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The discussion about public sector performance is still present today, despite the profound research that has already tried to address this subject. Furthermore, theory links negative effects on organizational performance with increased levels of organizational complexity. However, literature thus far did not succeed to put forward a successful theory that explains why and how public organizations became increasingly complex. To answer this question, we argue that increased organizational complexity can be explained by viewing public organizations as the hybrid result of different institutional logics, which are shaped by various management views. However, former research mainly concentrated on the separate study of management views such as traditional public management (TPM), NPM, and post-NPM. Although appealing, research that approaches hybridity from this perspective is fairly limited.

We conducted a literature review in which we studied 80 articles about traditional public management, NPM, and post-NPM.

We found that these management views essentially differ on the base of three fault lines, depending on the level of the organizational culture. These fault lines, according to the management view, together result in nine dimensions. By combing dimensions of the different management views, we argue that a public organization becomes hybrid. Furthermore, in line with findings of contingency theory, we explain the level of hybridity might depend on the level of tight coupling for a given organization. Finally, we developed propositions that explain hybridity as the result of isomorphic forces, organizational change, and organizational resistance to change and that link hybridization with processes of selective coupling.

The value of this chapter lies in its real-life applicability.

This conceptual article aims primarily to illustrate the impact of public value thinking on the process of public sector modernisation. Public value management (PVM) is analysed from two perspectives. First, the principles and features of PVM approaches are detailed, including a comparison of the literature on the other approaches characterizing the modernisation process, that is, traditional public administration (TPA), new public management (NPM) and new public governance (NPG). Then PVM is contrasted with NPM and TPA. Subsequently, the elements connecting PVM with NPG are explored. Second, the theoretical and methodological frameworks within which public value has been operationalized are investigated. One of the core topics is the measurement of public value, which is illustrated focusing on the link between public value (in the singular) and public values (in the plural). The impact that the adoption of public value thinking exerts on the multiple performance objectives for public sector organisations is also investigated. Ultimately, the article aims to highlight the potential of the public value view – considered in conjunction with performance measurement and performance management systems – without neglecting the challenging and problematic aspects of this wave of reform. The comparison with other waves of reform is intended to provide a clearer picture of the way forward for PVM.

Theoretical and methodological investigation, elaborating on the relevant literature on the process of public sector modernisation, is carried out.

The approaches that have emerged during the last two decades (PVM, NPG) are other than alternative solutions. But also less recent waves of change have left, or are expected to leave, their own legacy for public administration over time. This could be the case for NPM, although, according to many scholars, it is in trouble and has lost its driving force, while others see it as simply ‘dead’ and doomed to give way to the ‘digital-era governance’. Several core elements of NPM are no longer in evidence either in PVM or in NPG. Different distinguishing elements have been brought into the foreground. For instance, the idea of the public as citizens characterises PVM and NPG, instead of the public as customers, qualifying NPM. What we are seeing is a progressive expansion of the public’s involvement, through co-production and participation. Contemporary public officials interact with members of the public in ways that involve all of their possible roles: as citizens, customers, partners. There are two salient aspects under which public value thinking can contribute. First, a focus on public value can – better than other approaches – represent a ‘glue’ capable of bringing together debates involving ‘values, institutions, systems, processes, and people’ (Smith, 2004, p. 18). Second, such a focus makes it possible to link insights from different analytical perspectives, fostering a broader view on the determinants of public sector change. This could be of decisive importance for the purpose of reshaping performance measurement and performance management systems, which is a crucial step in public sector reform.

Significant contributions are offered under two aspects. First, in terms of exploration of the concepts of public value (also in relation to public values) and private value. Second, in terms of analysis of the impact that PVM can exert on the logic of performance measurement and performance management.

An international management movement known as New Public Management (NPM) emerged during the 1970s and 1980s. It relies on the normative use of economic market models, transaction cost theory, and public choice theories to deliver public services. While the manifestations of this new approach have taken many different avenues across the world, in the United States the primary manifestations have been found in the “Reinventing Government” movement (Gore, 1993), and the “Competitive Sourcing” plan of the Bush Administration (Office Management and Budget, 2002, 2003). A central component of NPM practices in the United States is the use of “outsourcing” of government service delivery to private or non-profit organizations.

This chapter discusses the implications of New Public Management (NPM) and of alternative theories on the higher education sector. Three clusters of alternative concepts and theories are identified, positioned in relation to NPM, and discussed. The chapter concludes that the different theoretical approaches: (1) cannot always be distinguished easily, (2) entail a risk of normativity due to the position of higher education in society, and (3) demonstrate that higher education policy and research are in need of a multi-theoretical approach that is able to put higher education back into its social, political, and economic context. By formulating research questions on the role of higher education and on the impact of former reforms, it is suggested that policy and research look further than the current concepts and theoretical approaches to build a new agenda for future.

Despite an abundance of studies on hybridization and hybrid forms of organizing, scholarly work has failed to distinguish consistently between specific types of hybridity. As a consequence, the analytical category has become blurred and lacks conceptual clarity. Our paper discusses hybridity as the simultaneous appearance of institutional logics in organizational contexts, and differentiates the parallel co-existence of logics from transitional combinations (eventually leading to the replacement of a logic) and more robust combinations in the form of layering and blending. While blending refers to hybridity as an “amalgamate” with original components that are no longer discernible, the notion of layering conceptualizes hybridity in a way that the various elements, or clusters thereof, are added on top of, or alongside, each other, similar to sediment layers in geology. We illustrate and substantiate such conceptual differentiation with an empirical study of the dynamics of public sector reform. In more detail, we examine the parliamentary discourse around two major reforms of the Austrian Federal Budget Law in 1986 and in 2007/2009 in order to trace administrative (reform) paradigms. Each of the three identified paradigms manifests a specific field-level logic with implications for the state and its administration: bureaucracy in Weberian-style Public Administration, market-capitalism in New Public Management, and democracy in New Public Governance. We find no indication of a parallel co-existence or transitional combination of logics, but hybridity in the form of robust combinations. We explore how new ideas fundamentally build on – and are made resonant with – the central bureaucratic logic in a way that suggests layering rather than blending. The conceptual findings presented in our paper have implications for the literature on institutional analysis and institutional hybridity.

This article attempts to capture and extend the lessons rendered in the previous articles in this book. In overview we may observe that over the past three decades, criticisms about government performance have surfaced across the world from all points of the political spectrum. Critics have alleged that governments are inefficient, ineffective, too large, too costly, overly bureaucratic, overburdened by unnecessary rules, unresponsive to public wants and needs, secretive, undemocratic, invasive into the private rights of citizens, self-serving, and failing in the provision of either the quantity or quality of services deserved by the taxpaying public (See, for example, Barzelay & Armajani, 1992; Osborne & Gaebler, 1993; Jones & Thompson, 1999). Fiscal stress has also plagued many governments and has increased the cry for less costly or less expansive government, for greater efficiency, and for increased responsiveness. High profile members of the business community, financial institutions, the media, management consultants, academic scholars and the general public all have pressured politicians and public managers to reform. So, too have many supranational organizations, including OECD, the World Bank, and the European Commission. Accompanying the demand and many of the recommendations for change has been support for the application of market-based logic and private sector management methods to government (see, for example, Moe, 1984; Olson, Guthrie, & Humphrey, 1998; Harr & Godfrey, 1991; Milgrom & Roberts, 1992; Jones & Thompson, 1999). Application of market-driven solutions and business techniques to the public sector has undoubtedly been encouraged by the growing ranks of public sector managers and analysts educated in business schools and public management programs (Pusey, 1991).

This chapter examines the role and importance of leadership in public management reform through the experience of Hong Kong. It aims to identify the gap between leadership in public organizations and public management reform in both theory and research and to make recommendations on how the gap can be bridged, particularly under the Asian context. It is a major irony that while both leadership and public management reform have a common concern of fostering positive change in public organizations, these two streams of research are separated, incompatible, and even conflicting. While leadership study is influenced by disciplines such as the psychology and emphasizes a multifaceted approach, most public management reforms are based on the New Public Management (NPM) model which is economics-oriented and structure-driven. Through studying the role of leadership in the public management reform in Hong Kong, it is argued the hollowing-out of leadership in reform is often one of the leading causes for the failure to achieve the expected outcomes. This chapter will elaborate its argument in the following sequence. First, it will review the generic literature on leadership to highlight the importance and relevancy of leadership for public organizations. Second, it will point out the leadership crisis in public management reform caused by the dominance of the NPM model. Finally, it will discuss the negative impact of the hollowing-out of leadership on public management reform and how this problem should be tackled.

The chapter summarises findings from a study on administrative reforms covering all central government ministries and agencies in 19 countries, examining reform trajectories seen from the top of the central administrative apparatus. Core structural features of the central bureaucracy are described, along with role perceptions, values and motivation of administrative executives. Reform processes, trends, content and management tools are addressed, leading up to similarities and differences between the Nordic countries and between them and other European families of countries. A main finding is that the Nordic bureaucracy represents a layered, complex and hybrid system combining different reform trends and that there is a clear North–South divide in Europe when it comes to administrative reforms.

The year 2020 is an epochal moment for governance and public administration. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has upset social and economic life, including the delivery of public services, and eroded domestic and international politics. It comes in an era of uncertainty resulting from the end of the New Public Management boom and a looming breakdown of the contemporary US-defined international order. Against such a sea change, we can hardly take business as usual. Change breeds indeterminacy but also induces reimagining. Any renewal and renaissance of public management has to address the ‘what’ and ‘how’ questions of governance in a low-trust and high-risk society. Both the capacity and legitimacy of the state need to be re-empowered, but no longer through the market. The dual failure of democratic politics and bureaucratic excellence in many countries has rendered the Wilsonian politics-administration dichotomy redundant. Amid the rise of East Asia, there are growing contentions over the conceptualization of meritocracy as alternative systems of governance and public service models seem to be delivering effective rivals. Governance performance may not be predetermined by regime types within a poly-polar world. We need to search for new reconnections, new leadership, a new basis for trust and consensus, and a new public service bargain to avoid getting bogged down in old wine in re-labelled bottle, or another singular universalist paradigm.