Conclusion: Taking Stock of the New Public Management

Abstract

From the preceding chapters it is clear that, over the past two decades, public services in Britain were subjected to some unprecedented demands for change. Conservative governments initially sought to control the costs of welfare provision, but subsequently turned to the reorganisation of services by introducing more management to augment their cost cutting agendas. They did this on the assumption (which was not seriously disputed) that doing so would increase efficiency. Broadly speaking, the goal was to substitute a model of managed provision for the existing ‘custodial’ producer driven approaches to organising work. This turned out to be a project involving fundamental reform, which, as time went on, drew intellectual credibility from private sector management ideas to which successive governments were increasingly and overtly committed.

The fact is that complex work cannot be effectively performed unless it comes under the control of the operator who does it. Society may have to control the overall expenditures of its Professional Bureaucracies — to keep the lid on them — and to legislate against the most callous kinds of professional behaviour. But too much external control of the professional work itself leads…to centralisation and formalisation of the structure…The effect is to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Technocratic controls do not improve professional-type work, nor can they distinguish between responsible and irresponsible behaviour — they constrain both equally. That may, of course, be appropriate for organisations in which responsible behaviour is rare. But where it is not — presumably the majority of cases — technocratic controls only serve to dampen professional conscientiousness (Mintzberg, 1993: 212).