Book Review: Managing the New Public Services
| Author | Mike Young |
| DOI | 10.1177/014473949301300209 |
| Published date | 01 September 1993 |
| Date | 01 September 1993 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
Book
Reviews
Managing the New Public Services. By David FARNHAM and Sylvia
HORTON
(eds). (Macmillan, 1992, pp.282, £11.99
pIb.)
This timely reader, which aims to provide an
inlmm.
assessment
of
the complex and
substantial changes which have affected Britain's public service since the late 1970s,
is an interpretation
of
both the contexts and characteristics
of
the so-called 'New
Managerialism' rather
than
a prescriptive manual
of
management techniques. It focuses
on the pressures to redefine public sector employment in order to accommodate the
traditional 'public service ethic' to the needs
of
an enterprise culture, allegedly
advantaging senior managers and corporate accountants at the expense
of
conditions
of
service and morale at the front-line of. public service. The book is organised
conventionally with the editors providing 'scene setting' and concluding sections which
sandwich the 'meat'
of
this work.
Part One briefly anatomises the changing British state post 1979 and the variety
of
attempts made by recent Governments, heavily influenced
by
"New Right' politics, to
bring private sector assumptions, practices and procedures to bear on public sector
organisations. The authors argue this
has
transformed a 'mixed economy' state built
upon a crumbling post war consensus, into one significantly altered by the application
of
market 'freedoms' into a "more limited regulatory state". This has occurred in spite
of
the failure
of
four successive Conservative Governments to significantly reduce
gross government expenditure and has produced the (presumably politically acceptable)
paradox
ofan
increasingly 'strong state' emerging from reforms designed to 'roll back'
the public sector and devolve financial and other responsibilities within a Iiberalised
economic context. The authors also indicate how partial and intermittent the New
Right experiment
has
been.
Part One also reviews the extent to which there still remains
an
obvious distinction
between public and private administration. Different contributions to the debate are
examined in an attempt to define the 'new public administration'. Recent 'fashionable'
managerialist prescriptions (e.g. flexibility, excellence, total quality) are not necessarily
accurate descriptors even for management in the private sector, and the public sector
continues to have concerns (e.g.political priorities, accountability, legal and other
constraints) which are completely or partially irrelevant in business and which may
well cut across the key private sector 'bottom-line' measure provided
by
market
testing.
Part Two competently explores
three
increasingly significant managerial functions
"within and across the public service" and examines the consequent implications for
the patterning
of
public sector recruitment and employment i.e. the developing impact
of
Strategic ManageBleot (Elcock), the changing role
of
public sector Financial
75
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