Advancing knowledge on organizational change and public sector work

Advancing knowledge on organizational change and public sector work

Article Type: Guest editorial From: Journal of Organizational Change Management, Volume 28, Issue 4.

A recent literature review on change management in the public sector by Kuipers et al. (2014) argue that there is a need to adopt a public administration perspective (see Tummers, 2013; Vann, 2004). This is because the change management literature has tended to focus on the private sector with little attention being paid to the way public sector workers experience and respond to change (Kickert, 2010).

This Special Issue contributes to the need for thoughtful and critical assessment of organizational change (such as that induced via new public management (NPM)) and public sector work. Of particular interest is the role managers as leaders take as agents of change (Fernandez and Rainey, 2006), developing better theoretical understandings of public sector management and governance of change, and formulating practical, evidence-based principles for implementing change (Azzone and Palermo, 2011; Barton Cunningham and Kempling, 2009).

When we first proposed this Special Issue we could not have imagined the diversity of papers that we would receive. As a consequence, it is methodologically very diverse, including longitudinal case studies, surveys, interviews and narrative methods. It also has a wide international scope with studies from the USA, UK, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand. Taken together, the papers in this issue provide some interesting insights into organizational change and public sector work. Two major themes emerged. First, it is not only the nature and character of change that counts, it is also very much about the process; leadership in change management is crucial. Second, next to studying intended effects, we can sometimes learn much by examining unintended effects of reform.

We also found the papers in this issue point to areas that will be of interest to those wanting to research the issue of organization change and public sector work further. It is clear that more studies are needed that should employ a multimethod/mixed-method design (there were some in this Special Issue that benefited from combining the analytical strengths of two methodological approaches). We also found that there is a need for more studies that go beyond examining the role of management. Instead our gaze could be shifted to those departments in public sector organizations that have a role in making employees ready for change, for example, HR, given that HR practices can increase proactivity and lower stress.

When reading the papers in this issue it is important to keep in mind the profound effects of NPM ideology that has underpinned public sector reform since the 1980s (Diefenbach, 2009; Hood, 1991; Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2011). At its core is a problematization of existing public sector institutional forms and operations. The proposed solution was to establish organizational arrangements within (and outside) state bureaucracies that could be subjected to modern management as practiced in the private sector (Brunsson, 2011). Central to this are the ideas of steering, effectiveness, and efficiency, which proponents of NPM argue improve public administration by increasing accountability and productivity. Organizational change arising from NPM tended to be around structure, culture, strategy processes, and strategy content (Ashworth et al., 2009). Some examples of these changes include the development of internal market-like competition, casualization of employment, and the contracting-out of services in public hospitals, schools, and public transport.

Despite the sizeable theoretical arguments in support of NPM-inspired change, empirical research has not always produced results supporting the predicted desirable outcomes. Rather than improving performance, change has tended to create stressful environments for employees, especially arising from reductions in government funding and tighter government requirements to do more with less, having “more bang for your buck.” This can have significant deleterious effects on employee well-being which can in-turn negatively influence recruitment and retention. Conley (2002), for example, found that NPM reform is connected to an increasing use of temporary and insecure employment arrangements. This is clearly evident in the higher education sector where wide and deep changes to the forms and cultures of universities resulting from NPM-inspired change have led to increased job insecurity and stress (Chandler et al., 2002).

This Special Issue on organization change and public work provides insights into various countries, including the USA, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and the Netherlands. The theme for this issue emerged from a symposium held at the 2011 Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management in San Antonio on “Organizational Change in Public Sector Health Care Organizations and Universities” organized by three of the current Special Issue guest editors. A common thread throughout this symposium was the effects of NPM and concern seemed to arise about the need to develop new insights and to develop a clear point of difference between insights gained from mainstream management theories about change and those specific to public sector research. Much has been published about organizational change in the public sector over the past two decades and discussion about this has been well rehearsed (see e.g. recent contributions by Christensen and Lægreid, 2011; Tummers, 2011; Kuipers et al., 2014). This Special Issue then presented us with the challenge of framing it in a way that elicited papers that made interesting and original contributions that are consensus challenging and path (up)setting (Alvesson and Sandberg, 2013). To achieve this we selected papers that presented a variety of approaches and perspectives that explore the boundaries of our current ways of understanding and researching public sector organization change.

The collection of papers in this issue provides interesting and thoughtful assessments of public sector change. The first paper is one that sets the scene for this issue. Yeo and Marquardt advise that those contemplating reform should need to consider their actions. In an examination of the implementation of technology and e-government in the Malaysian public sector new theoretical insights are provided into the influence of agency and structure on strategy and performance when technological innovations are introduced. Interestingly this paper identifies both intended and unintended consequences of change. This is something practitioners should pay particular attention to – hence the title of the paper, “Think before you act.” In the second paper in this collection the importance of leadership in change is brought into focus. Bish, Newton and Johnston pay close attention to the role of public sector managers as leaders in change. They apply innovation and diffusion theory to examining change-related outcomes in Australian public sector organizations. In tracing the relative influences of distal and proximal leadership they find each are important contextual factors in the effective implementation of change.

The third paper shifts attention to the macro-scale. Ahmed, Belzanova and Cohen present a welcome longitudinal analysis of NPM reform. In this study it is the New Zealand electricity supply industry that cones under scrutiny. The authors suggest that while evolutionary change theory is a useful conceptual and analytical tool for understanding public sector change, this evolution can be non-linear and not necessarily path dependent. This connects well to Yeo and Marquardt’s finding about reform in the Malaysian context where unintended consequences of change often arise. This could be because the major stakeholder (national government) exerts significant and perhaps unpredictable influence on the pace and direction of reform.

Reform to the electricity supply industry is also the focus of attention in the fourth paper that connects the macro view in the previous paper to a micro perspective on change. In this study, Descubes and MacNamara break away from mainstream management research by introducing Theatre-Based Learning methods to assist with change efforts. In their analysis of change in the French electricity supply industry narrative research methods are employed to provide new non-linear perspectives to our understanding of public sector change referred to in the second paper as well as some new practice insights that public sector managers might consider when planning change programs.

The effects of change on employees is the topic of the fifth paper. Dasborough, Lamb and Suseno undertake a phenomenographic study of emotional responses to change amongst staff working in Australian public universities. This research makes us think again about how employees in public sector organizations respond to change. Of particular interest is the effect of gender and conditions of employment and the gradual shift from “anticipatory emotions” to a new set of “realized emotions” identified by the authors.

In the sixth paper, Kelliher and Parry examine the effects of reform in the British National Health Service. This research suggests that it is the way change is implemented and its outcomes that are associated with stress rather than the nature of change itself. This finding is reinforced and developed in the seventh paper by O’Mari and Paull that focusses on the Australian public sector. This paper demonstrates that while NPM-inspired change is well established, it is the way it has been implemented that causes most tension and negative behaviors in the workplace.

The eighth paper, Kellis and Ran undertake a study of how management implement change in public sector organization from a leadership perspective. They examine a case history of leadership failure in the US Medicare and Medicaid services agency. They find that a focus on leadership is an important aspect of successful change implementation. The issue of effective management and leadership is taken further in the ninth paper by Xerri, Nelson, Brunetto and Reid who focus on the effects of NPM-inspired reform on the management of publicly owned assets. They conclude that quality of management culture, particularly the degree of autonomy that managers give to those they supervise is an important factor in ensuring effective asset management practices.

An interesting perspective on the importance of the relationship between managers raised in previous papers is given in a study of public health services by Rodwell, Flower and Demir in the tenth paper in this collection. They examine the effects of change on the psychological contract of medical practitioners in an Australian maternity hospital setting. In finding that organizational justice is an important aspect in that the participants in this study they find that psychological contract is affected by the degree to which management fulfill promises they make during the change process.

The last paper in the second half of this issue continues the theme of managing change. In this paper, Tummers, Kruyen, Vijverberg and Voesenek examine employees in Dutch health care organizations. They aim to connect Human Resource Management (HRM) with change management by analyzing how HRM practices can improve employees’ capabilities to cope with change. They suggest that three HRM practices can stimulate change readiness: high autonomy, high participation in decision making and high-quality teamwork. This last paper provides a useful counterpoint to the previous papers by drawing attention to the employee level and involving the role of HRM into change management. On the one hand there are questions about NPM-inspired change because it has often been asserted that it is the nature of NPM-inspired change that leads to stress. But many papers in this issue suggest that it is the how that is more important: how does management implement change? Related to this, the last paper shows that there is a core role for HRM, next to (line) managers. This raises a number of questions requiring further research attention about the relationship between public sector change, those who are responsible for implementing change and those who are subject to change.

We hope the papers presented in this issue are interesting and useful to both academic researchers and practitioners and meets our goal of encouraging new thinking about change and public sector work.

Compiling these papers is the fruit of the efforts of many people. We would also like to thank Professor Slawek Magala who accepted our proposal and the editorial office staff whose hard work and professionalism helped make this Special Issue a reality. We thank the reviewers for their work in producing the papers:

Geoff Plimmer

Karolina Mikolajewska

Agata Dembek

Alison Thirwall

Amy Tian

Ann Dadich

Ben Farr-Wharton

Ben Kuipers

Bing Ran

Dianne Gardner

Fiona Buick

Julie Douglas

Katherine Ravenswood

Marie Dasborough

Megan Paull

Pawel Krzyworzeka

Peter Steane

Richard Sisley

Roy Smollan

Slawomir Magala

Yvonne Brunetto

Associate Professor David Pick - School of Management, Curtin University, Perth, Australia

Professor Stephen T.T. Teo - AUT Business School, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand

Associate Professor Lars Tummers - Department of Public Administration, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands and Center for the Study of Law and Society, University of California, Berkeley, California, USA, and

Professor Cameron Newton - Department of Management, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia

References

Alvesson, M. and Sandberg, J. (2013), “Has management studies lost its way? Ideas for more imaginative and innovative research”, Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 50 No. 1, pp. 128-152

Ashworth, R., Boyne, G. and Delbridge, R. (2009), “Escape from the iron cage? Organizational change and isomorphic pressures in the public sector”, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Vol. 19 No. 1, pp. 165-187

Azzone, G. and Palermo, T. (2011), “Adopting performance appraisal and reward systems: a qualitative analysis of public sector organisational change”, Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 24 No. 1, pp. 90-111

Barton Cunningham, J. and Kempling, J.S. (2009), “Implementing change in public sector organizations”, Management Decision, Vol. 47 No. 2, pp. 330-344

Christensen, T. and Lægreid, P. (Eds) (2011), The Ashgate Research Companion to New Public Management, Ashgate, Farnham

Conley, H. (2002), “A state of insecurity: temporary work in the public services”, Work, Employment & Society, Vol. 16 No. 4, pp. 725-737

Diefenbach, T. (2009), “New public management in public sector organizations: the dark sides of managerialistic ‘enlightenment’”, Public Administration, Vol. 87 No. 4, pp. 892-909

Fernandez, S. and Rainey, H.G. (2006), “Managing successful organizational change in the public sector”, Public Administration Review, Vol. 66, pp. 168-176

Hood, C. (1991), “A public management for all seasons”, Public Administration, Vol. 19 No. 1, pp. 3-19

Kickert, W.J.M. (2010), “Managing emergent and complex change: the case of Dutch agencification”, International Review of Administrative Sciences, Vol. 76 No. 3, pp. 489-515

Kuipers, B.S., Higgs, M.J., Kickert, W.J.M., Tummers, L.G., Grandia, J. and Van der Voet, J. (2014), “The management of change in public organisations: a literature review”, Public Administration, Vol. 92 No. 1, pp. 1-20

Pollitt, C. and Bouckaert, G. (2011), Public Management Reform: A Comparative Analysis, 3rd ed., Oxford University Press, Oxford

Tummers, L.G. (2011), “Explaining the willingness of public professionals to implement new policies: a policy alienation framework”, International Review of Administrative Sciences, Vol. 77 No. 3, pp. 555-581

Tummers, L.G. (2013), Policy Alienation and the Power of Professionals: Confronting New Policies, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham

Vann, J.L. (2004), “Resistance to change and the language of public organizations: a look at ‘clashing grammars’ in large-scale information technology projects”, Public Organization Review, Vol. 4 No. 1, pp. 47-73

Further reading

Brunsson, N. (2011), “New public organisations: a revivalist movement”, in Chrsitensen, T. and Lægreid, P. (Eds), The Ashgate Companion to New Public Management, Ashgate, Farnham, pp. 65-82

Chandler, J., Barry, J. and Clark, H. (2002), “Stressing academe: the wear and tear of the new public management”, Human Relations, Vol. 55 No. 9, pp. 1051-1069