The World Bank’s approach to public sector management for 2011–2020: proposals to push forward the debate
| Author | Léon Bertrand Ngouo |
| Published date | 01 September 2017 |
| Date | 01 September 2017 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0020852315591645 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
International Review of
Administrative Sciences
2017, Vol. 83(3) 541–562
!The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/0020852315591645
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International
Review of
Administrative
Sciences
Article
The World Bank’s approach
to public sector management
for 2011–2020: proposals
to push forward the debate
Le
´on Bertrand Ngouo
Professor/Consultant in Public Management, Cameroon
Abstract
This article is a contribution to the debate raised in the special issue of the International
Review of the International Institute of Administrative Sciences (IIAS) (Volume 79(3))
devoted to the World Bank’s approach to public sector management for 2011–2020.
We offer a methodological framework for action that builds on the definitions we have
chosen of three key concepts used by several authors: ‘administrative reform’, the ‘real
world’ and the ‘performance’ of administrations. The proposed model suggests an
inductive-style methodological approach, taking into account the challenges that the
World Bank has set itself to secure the successful implementation of its strategy.
Points for practitioners
The success of administrative reforms very much depends on the consideration given to
the different mechanisms that regulate the actual workflow in public services. The
article shows how this flow is characterised by multiple methods of regulation whose
nature and configuration vary from one administration to another, and offers a way of
managing reforms that duly takes this into account. The focus is on the professionalism
of the practitioners in this field.
Keywords
administrative reform, intervention approach, management strategy, performance,
public sector, system of regulation
Introduction: our analytical perspective
The articles published in volume 79(3) of the International Review of the
International Institute of Administrative Sciences (IRAS) focused on the analysis
Corresponding author:
Le
´on Bertrand Ngouo, PO. Box 14790, Yaounde
´, Cameroon.
Email: lbngouo@yahoo.fr
of the document ‘Approach to public sector management for 2011–2020: Better
results from public sector institutions’, adopted by the World Bank as its new
strategy for public sector management (PSM) and governance for the period indi-
cated. This approach is based on the assumption that problem-solving in a given
political environment is the first mission of reform, rather than the desire to impose
international ‘best practices’ (Manning and McCourt, 2013: 416).
Our contribution humbly aims to take forward the debate thus launched, as
encouraged by its coordinators (Manning and McCourt, 2013: 421). Our study was
inspired by a close reading of some of these articles that we wish to share. Our
reading was guided by an inductive analysis of the organisational situations to take
into account the intrinsic characteristics of the organisational environments that
are the targets of the reforms in order to increase the individual and collective
performances of the stakeholders (Aktouf, 1992; Garfinkel, 1967; Grouard and
Meston, 2005; Hatchuel, 1990, 1994; Pichault, 2008, 2009; Schmit et al., 2008;
Yvan, 1997). This has prompted us to perform a ‘strategic organisational analysis’
to focus on the mechanisms, including the institutional mechanisms, that structure
the patterns of behaviour and thought of the stakeholders by participating in the
regulation of the workflow in the ‘real world’ of the administrations concerned by
the reforms. In his analysis of the dynamics of organised action, Friedberg (1997:
177–193) talks of ‘local orders’, arguing that any collective action, as in any public
sector reform, features:
an interdependent set of individual and/or collective, natural and institutional stake-
holders that compete with each other not only to define the problems to whose solu-
tion they must (they can) contribute and but also to come up with ‘solutions’ that will
be applied to these problems (Friedberg, 1997: 177).
We thus enter into the perspective of the ‘contextualist analysis’ used, for example,
by Pichault (2008, 2009), which is based on the interactions between the context,
content and process of the change introduced.
This text is organised into three parts. The first examines the question of ter-
minology; the second describes the proposed methodological approach; and the
last deals with the challenge of congruence facing the World Bank. We conclude by
drawing attention to the pitfall of anomie confronting public administrations, all of
which are wrongly considered as mechanistic bureaucracies.
Administrative reform: terminology and the analytical
and management perspectives
When reading through the articles in the review, particularly those that use the
terms ‘public sector reform’, ‘public management reform’, ‘public service reform’
and ‘real world’, an explicit, clear and unambiguous definition of the terms used
appears nowhere. If we are not careful, the subject of PSM may be mistaken. It is
sometimes the public sector within the meaning of the World Bank (Manning and
542 International Review of Administrative Sciences 83(3)
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