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Sets out to present current dynamics of public management reform in Austria, a country that is characterized by institutional governance features (federal structure, legalistic Rechtsstaat tradition) often described as an obstacle to management‐oriented reforms. The paper's focus lies in the reception of management ideas and concepts by public sector executives within this special national context and in differences between federal and state administration.

Presents results of a recent questionnaire‐based executive survey (sample size: 385). Apart from non‐parametric correlation analyses, investigates level differences (federal vs state) by using an independent samples Mann‐Whitney U rank sum test.

Highlights the importance of the national institutional background for understanding public management changes. Finds considerable support for reform initiatives despite some scepticism and resistance towards management knowledge and instruments. Results confirm that executives in a legalistic Rechtsstaat system are not per se opposed to management‐driven reforms. Regarding the reception of public management reforms, at various government levels, differences between federal and state level are less pronounced than expected.

Addresses the lack of empirical research regarding the reception of management ideas in legalistic Rechtsstaat systems by presenting data from a country which has hardly been covered by international public management literature so far. This study also compares the reception at federal and state administration to look for level variations of management reform dynamics.

In the German Civil Service, a system of performance appraisals has played a pivotal role with regard to promotion. Therefore, individual appraisals have frequently been objects of far‐reaching judicial review. In addition, the modern target culture leads to an integration of elements of target setting and evaluation into the work of the civil service. Resulting tensions are an expression of a fundamental difference between traditional bureaucratic administrations based on the principles of the Rechtsstaat and the demands of a culture associated with the impacts of New Public Management. The article depicts that in an environment based on judicial scrutiny, performance‐related elements almost necessarily lead to more, rather than less, bureaucracy and possibly even to negative impacts on the motivation of the people evaluated. Consequently, the full‐scale Rechtsstaat might prevent the efficiency‐enhancing elements from taking effect.

The meaning of justice and dignity have changed over time, as has the idea of a normative or moral ‘foundation’. Given that justice and dignity are commonly ascribed foundational roles in practical philosophy, this chapter charts important changes in these concepts and changes in how they have interacted. The ideas of rights and status capture the most persistent points of interaction between justice and dignity. However, because rights and status are themselves unstable concepts, and because both rely upon contextual theories of freedom and the state for their meaning, no simple reconciliation between justice and dignity as foundations is possible. In sum, we cannot treat justice and dignity as equally foundational if foundational is taken to mean the final determinant of our obligations.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate, through different interpretative theories, the implementation and operation of performance measurement systems (PMS) considering the factors crucial in influencing the development and the operational difficulties of the PMS in a context such as Italy, which is typically unresponsive to new public management-inspired ideas.

A theoretical framework is developed through the use of new institutional sociology and management control theory. The empirical study involves the whole ministerial sector, and explores some strategic documents belonging to the new PMS introduced in Italy in 2009.

The research illustrates a widespread dissemination of the reform in ministries. However, it has also shown the ceremonial and superficial implementation of the PMS. In addition, the findings confirm that the operation and the actual development of a PMS is strongly affected by the characteristics of the activity under examination.

The peculiarity of the Italian context limits the generalizability of the findings to countries with similar public sector management and culture. Further studies may investigate the system through an individual perspective, i.e. exploring the role of individual managers in slowing down the operations of the evaluation systems.

This paper contributes to the debate on the implementation and operation of administrative reforms in legalistic countries also known as Rechtsstaat countries. The use of multiple theories allows investigating the subject matter by considering its complexity in a holistic way.

A well-coordinated public sector is often considered to be of major importance, but at the same time it appears to be a huge challenge. Public sector reforms struggling with the coordination conundrum are numerous and countries display a certain dynamic in their adoption of coordination instruments throughout time. On the one hand, it is sensible to presume that – to a certain extent – countries are stimulated to adopt similar coordination instruments, because of isomorphic processes induced by factors such as the spread of the new public management line of thought or the multiplication of exchanges of good practices at an international level. On the other hand, culture-linked elements might have an important role to play in explaining idiosyncrasies. By examining the conceptual link between coordination and culture through an empirical analysis for four counties (UK, New Zealand, France, and Sweden), it is the aim of this chapter to explore the relevance of culture for understanding coordination trajectories of individual countries.

Since the 1970s the Supreme Audit Institutions (SAI) have gradually expanded their role as external controllers of the public administration. Instead of merely controlling whether accounts are according to standards they have taken on a role as evaluators with a mandate to assess whether the public administration works economically, efficiently and effectively. With this new regime of external control, the question arises whether the SAIs’ control, in practice, contributes to a more efficient and effective public sector. Whether this external control will be effective depends, in the end, on the extent to which the organisations learn from the control they are subjected to and make actual changes. The chapter uses theories of cultural differences and theories on control within public administration to understand civil servant perceptions of SAI results. Data on civil servants’ reactions to the SAIs’ performance audit in four countries are analysed to see whether performance audits have any impact on the audited entities. The research is based on 696 responses to questionnaires sent out to civil servants in three different Nordic countries plus one new democracy in northern Europe, Estonia.

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.

Many changes taking place in the public sector raise value questions. Examples are New Public Management, mixed governance forms, globalised recipes on good governance, transnationalisation of public organisations and clashes between Christian and Islamic values in most European states. How to deal with value confusion and value conflicts, thus, is an important challenge for the public manager. Stated in 10 normative prescriptions, various strategies are suggested in the paper. The basic questions addressed are two. How can public management distinguish the central values from those of lesser interest? And how can public management handle value conflicts and organisational design conflicts

After some discussion of Habermas’ model of reconstruction and the ways in which he and others have applied it to the European Union (EU), I venture some remarks about the development of EU law and European democracy.

I trace the way in which a meta-theory of social science can be extended to illuminate questions of political and constitutional legitimacy.

It is found that Habermas’s model points to the double character of EU citizenship, in which one is a citizen both of the Union and of one if its member states, and the corresponding creative tension between these two levels of governance.

A contribution to the so-far rather under-developed theorisation of the political philosophy of a united Europe.