Korea`s Experience with NPM-Based Reform: Applying the Policy Fashion Concept

The outsourcing of education services has been widely adopted across international contexts as a 'tested solution' or panacea to meet various educational problems including school management, curriculum design, teaching and student discipline. Contracting third party providers, it is argued, enhances organisational goals such as efficiency, quality and school improvement. However, the outsourcing of education services has also impacted on established notions concerning the boundaries around teachers' work. This paper deploys the framework of discursive institutionalism to offer insight into how the idea of outsourcing has been activated and circulated by discursive communities in three diverse international settings. Despite its problem-solution logic, the institutionalisation of outsourcing creates its own problems, not least the undermining of teacher professionalism, the 'businessification' of schools and a diminishing of their educational mission.

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The change of administrative capacity in Korea: contemporary trends and lessons

Park

Shim

et al. 2021

International Review of Administrative Sciences

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This article empirically explores the understanding and changes in the concept of administrative capacity in the Korean context. Despite a universal consensus on its importance, administrative capacity is defined differently by regimes and stakeholders (i.e. in this study: the public, members of the National Assembly, and academia). To improve our understanding of administrative capacity, we collected three types of texts (337 academic papers, 1470 National Assembly minutes, and 3316 newspaper articles from 2000 to 2019) and analyzed the data using topic modeling and text-network analysis methods. The results suggest that although academic articles emphasized leadership, manpower, education, and other policymaking capacities, the National Assembly stressed innovation capacity in solving different policy problems. Finally, the media, assumed to reflect public opinion, emphasized capacities related to national security. Points for practitioners This study suggests that different types of administrative capacities could be needed according to the developmental stage of states. While managerial and administrative capacity should be developed in countries pursuing state-led economic development, governance capacity could be more requested in countries facing demands for democratization and meeting citizens’ various needs and participation.

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Korea`s Experience with NPM-Based Reform: Applying the Policy Fashion Concept

Cited by 6 publications

References 13 publications

Republic of Korea

Republic of Korea

Outsourcing education services in South Korea, England and Hong Kong: a discursive institutionalist analysis

The change of administrative capacity in Korea: contemporary trends and lessons

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