Editorial
| Published date | 01 January 1988 |
| Author | Chris Bellamy |
| DOI | 10.1177/095207678800300102 |
| Date | 01 January 1988 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
iii
Editorial
Mrs
Thatcher’s
well
vaunted
impatience
with
questions
of
government
machinery
has
been
confirmed
by
the
fact
that
her
third
election
victory
has
been
followed
by
no
great
shakeup
of
central
government
departments
to
excite
the
commentators
on
the
Whitehall
scene
or
cause
teachers
of
public
administration
to
revise
their
handouts
for
students.
Nevertheless,
the
changes
in
the
Cabinet
Office
imple-
mented
at
the
beginning
of
October
1987 - that
is,
the
abolition
of
the
Management
and
Personnel
Office
and
the
transfer
of
a
significant
part
of
its
responsibilities
to
the
Treasury -
may
signal
much
about
the
direction
and
control
of
management
issues
in
this
third
term.
Briefly,
those
functions
of
the
M.P.O.
bearing
directly
on
manpower,
pay
and
financial
conditions
of
service -
which
include
responsibility
for
financial
manage-
ment,
information
management
and,
crucially,
the
implementation
of
performance
related
pay -
have
gone
to
the
Treasury.
This
leaves
a
smaller,
new
sub
department
t
-
the
Office
of
the
Minister
for
the
Civil
Service -
handling
machinery
of
govern-
ment
questions
and
training
and
staff
development,
including
the
Top
Management
Programme,
along
with
welfare,
personnel
and
public
appointments
functions.
It
also
retains
responsibility
for
the
Civil
Service
College,
CSSB
and
the
Civil
Service
Commission.
The
new
office
will
continue
to
be
in
the
day
to
day
charge
of
Richard
Luce,
the
Minister
of
State,
Privy
Council
Off’lce
The
organisational
logic
behind
this
change
is
the
rationalisation
of
what
was,
inevitably,
an
awkward
demarcation
between
the
financial
aspects
of
the
MPO’s
work
and
the
interests
of
the
Treasury.
The
1982
arrangements -
designedly
or
otherwise -
set
up
a
contingent -
and
competing -
power
centre
to
the
Treasury
on
financial
and
manpower
management
issues,
with
potential
for
’creative
tensions’
redolent
of
the
DEA
in
the
1960s.
The
new
arrangements
do
not -
or
should
not -
dissolve
the
demarcation
problem
at
the
centre
of
government -
but
they
move
the
boundary
over
to
what
may
appear
a
more
clearly
marked
location
between
the
’management’
functions
of
the
Treasury
and
the
’personnel’
functions
,of
Luce’s
new
office.
The
very
perception
of
a
clearcut
boundary
and
its
institutionalisation
in
these
new
arrangements
will
not
encourage
those
who
suspect
the
present
regime
of
an
old
fashioned
and
’impoverished’
concept
of
management -
a
caricature
of
good
practice
in
the
commercial
sector2.
Their
view
is
that
’management’
in
the
civil
service
has
been
overly
concerned
with
financial
discipline
and
short
term
cost
cutting,
and
inadequately
concerned
with
the
motivational
and
behavioural
aspects
of
organisational
culture
that
modern
management
science
teaches
are
the
key
to
a
real
shift
of
attitudes
and
the
development
of
performance.
Inevitably,
the
abolition
of
the
MPO
has
been
interpreted
as
a
victory
for
the
Treasury
in
a
White-
hall
power
struggle3 ,
an
interpretation
which
in
itself,
of
course,
weakens
the
clout
of
the
new
Office
and
says
much
about
perceptions
of
its
relative
importance.
Indeed,
the
new
allocation
of
functions
to
the
Treasury
and
OMCS
reads
suspiciously
like
a
league
table
of
issues
on
the
current
agenda
of
Whitehall
reform,
with
a
first
To continue reading
Request your trial