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This study examines unexplored horizontal accountability types between public, private and third sector actors within a hybrid organization. The case organization was applying a novel alliance model to generate service paths for heterogeneous clientele consuming cultural, educational, health and social services. It was first to do so in Finland.

This research is on a case study that used documents and interviews to examine the design of the horizontal accountability. The descriptive analysis focused on identifying what type of formal accountability system was designed (i.e. who is the account holder, and who is accountable and for what and why).

An imbalanced accountability system was identified because accountability obligations were unevenly distributed between public, private and third sector actors. The private sector was the most accountable for performance, and the third sector (i.e. voluntary sector) was the least accountable. As account holders, the public, private and third sector actors were judging their conduct as account providers. This created a biased horizontal accountability system. The hybrid's accountability system was dynamic because the contracts made to establish the hybrid included opportunities to change horizontal accountability if future changes to the external environment affect too drastically the potential to achieve the hybrid's goals.

Three new concepts are proposed for studying dysfunctional accountability systems: dynamic, biased and horizontally imbalanced accountability.

Neutrality has traditionally been considered a key trait of the civil service in Western democracies. The conception of the neutral bureaucracy is closely linked to the notion of the prominent politics–administration dichotomy of the two spheres of politics and administration, as advocated by Max Weber (1980) and Woodrow Wilson (1887). According to conventional wisdom, the firm and encompassing implementation of the merit principle realises the idea of a neutral bureaucracy. In that respect, neutrality and merit-based recruitments are often considered the opposite of politicisation. Conventionally, a neutral bureaucracy is considered to assure competence and immunity against opportunistic ideas brought in by volatile, sometimes erratic political leadership. Because elected politicians come and go with elections, they cannot ensure that political decisions are carried out based on the ‘best’ available knowledge. In that sense, bureaucrats are conceived as neutral, obedient servants that subordinate their behaviour to the will of political masters, to the law and the common good. However, there is no strict politics–administration dichotomy in contemporary politico-administrative systems. Empirical findings from the late 1970s onwards demonstrated that bureaucrats are by no means as neutral and ‘apolitical’ as assumed, but rather remarkably involved in political processes. This chapter discusses the literature on neutral competence and presents an empirical analysis of Danish and British civil servants’ accounts of neutrality. This chapter concludes by suggesting the concept of competent neutrality and discussing implications for our understanding of bureaucratic neutrality.

Compares and contrasts the writings of Max Weber and the US literature on public administration on the question of the appropriate role of the administrator in the political process. Examines the relevance of Weber’s analysis to the US experience. Concludes that Weber provides pertinent cautionary advice concerning the endorsement of an activist role for the administrator in political and policy processes.

This chapter examines one of the most contested issues in Public Administration, namely political–administrative relationships. The first part of the chapter begins with a brief overview of the features of an ideal-type bureaucracy. Next is a literature review of political–administrative relationships. This is followed by an analysis of typologies of political–administrative relationships, with particular reference to developing countries. The second part of the chapter analyses the evolution of political–administrative relationships since the dawn of South African democracy in 1994. It examines the growing politicisation of the public service, the weakening of the powers of public officials vis-a-vis Ministers and the emasculation of the PSC. Data indicate that the government is unable to fill posts at the Senior Management Service (SMS) level and that there are a high number of acting HoDs, an indicator of instability. Finally, it uses Dasandi and Esteve’s typology of political–administrative relationships in developing countries to interpret the South African case.

The purpose of this empirical study is to identify the job tasks where decisions regarding social responsibility are likely to occur and assess the potential connections between social responsibility and professionalism.

A job study conducted by the Universal Public Procurement Certification Council (UPPCC) of 2,593 practitioners is used for data collection. Factor analysis is applied to a set of 75 procurement job tasks to determine the relationship between practitioners’ performance and management of job tasks and social responsibility variables.

The results suggest that there are specific job tasks performed and managed in both public and private sector procurement that share a unique relationship with social responsibility variables.

The manuscript advances the research on professionalism in procurement and administration through empirically testing job tasks performed and managed by practitioners and identifying relationships between job tasks according to a professional orientation toward social responsibility.

The study shows that specific job tasks are performed and managed in procurement and administration with a social responsibility consideration.

The technical nature of job tasks found to be related to social responsibility suggests a paradoxical view of the politics-administration dichotomy, and the notion that neutral tasks of both the public and private sectors are not void of a social function.

One attribute of professionalism in the literature, social responsibility, is operationalized through actual performance and management of job tasks by practitioners.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to assess if the core value of Chinese traditional culture (harmony) still remains in managers’ hearts, and what factors influence this core value’s persistence. This was done by assessing the harmonious competencies of China’s county and department-level officials based on the competing values framework.

A survey of 1,000 county and department-level officials was taken at random based on the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security’s public sector employee listings. An empirical assessment was made and a hierarchical linear regression approach was used.

Though Chinese traditional culture has been blended with communist ideology and Western practices in government administration, the core value of Chinese bureaucracy still remains that which is carried in officials’ minds. In general, public officials possess a satisfactory level of harmonious competency. The regression results showed that some factors influence harmonious competency significantly, which disproves the view that harmonious competency might be merely engendered in officials by being born and growing up in Chinese traditional culture.

Given the assumption that a Chinese-born citizen could inherit the core value of its traditional culture is commonplace, the paper reveals that because the current Chinese culture is a mix of socialist thinking, traditional culture and Western practices, it cannot be assumed any more that the core value of Chinese culture is inherited automatically. On the contrary, it could be promoted by changing or cultivating certain factors in workplaces.

Begins with a brief overview of how public administration emerged as the positivist theory and technocratic practice of the modern administrative state. The question then becomes: To what extent has public administration been affected by the societal shift toward postmodernism? The author argues that public administration has moved some distance away from its positivist origins; however, the transformation of public administration is still incomplete. The author concludes that public administration should pay more attention to the recent developments of post‐positivist methods of analysis rather than attempting to adopt all the tenets of postmodernism. Large bureaucratic organizations remain typically modern, but they should not be either conceptualized or managed as small machines.