March 2006 Harry de Boer --- Hedda Oslo 1

NPM and managerialism in higher education

Harry de Boer

Peter Maassen

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Social cultural changes

Economic developments

Technological developments

Political-administrative developments

university:Structure

ManagementPolicy

Public interest

Education markets

Research markets

Labour markets

governments

Other suppliers

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Who decides what with respect to education, research ?

Examples:

• Access to higher education• Supply, content and quality of teaching programmes• Supply and kind of research• Personnel matters (who works where under what

conditions?)

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Clark’s triangle of co-ordination

Academic oligarchy

marketstate

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Public sector reforms

Since 1980 we have witnessed a pandemic of public management reforms in OECD countries.

Change is not the exception to the rule, but seems to be a fact of life, also in the field of higher education and research.

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Public sector reforms New Modes of Governance Basic dimensions of governance concept:- Diagnosis- Structure- Management- Policy- Public interest

• Market• Participation• Flexibility• Deregulation

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Early 1980s: institutional administration ‘necessary evil’

Clark (1983): Importance of ‘administration’ in HEIs growing

Keller (1983): Management revolution in HE

2006: Academics necessary evil?

Focus on management in HE governance reforms

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Enhanced Institutional Autonomy:

- Need for accountability

- Quality assurance

- Need to attract non-governmental income

”Universities have become to complex to be run by academics”

”What is happening with the public funds invested in HEIs?”

Why focus on management in HE governance reforms?

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Public sector reforms

Management reform is a means to multiple ends.

However, matters are not that simple. Management reforms can easily go wrong.

It is said to make savings in public expenditure, improving the quality of public services, making the operations of government more efficient and increasing the chances that the policies which are chosen and implemented will be effective.

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Public services were allocated through the combination of two modes of coordination that existed side-by-side

1. Bureaucratic administration

2. Professionalism

“Old” public sector management

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Bureaucratic administrationRational, Weberian bureaucracy:• Fixed spheres of competence• Defined hierarchy of offices• Clear distinction between the public and the private

roles and properties of the officials• Specialization and admin expertise as the basis for

action• Full-time, career appointments for officials• Management by the application of a developing set

of rules, knowledge of which was the special technical competence of the officials concerned

• Equity: socially, politically and personally neutral• Efficient and impartial administration

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Professionalism• Content expertise needed to supplement admin

knowledge• Distinctive bodies of knowledge about the causes

and solutions of social problems• Bureaucracy operates through formal specification

of roles and responsibilities, professionalism is based on the standardization of skills through externally controlled training and qualification

• Professional autonomy used for exercising professional judgments

• Loyal to the profession: codes and values• Disinterested service providers• Personalized professional – client relationships

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Bureau-professionalism

• The combination of bureaucracy and professionalism supported a particular ideological representation of the relationship between the state and the people in which they served as the institutionalized guarantors of the pursuit of the public good

• Administrators could be trusted because their purpose was merely to implement rules, and professionals could be trusted because their neutrality was guaranteed by an ethos of service

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Critique on bureau-professionalism

“The kind of governments that developed during the industrial era, with their sluggish, centralized bureaucracies, their preoccupations with rules and regulations, and their hierarchical chains of command, no longer work very well. They accomplished great things in their time, but somewhere along the line they got away from us (…) when the world began to change, they failed to change with it. Hierarchical, centralized bureaucracies (…) simply do not function well in the rapidly-changing, information-rich, knowledge-intensive society and economy of the 1990s.” (Osborne and Gaebler 1992: 11-12)

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Solution

Bureau-professionalism as a mode of coordination of delivering public services was said to be in need of replacement by more flexible, fast-moving, performance-oriented forms of modern organization: government had to be re-invented.

a.o.t. the ‘birth’ of managerialism or new public management (NPM)

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Public sector reforms and the management function (1)

“Deliberate changes to the structures and processes of public sector organizations with the objective of getting them (in some sense) to perform better.” (Pollitt & Bouckaert 2000:17)

• Public management may denote the activity of public servants and politicians. It may also denote the structures and processes of the executive government.

• Management is seen as a new kind of activity and is contrasted with the older form, administration.

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• Relationship between public management and generic management. Last 20 years there was extensive borrowing by public sectors of management ideas and techniques which originated in the private sector.

• Management is not neutral, technical process. It is value-laden and influenced by ideologies.

• The claims to run things better should be tested empirically rather than assumed.

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• Management reforms can be initiated top-down, but also bottom-up.

• Management reforms in any particular country will almost certainly be shaped by the local preoccupations (‘local frames of reference’, path dependency).

• ‘To run better’ may mean different things to different individuals and groups; there may be winners and losers.

• Reforms occur at different levels and may vary in scope.

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New Public Management / Managerialism

There has been a great optimism about the potential of

management itself.

This means that also the regime of new public management faces trade-offs, contradictions and dilemmas.

However, “while management practice and discourse have been transformed, the perennial questions of public administration remain.” (Halligan 1997:43)

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Contradictions in New Public Management?

1. Increase political control of the bureaucracy / free managers to manage / empower service customers.

From: Pollitt & Bouckaert 2000:chapter 7

2. Promote flexibility and innovation / increase citizen trust and therefore governmental legitimacy

3. Give priority to making savings / give priority to improving the performance of the public sector

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Contradictions of New Public Management? (2)

4. “Responsibilize” government / reduce the range of tasks government is involved with (‘privatization’)

5. Motivate staff and promote cultural change / weaken tenure and downsize

6. Reduce burden of internal scrutiny and associated paperwork / sharpen managerial accountability

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Contradictions of New Public Management? (3)

7. Create more single-purpose agencies / improve policy and programme co-ordination

8. Decentralize management authority / improve programme co-ordination

10. Increase quality / cut costs

9. Increase effectiveness / sharpen managerial accountability

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A model for public management reform

Christopher Pollitt and Geert Bouckaert (2000)

Public Management Reform. A comparative analysis.

Managerialism (or NPM) has been more than a hype.

However, there are significant differences among countries and among public sectors.

How to analyze and to explain the similarities and differences among countries?

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Strategies to reform the public sector (Pollitt & Bouckaert 2000)

1. Maintain:

Tighten up traditional controls, restrict expenditures, freeze new hirings, ‘squeeze’ the public sector

2. Modernize:

Bringing in faster, more flexible ways of budgeting, managing, accounting and delivering services to their users (e.g. deregulation)

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Strategies to reform the public sector (Pollitt & Bouckaert 2000)

3. Marketize:

Bringing in market-type mechanisms such as competition

4. Minimize:

Handling over tasks to the market sector (privatization, contracting out)

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New public management:New public management:

The academic response The academic response

Research: The credibility cycle

Researchers are highly motivated to gain credibility (acceptance and legitimacy), which is achieved through research performance for which resources are required

What are the effects of introducing new values, beliefs and aspirations in the game academics play?

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New public management:New public management:

The academic response The academic response

1. Victory of managerial values over professional ones; de-professionalization; end of self regulation and control

2. Victory of academic values; academics can still be in the driver’s seat in the case of management by contract; conditional funding

3. A blend of academic and managerial values; adaptation of traditional values; soft monitoring of academic work with professionals still in control and implementing new forms of self policing

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New public management:New public management:

The academic response The academic response

Expectations:

1. Different forms of NPM (e.g across countries, public sectors or time) lead to different value systems

2. Different scientific disciplines lead to different value systems

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Relevant websites:

- www.utwente.nl/cheps/documenten/lustrumscenarios2020.pdf

- www.arena.uio.no/publications/working-papers2005/papers/wpo5_15.pdf