The polyphonic effects of technological changes in public sector organizations

Niels Thygesen and Niels Åkerstrøm Andersenˡ

Chapter 6 in The Illusion of Management Control, 2012, pp 159-181 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract New Public Management (NPM) has established itself as the paradigm to watch when it comes to understanding changes in the public sector. It is generally agreed that the normative purpose of NPM is to improve the market orientation, public choice, competition and cost efficiency of public administration. In order to achieve this purpose, NPM normally emphasizes new steering technologies, largely adapted from the private sector and guided by the tautological maxim that ‘managers must manage’. What is called New Public Management, then, is the meeting of a particular set of normative ends with a specific set of technical means handled by managers who know how to manage. This causal set-up has undoubtedly contributed to the general acceptance of both means and ends, since overcoming the obstacles can now be conceived of as a relatively straightforward matter of implementing technologies.

Keywords: Technological Change; Market Orientation; Public Management; Actor Network Theory; Collective Acceptance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-36539-1_7

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DOI: 10.1057/9780230365391_7

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