International dictionary of public management and governance PDF
Preview International dictionary of public management and governance
International Dictionary of Public Management and Governance This page intentionally left blank International Dictionary of Public Management and Governance Gambhir Bhatta Foreword by Des Gasper RO Routledge U TLE DG Taylor & Francis Group E LONDON AND NEW YORK First published 2006 by M.E. Sharpe Published 2015 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY, 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 2006, Taylor & Francis. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notices No responsibility is assumed by the publisher for any injury andlor damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use of operation of any methods, products, instructions or ideas contained in the material herein. Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their owu experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility. Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bhatta, Gambhir. International dictionary of public management and governance I by Gambhir Bhatta. p. cm. ISBN 0-7656-1261-5 (hardcover: alk. paper) 1. Public administration-Dictionaries. 2. Administrative agencies-Management-Dictionaries. 3. Management-Dictionaries. I. Title: Dictionary of public management and governance. II. Title. JA6l.B482005 351' .03--dc22 2004025456 ISBN 13: 9780765612618 (hbk) Dedicated to the memory of Lava Dev Bhatta but for whom I wouldn't be here today doing what I'm doing This page intentionally left blank Foreword Good public policy, management, and administration require thinking that is disciplined yet creative, independent yet committed. In his classic study, Towards a Philosophy of Administration, Christopher Hodgkinson indi cated how administration focuses on the formulation, clarification, testing, communication, and follow-up of evaluative propositions. I Strong skills in handling language, logic, and in discussing values are, therefore, essential. Gambhir Bhatta's formidable dictionary of public management pro vides a valuable tool for the first part of such work: the giving of close attention to words, and the skilled handling of language. With exceptional energy and patience, he has given a lucid introduction to a large propor tion of the technical terms that are likely to confront a public-management specialist. The dictionary is important in several ways. • The field of public management is a complex intersection that draws concepts and vocabulary from many areas of theory and practice. In such an interdisciplinary field, a dictionary like this can save consid erable time for professionals and students, and, even more impor tantly, gives a basis for thinking further about the complex and competing sources of public management: law, economics, business management and finance, human relations, politics, military planning 2 and strategy, among others. • The language of public management is dynamic, with the continual entry of new terms and constant evolution of old ones. The injection of concepts from business management, for example, in a series of waves through the twentieth century culminated in the widespread shift in the 1980s and 1990s to a language of "public management" rather than "public administration," and to a whole additional vo cabulary of "New Public Management." • Thinking about word choice is central to the building and testing of arguments that is in turn central in administration and management. Considering alternative possible formulations, as compared to the formulation in a text, helps us to see more clearly and exactly the con clusions which the actual choice of words leads toward, and it helps in VB viii Foreword finding possible counterarguments and other ways of viewing or re sponding to the same situation, against which a text should be com pared when passing judgment. An in-depth dictionary is an essential tool for finding one's way, keeping up, and becoming a critical, creative user in a professional or academic field. The flourishing of dictionaries and encyclopedias in spe cialist intellectual areas is far more than a publishing phenomenon. Analogous even to the presentation in printed and vernacular forms of Holy Scriptures, which made them accessible to every literate person after centuries or millennia of authoritative access only by elites, it facili tates broader participation in public discourse and the desacralization of remote texts. When one can no longer wield authority by resort to a vo cabulary that remains obscure to one's audience, clear and cogent argu mentation becomes required. When people acquire a guide to the vocabulary and its ambiguities and even contradictions, they are better able to read and think critically for themselves, and to have the confi dence to draw from their own experience. Thoughtful attention to words is part of a critical orientation that is necessary to avoid being colonized by approaches that may suit certain countries, eras, sectors, and worldviews, but not necessarily one's own, and indeed that is necessary to help construct and appraise one's own worldview. Christopher Hood and Michael Jackson's Administrative Argument examines why and how administrative doctrines have often been adopted without a sufficient basis of evidence.3 They propose that politically successful arguments about principles for administration have rarely been based on reliable data or careful logic and analysis. More often they have relied on appeals to authority, metaphors, proverbs, and selected supportive examples. Yet as Herbert Simon had pointed out in his Administrative Behavior (1945), for nearly every administrative proverb there is a contradictory one, equally plausible, that is disre garded, often until a turn in administrative fashion mobilizes those oppo site views toward a new orthodoxy. Hood and Jackson catalogued ninety-nine proverb-like doctrines of administration, about who should do what or how, and discussed what factors influence which doctrines get singled out and effected. Simon instead sought precise large-scale testing of which doctrines work when and where. But that sort of work in academic public administration has been rather indecisive and short of influence, since it rarely gives bold, inspiring, sweeping conclusions situations and criteria have so many aspects, vary widely, and undergo constant change. Foreword IX More influential, argued Hood and Jackson, were approaches which contain attractively packaged sets of administration proverbs and satisfy all or most of various standard requirements. First, they must pick up a felt mood of the time. New Public Management (NPM) has matched a desire to 'jack up" the public sector and cut costs. Second, the approaches have used persuasive metaphors and built on appealing and widespread "common sense" ideas. NPM stressed masterful "management" rather than more modest "administration," and equated budget cutting with fitness and weight loss: "mean" became redefmed as "lean." It often relied on a simple picture, provided by economists, that people are restless calculators who are preoccupied with fmancial incentives and are overwhelmingly self interested. Vivid, simple images are more likely to capture the imagination of large groups. This is how many business-management "gurus" work. Thus packages of ideas from business management and economics-as in NPM-have often become more influential in public management than ideas from research in the public administration discipline itself, which have typically been more complex, harder to use, and unmarketed. Third, the successful approaches have been stated in general terms, which allow different groups to interpret the package differently, in line with their own concerns. NPM's "performance" talk could appeal both to cost-cutters in terested in fmancial performance, and to quality-raisers. Fourth, each such approach is proposed in a forceful dramatic way that induces people to ac cept its story and conclusions even in the absence of solid evidence; for example, by insisting that a crisis exists that demands immediate action. These factors, among others, help explain how NPM was sold, and bou§ht, as if it were a well-proven package, despite little empirical evidence. It was sold-and bought-as if it were a consistent system, even though it was a patchwork of different elements and tendencies, some market-based and some hierarchy-based, and, for example, assumed public-service com mitment and loyalty, yet often failed to maintain or build them.5 How can we do better than too readily and unselectively swallow new fashions? How might we think independently and yet have an audience and influence in the longer term? One lesson, especially from the study of public administration, is the importance of being empirical and case specific, and respecting complexity. From the history of ideas, and of ad ministration in particular, we see the need for sensitivity to key concepts and to how they have emerged. Another lesson, not least from economics, is the power of a systematic approach to thinking. And from business management especially comes a lesson about the power of metaphors and stories, for seeing new angles, communicating, and being persuasive.6
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