2 - Professions, Professionals and the ‘new’ Government Policies: A Reflection on the last 30 Years

Summary

Introduction

This chapter offers an account of a body of research relating to professions and professionalism in the UK public sector which the author has undertaken with colleagues over a thirty-year period. At the start of this period, following the election of a Conservative government in 1979, there was the introduction of a distinctive new policy. A decisive break with the past, this policy was collectively identified as New Public Management (NPM) (Exworthy & Halford 1999; Ferlie & Fitzgerald 2000). The general direction of policy did not change much thereafter, despite changes of administration and the election to power of different parties (Ackroyd 1995a; Harrison 2002). NPM was extended and consolidated over the intervening years. Thus, the policies under consideration may hardly be considered as new in 2012 – as the parentheses around ‘new’ in the title here indicate. However, many observers are still thinking of these polices as new. NPM is still something distinctive – it has not been accepted as simply the way things now are.

This chapter makes an assessment of a particular body of academic research undertaken to assess the implementation of NPM policies. Doing this assessment in conjunction with work undertaken in the Netherlands will allow readers to assess how far there are similarities in research interests and outcomes between academic communities in adjacent countries. Britain, like the USA (together sometimes called ‘Anglo Saxon’ economies and countries), is often regarded as in the forefront of change; though whether this is really so and what constitutes being ‘in the lead’ or ‘behind’ are matters of controversy. Anyway, the chapter is written in the hope that the research reported (and particularly its lack of impact) will be of interest to scholars and professionals working on similar organisations but within a somewhat different institutional context. The conclusion will discuss why the outcome took the shape it did.

NPM entails the proposition, in itself relatively unobjectionable, that existing arrangements for the provision of social welfare are inefficient, and, to improve this, it is necessary to turn to management modelled on the private sector. Inevitably, however, achieving efficiency as defined by NPM, was not a simple change easily implemented that would quickly improve things.