Investigating the ‘NPM-ness’ of agencies in Italy and Flanders

Abstract

Autonomous bodies established by or reformed under NPM-inspired reforms should be, from a normative point of view, characterized by (1) structural disaggregation, (2) managerial freedom, (3) contractual relationships with the oversight authorities, and (4) tasks on the operations side of the policyoperations divide. We aim to investigate the extent to which real-life agencies reflect these normative characteristics, by taking as an empirical setting the Flemish and Italian public sectors. Our findings suggest that in reality, the normative NPM ideal type agency is only rarely observed. Secondly, we want to explore the effect of the country, the age, and the tasks of the agency on the extent to which it reflects the characteristics of the NPM ideal-type. We find that Italian agencies better reflect the ideal type compared to their Flemish counterparts, and that there is virtually no effect of agencies' age and tasks on the extent to which they reflect the NPM ideal typical agency.

Difusão e adaptação do modelo de agência reguladora no Brasil

“…Agencification processes are commonly portrait as an international fad in the field of public administration (Pollitt et al, 2001). While it can be considered a convergent phenomenon, given the popularity of the 'agency' form and its global dissemination, what each locale understands as an 'agency' , and the observed differences in their degree of autonomy indicate that the outputs of the process are quite divergent -since agencies go through unique trajectories given their countries and sectors (Levi-Faur, 2006;Nakano, 2004;Pollitt et al, 2001;Verhoest & Laegreid, 2010;Verschuere & Barbieri, 2009;Yesilkagit & Christensen, 2009). As a result, agencies not only differ in the shapes they assume and the trajectories they follow, but also in the rhetoric that upholds them (Smullen, 2010) in a process of "divergent convergence" (Tenbucken & Schneider, 2004).…”

Let's Get Public Administration Right, But in What Sequence?: Lessons from Japan and Singapore

“…Guided by the principle of efficiency, these reforms are intended to operate government like a business and change the mindset of administrators accordingly. Managerial reforms have often been associated with New Public Management (Hood, ), and they are institutionalized on the ground in a number of countries (for empirical evidence, see Verschuere and Barbieri []; Meyer and Hammerschmid [], and Aoki []).…”

Drivers of Autonomy of Public Agencies in Italy

“…Managerial autonomy is further differentiated in personnel management autonomy and financial autonomy, both further distinguished into strategic and operational (a notion which applies also to policy autonomy, in which operational policy autonomy refers to autonomy in the selection of policy instruments and strategic policy autonomy refers to autonomy in deciding on the targets of the policy). Six indexes of autonomy have been created following the methodologies used by Verschuere and Barbieri () (see Appendix for details): Operational Personnel management Autonomy (OPA) Strategic Personnel management Autonomy (SPA) Operational Financial Autonomy (OFA) Strategic Financial Autonomy (SFA) Operational Policy Autonomy, or Policy Autonomy on Instruments (PAIN) Strategic Policy Autonomy, or Policy Autonomy on Targets (PATARG). …”

“…Managerial autonomy is further differentiated in personnel management autonomy and financial autonomy, both further distinguished into strategic and operational (a notion which applies also to policy autonomy, in which operational policy autonomy refers to autonomy in the selection of policy instruments and strategic policy autonomy refers to autonomy in deciding on the targets of the policy). Six indexes of autonomy have been created following the methodologies used by Verschuere and Barbieri (2009) Operational personnel management autonomy refers to the degree of autonomy of the organization in the determination of: the wage increases for individual employees; the promotion of individual employees; the evaluation, recruitment and dismissal of individual employees. Strategic personnel management autonomy refers to the degree of autonomy of the organization in setting: the level of salaries; and the general criteria for promotion, evaluation, recruitment and organizational design.…”

“…This paper contributes to the on‐going debate on agencies’ autonomy by testing a set of hypotheses on the so far empirically under‐investigated case of public agencies in Italy. Autonomy of public agencies in Italy, in fact, have been very limitedly investigated in the academic literature so far (for exception see, Barbieri et al., ; and Fedele et al., ; on Italian non‐departmental bodies, Allix and Van Thiel, ; on the related issue of the steering and control of Italian non‐departmental bodies, Barbieri et al., ; and Verschuere and Barbieri, ).The aim is to further the debate by testing hypotheses about agency autonomy on novel empirical evidence, with the ultimate purpose of contributing to address the research question: what factors do influence the autonomy of public agencies?…”