Organizing Marketization

Guest editorial: Historical trends and emerging issues in public management education

“…At first, this new shift, from traditional administration to New Public Management (NPM), inspired a stronger focus on markets, performance and results-based management. Later a shift to a post NPM period, or New Public Governance, has been observed in some countries in which public managers focus to a greater extent on creating public value in networks through digitization and collaboration across organizational boundaries (Christensen and Laegreid, 2010; Dunleavy et al ., 2006; Hansen et al ., 2020; Torfing et al ., 2020).…”

“…It was debated by Plato, Aristotle and Seneca in the Greco-Roman era more than two millennia ago, was organized in the classical Chinese mandarin system around 600 AD and was later emulated in other East Asian countries such as Japan and Korea (Kim, 2017). The question has been a core issue in public administration since its establishment as an academic field at the end of the 19th century (Weber, 1968;Wilson, 1887;Wren and Bedeian, 2020).Issues concerning public management education (PME) are related to the properties of the public sector to be managed, and these properties changed dramatically, though with large variations, across the globe in the 20th century (Hansen et al, 2020;Tanzi and Schuknecht, 2000).These changes were characterized by a move from relatively small states, as indicated by the level of public spending, around 1,900 primarily responsible for security (military and police) and with small welfare expenses to much larger welfare states with substantially expanded responsibilities at the end of the century providing, besides security, education, healthcare services, social security and redistribution of welfare between generations and social groups.The post-war decades from the 1950s to 1980s in particular saw a rapid expansion of the welfare state. The trend was global, but it was especially strong in more wealthy economies and especially in Northern Europe.…”

“…Issues concerning public management education (PME) are related to the properties of the public sector to be managed, and these properties changed dramatically, though with large variations, across the globe in the 20th century (Hansen et al, 2020;Tanzi and Schuknecht, 2000).…”

“…The NPM movement of the 1980 and 1990s is often presented narrowly as a largely unsuccessful, neoliberal attempt to roll the state back (Hood and Dixon, 2016), but in a broader perspective, it was also, to many reformers in many countries, an attempt to reform the welfare state in order to preserve the best parts of it by making it more efficient and responsive to citizen's needs (Hansen et al, 2020;Hirschman, 1991). NPM included several new governance models (Dunleavy et al, 2006;Hood, 1991) including competition, privatization and performance management, but it also included a new and more prominent role for public managers.…”