas than to the world
of action, and they are often successful in the world of ideas as opposed to
the practical world (Brunsson and Olsen,
1993b). Second, reforms may change
the perception of actors in an organization’s environment to a more successful
perception. Instead of organizations
adapting to their environments, sometimes the environment—elements of it—adapts
to the organization. As Brunsson and
Olsen argue, “Reforms can even create the impression that improvements have
already been made, since they are prone to generate talk of change among both
reformers and reformees” (p. 199). Moreover, “reforms, by definition, are talk
about desired states of affairs, and that such talk is adapted, for natural
reasons, to the norms of how people should think and talk rather than to the
world of practices (Brunsson, 1993a, p.
87). Some reforms may have
succeeded as designed and intended, but this is thought hard to achieve.
Brunsson (1989) believes that change
is supported by an “objective ideology.”
To the degree that reforms are consonant with that ideology, they have a
possibility of success. The degree to which
NPM has integrated itself into existing objective ideologies should facilitate
the success of the techniques associated with it.
All three assessments of NPM find
that it is often difficult for reform results to equal unambiguously their
promise and that overall reform results are indeterminable. Institutionalists don’t find this surprising
either. Typically success is expressed
in terms of goals accomplished, objectives reached. The intentions of reformers are likely to be ambiguous (March and Olsen, 1989). It is common to keep or increase ambiguity
to gain support from participants (March,
1989). The effectiveness of
proposed reforms is exaggerated.
“Inflated expectations about programs that are successful in gaining
support for policy makers make subsequent disappointment likely” (p. 158). Not only may reforms begin ambiguously, but, like other
decisions, their goals may change with the subsequent reaction, understanding,
and behavior of organization members and environmental actors. “Thus, intentions are simultaneously
persistent and shifting, simultaneously pervasive and idiosyncratic” (March and Olsen, 1989, p. 66). People in organizations evolve away from the
original decision as the difficulties of implementation set in. “Policy ambiguity encourages administrative
autonomy, which in turn encourage more policy ambiguity” (March, 1989, p. 160). If
goals are subject to interpretation and shift in meaning, then the match
between organizational outputs and outcomes are unlikely to match up with the
originally stated goals.
The inconclusiveness of the NPM’s
results should not distract public managers.
As Brunsson and Olsen (1993a)
point out, in an institutional environment “attempted reforms can . . . be
regarded as part of a cultural struggle for norms, world views, symbols and
legitimacy” (p. 11). The outcome is highly unpredictable and the
possibility of failure is high. Peters’ institutional models are useful tools
for conceptualizing and assessing reform; they provide rationales for the uncertainty
of results. Different reforms applied
for different reasons in differing contexts are not likely to produce
consistent results in the institutional context; moreover, reforms are
undertaken for political reasons more so than for organizational ones. Who evaluates the reform has much to do with
the nature of the results. Nonetheless, the reforming activities of
organizations satisfy many of their constituents’ expectations while inspiring
change. “[T]the achievement record of
reorganization efforts seems more impressive in the long run than in the short
run” (March and Olsen, 1989, p. 87).
Reforms have cumulative effects that do make managerial and
institutional differences over time.
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Douglas Skelley directs the MPA program at James Madison University where he has taught organization theory and public management to graduate and undergraduate students for twenty-two years. His research has addressed institutional theory, management theory, industrial democracy, the neutrality principle in the civil service, and managerial capacity in rural governments. He received his doctorate in political science from the University of Georgia.