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Most scholars in public administration and management research would agree that there is a connection between the culture of a nation or region and the way management in public administration is structured and working (“public management arrangements”). However, to be incorporated into public management research and theory, a more precise notion about the forms, ways, and mechanisms of the interlinkage between societal culture and public management is required. A look into public management literature reveals that wide use and reference is made to the importance and influence of culture on public management arrangements – mostly, though, using the term “culture” as a shortcut for “organizational culture”. Public management treatises stress the influence of past events and contexts for the specific functioning and establishment of organizations, rules, and perceptions which in turn have great influence on the reception and functioning of public management mechanisms (Heady, 1996; Jann, 1983; Schröter, 2000; Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2004). Elsewise, organizational culture – or more precisely change thereof – is claimed to be the result of public management efforts (Ridley, 2000; Schedler & Proeller, 2000). In sum, the interlinkage between culture and public management is there, but is not systematically and explicitly incorporated by referring to adequate theory. Although cultural theory has gained considerable attention (Hood, 1998), there are still other concepts for the analysis of cultural facts that may be of interest to the subject, too.

Bidhya Bowornwathana is associate professor at the Department of Public Administration, Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand. His research interests are on governance and administrative reform. His writings appear in journals such as Governance: An International Journal of Policy and Administration, Public Administration and Development, Australian Journal of Public Administration, Asian Survey, Public Administration Quarterly, Public Administration: An International Quarterly, Asia Pacific Journal of Public Administration, Asian Review of Public Administration, and Asian Journal of Political Science. He has written several books in Thai on administrative reform and public administration. He co-edited a book with John P. Burns on Civil Services Systems in Asia (Edward Elgar, 2001). He also has chapters in recent books such as in Christopher Pollitt and Colin Talbot, eds., Unbundled Government (Taylor and Francis, 2004), Ron Hodges, ed., Governance and the Public Sector (Edward Elgar, 2005), Eric E. Otenyo and Nancy S. Lind, eds., Comparative Public Administration: The Essential Readings (Elsevier, 2006), and Kuno Schedler and Isabella Proeller, eds., Cultural Aspects of Public Management Reform (Elsevier, 2007). He was Chairman of Department of Pubic Administration, Chulalongkorn University. He has served several times as member and secretary of the national administrative reform commissions appointed by Thai governments.

The chapter summarizes evidence from Switzerland to suggest that culture proves to be a useful hypothesis to explain variations in public management reforms (PMR) in different arrangements. Culture, which is among other things embedded in politics, society, and public administration seems to have a strong impact on reform initiation, impact, and outcome as well. The review shows that an optimal culture fit between traditional and desired values appears promising. The chapter concludes that public sector reforms should consider cultural, historical, and geopolitical factors additionally when trying to conceptualize PMR in different settings.

The purpose of this article is to improve understanding of the use of performance information in the public sector.

The article is based on a comparative case study in the field of German childcare administration. Two cities have been selected based on the variation of their performance measurement systems.

It is found that a higher complexity and sophistication of the measurement system fosters the use of performance data by civil servants. At the same time, such a comprehensive control system seems to undermine the steering ability of local politicians. Referring to agency theory, it is argued that complex data systems can increase information asymmetries in favour of bureaucrats.

Since the findings are based on two cases, the paper does not make any claims about their generalisability for a particular population. Instead, the paper uses in-depth observations to better inform and enhance an existing hypothesis.

The results emphasise the importance of user-specific performance reporting. The paper suggests thinking of the adoption of management innovation as a temporal process where measurement complexity can be balanced over time by customised reporting.

This article is innovative as it focuses on two user groups of performance data simultaneously. The results show that this approach adds value because observations vary based on the perspective of the different users.

In this chapter, we present results from an EU-wide survey on public administration reform. Our analysis shows that the 27 public administrations covered still organize their HR services very differently. Divergent structures, traditions, and paths taken do not seem to give rise to an overall shared new model of a European Administrative Space, yet. Different national traditions have a considerable impact on the modernization paths and the organization of HR decision-making structures and account for similarities between more related public administrations. The clusters based on the administrative traditions and on the HR systems proved to be helpful in outlining different patterns, but also revealed several directions for refinement.

Do public managers’ religious beliefs and behaviors affect their work and their work-related attitudes? There is almost no empirical work on the topic. Questionnaire data (n=765) drawn from the National Administrative Studies Project-III11The data are drawn from the National Administrative Studies Project-III. is used to test hypotheses about the impacts of U.S. public managers’ religiosity and political activity, on work attitudes. Multiple regression shows that religious public managers tend to have a stronger orientation toward job security. Public managers who are members of political organizations are somewhat less oriented to security and have more negative views about their organization and fellow employees. Controls introduced into the model do not change these findings.

In December 1999, the UK Civil Service Management Board in Whitehall agreed upon a reform program focusing on six themes, all connected with improved managerial processes internal to the civil service and intended to complement the more externally oriented Modernising Government agenda set out in a white paper earlier that year. The purpose was to achieve major changes in the way in which the civil service was run – “step change” rather than continuous improvement. In May 2002, the Cabinet Office commissioned a research project to provide an evaluation of the Civil Service Reform program through four case studies. This chapter draws upon the findings of that study to discuss the extent to which cultural differences affected the outcomes of this ambitious reform program. In addition, it draws upon a set of interviews in 2005 which updated the findings of the research. The chapter suggests that four very different types of culture had important impacts on the way in which the case study organizations went about the process of addressing the Cabinet Office reform program, namely national cultures which differed greatly between the case studies, although they were all UK-based organizations; organizational cultures which differed greatly within each of the case study organizations; occupational cultures which crossed the four case studies, but usually with significant differences in each context; and sectoral cultures which in several cases provided particular barriers to change. The chapter shows how these different dimensions of culture were interwoven in the change programs of the four cases and explores the extent to which their progress on the reform agenda was affected by their particular cultural mix. It suggests that some “cultural stances” within these overall cultures were more difficult to change than others, so that reforms had to be re-activated on several occasions and through a variety of mechanisms. Finally, the chapter illustrates how, in the case study organizations which were most successful, a deliberate strategy was adopted by top management of highlighting the clashing internal cultures, in order to challenge the traditional positions of internal and external stakeholders, in spite of the risks involved.

This chapter tries to shed some light on the relationship between cultural patterns and country-specific public sector reform profiles. For a comparison, the British and German cases seem to be particularly appealing as they arguably represent two distinct approaches in public sector reform (see also Schröter & Wollmann, 1997; Schröter & Wollmann, 2000). It has become part and parcel of the conventional public management wisdom that the UK stands out for its vigorously pursued market-orientation and the emphasis on the explicitly “managerial” side of the new public management (“freedom to manage”) (see also Schröter, 2006), while few commentators seem to dispute that recent public sector reform programs in Germany have been of only modest range – more concerned with “maintaining” (Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2004) established features of the administrative system and fine-tuning the internal bureaucratic machinery of the state apparatus. At this point, our discussion does not take issue with that stereotypical depiction of national reform styles (see Schröter, 2001); rather it tackles a potentially powerful approach of interpreting the conspicuous policy variance: the linkage between traditional political and administrative cultures and national reform strategies.

This chapter is about the time dimension in the study of public management. There are four main steps in my argument: First, much contemporary academic work in public management is effectively time-free, or at least time-neglectful. Second, however, I argue that many key processes in public management are actually highly time-dependent. Therefore, third, we need to restore the temporal dimension to our theorizing about the development of different regimes, systems, models, and techniques for the administration of public tasks. Fourth, such a restoration of the temporal dimension will need to take account of the different cultural “framings” of time – of the fact that different cultures and subcultures conceptualize, value, and treat time differently. Throughout, the discussion is meant to be general, suggestive, and exploratory – an early conversation rather than a last word.