Christopher Pollitt

Managerialism and the Public Services shows how, during the 1980s, a new orthodoxy was imposed on many American and British public services. In health care, education and the civil/federal service 'new right' governments attempted to rebuild the welfare state according to their own organizational and political principles. In this second edition, Christopher Pollitt carefully analyses the ideas and practices that went into this would-be revolution. He identifies strengths and weaknesses in show more the ideas themselves, and charts the extensive resistance offered by many of those who worked in the services concerned. Pollitt also reviews the main alternatives to the new orthodoxy and considers how, from the late 1980s, an important new emphasis on cultural change and quality improvement has appeared. In conclusion, he reflects on the difficulty of achieving quality services in a climate of expenditure restraint. show less

Pollitt's work is a must read for those with an interest in governance and policy, yet this book didn't present information well. The information presented is solid and important to ongoing discussion in the field of governance, yet getting through the text can be quite difficult.

Very important for students, however.

The authors offer an integrated analysis of the wave of management reforms which have swept through so many countries in the last twenty years. The reform trajectories of ten countries are compared, and key differences of approach discussed. Unlike some previous works, this volume affords balanced coverage to the New Public Management (NPM) and the non-NPM or reluctant NPM countries, since it covers Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, the UK and show more the USA. Unusually, it also includes a preliminary analysis of attempts to improve management within the European Commission. The complex and often-avoided question of the results of reform is tackled head-on. A general model of the process of reform is proposed in which key factors influencing the scope, speed and depth of change are identified and related to structures and strategies. In the second half of the book the authors critically dissect the claims of public sector transformations. (amazon.de) show less