Irvine Lapsley – författare

The Resilience of New Public Management examines the role and significance of New Public Management (NPM) in contemporary society, and explores its emergence and resilience. Eminent scholars have said that NPM only existed from 1980-2000, and that we now live in a post-NPM world. This book tells a very different story. Evidence is presented in this book of 40 years of continuous NPM in public services, including government agencies, universities, and health care. NPM has diffused across sectors and globally since the 1980s, and in the process mutated to become modernization. It also coexists with alternative models of managing public services, including models such as digital era governance and network governance which were considered replacements for NPM. The capacity of NPM to mutate has caught many of its critics by surprise. This capacity for NPM to reinvent itself includes the adoption of Lean Management, the Toyota Production System. Early NPM adopter countries engaged with the use of Lean Management techniques, but late NPM adopters did not. The most recent alternative to NPM is Trust-based management, which has made significant advances in Scandinavian countries. However, Trust-based management is closely linked to proto-NPM and NPM practices and it has itself mutated to present itself as a friendlier and more supportive version of NPM, which at the very least deserves close scrutiny. The above trends are indicative of the resilience of NPM, and its intuitive appeal for policymakers. Its advocates argue that NPM has the capacity to deliver policy outcomes, but this book shows that such claims and aspirations are not always matched by the evidence of NPM in action.

This book explores innovations in public management, including establishing a corporate vision, strategizing an organization and change management.Chapters provide a valuable frame of reference for the 21st-century manager of public services by assessing the renewal of existing practices such as strategic costing, performance management, digitization and procurement and innovations in management practices, including branding, Lean Management, resilience and risk management. The book suggests that, as the management of public services is imbued with financial, social, economic and political uncertainties, management needs to be flexible and responsive to new ideas and practices to fulfil its purpose. This book ultimately supports the reflective manager, those who think about their job and are open to new ideas on how their job can be done better, by revisiting existing practices and examining innovations in public management.Enriched with real-life cases and thought-provoking discussion questions, this is the ideal textbook for reflective, open-minded advanced students of public management and actual, or aspiring, reflective managers in public services.

This book explores innovations in public management, including establishing a corporate vision, strategizing an organization and change management.Chapters provide a valuable frame of reference for the 21st-century manager of public services by assessing the renewal of existing practices such as strategic costing, performance management, digitization and procurement and innovations in management practices, including branding, Lean Management, resilience and risk management. The book suggests that, as the management of public services is imbued with financial, social, economic and political uncertainties, management needs to be flexible and responsive to new ideas and practices to fulfil its purpose. This book ultimately supports the reflective manager, those who think about their job and are open to new ideas on how their job can be done better, by revisiting existing practices and examining innovations in public management.Enriched with real-life cases and thought-provoking discussion questions, this is the ideal textbook for reflective, open-minded advanced students of public management and actual, or aspiring, reflective managers in public services.

As policymakers and scholars evaluate possible ways forward in the reform and renewal of public services by governments caught up in a recessionary environment, this book aims to offer something different – a comprehensive analysis of the development of the ‘Scandinavian’ way of modernizing public-sector management. No book has yet provided an inside view of the development and character of New Public Management (NPM) in Scandinavia. Although there is a general perception that there is a clear-cut ‘Scandinavian’ model of public policy and management, this book offers a more nuanced interpretation, illuminating subtle distinctions in political, social and economic context which are significant in identifying receptive contexts for the adoption of modernization policies.Organized into three main themes in the modernization of the welfare state – management, governance and marketization – the contents revolve around unique empirical accounts, revealing distinctive Scandinavian characteristics of reform initiatives. The received wisdom may be a hesitant follower of the UK and the USA. But this book offers an alternative interpretation, revealing an edginess in certain Scandinavian settings, particularly in Sweden, which is a largely unrecognized.Without compromising the welfare state, it may be a bold frontrunner in the development of New Public Management.

This book looks at the effectiveness of the 1999 restructuring of the UK through the establishment of the Scottish Parliament and the Assemblies for Northern Ireland and Wales, considering the process of devolution and its consequences on the key mechanisms of accounting and democratic accountability. Many of the chapters in this book examine whether devolution is enhancing democratic accountability, or creating a fragmentary state with conflict and tensions between the Westminster government and the devolved bodies. The focus is on the financial mechanisms for democratic accountability both in the UK and in international comparator countries (New Zealand, Norway, and the US). This book examines the turbulent pattern of relationships between central and devolved government and explores whether the present arrangements for devolution in the UK represent an end game, or whether they may be merely a stepping stone to a more fully fledged federal state. It is argued that the main thrust of many of the financial reforms in the UK has confounded, obfuscated, and complicated the desire for democratic accountability.

This book looks at the effectiveness of the 1999 restructuring of the UK through the establishment of the Scottish Parliament and the Assemblies for Northern Ireland and Wales, considering the process of devolution and its consequences on the key mechanisms of accounting and democratic accountability. Many of the chapters in this book examine whether devolution is enhancing democratic accountability, or creating a fragmentary state with conflict and tensions between the Westminster government and the devolved bodies. The focus is on the financial mechanisms for democratic accountability both in the UK and in international comparator countries (New Zealand, Norway, and the US). This book examines the turbulent pattern of relationships between central and devolved government and explores whether the present arrangements for devolution in the UK represent an end game, or whether they may be merely a stepping stone to a more fully fledged federal state. It is argued that the main thrust of many of the financial reforms in the UK has confounded, obfuscated, and complicated the desire for democratic accountability.

As policymakers and scholars evaluate possible ways forward in the reform and renewal of public services by governments caught up in a recessionary environment, this book aims to offer something different – a comprehensive analysis of the development of the ‘Scandinavian’ way of modernizing public-sector management. No book has yet provided an inside view of the development and character of New Public Management (NPM) in Scandinavia. Although there is a general perception that there is a clear-cut ‘Scandinavian’ model of public policy and management, this book offers a more nuanced interpretation, illuminating subtle distinctions in political, social and economic context which are significant in identifying receptive contexts for the adoption of modernization policies.Organized into three main themes in the modernization of the welfare state – management, governance and marketization – the contents revolve around unique empirical accounts, revealing distinctive Scandinavian characteristics of reform initiatives. The received wisdom may be a hesitant follower of the UK and the USA. But this book offers an alternative interpretation, revealing an edginess in certain Scandinavian settings, particularly in Sweden, which is a largely unrecognized.Without compromising the welfare state, it may be a bold frontrunner in the development of New Public Management.