New Public Management

The development of the activating welfare state is accompanied by the changes in the management of public institutions towards a New Public Management (NPM) – type of administrative recommendations. This model has been

internationally accepted after being initiated in New Zealand in the 1980s with the name of New Public Management. While it is clear that no uniform NPM model exists, it can be referred to as a modernization of public management (Schedler and Proeller 2005). Furthermore, the term has been conceptualized by Pollitt and Bouckaert (2011) as capturing two dimensions: the theoretical idea of public sector improvement by business ideals and the practical level introducing NPM concepts and practices. The former is based on the ideological construction of a more effective, efficient and economic management of public institutions. In particular, a common aim of these reforms is to enhance the responsiveness of public agencies to the needs of the clients, to increase managerial accountability and reduce public expenditure (Wright 1994). The latter, in turn, is largely connected to the following aspects in public management literature (e.g. Bonvin and Moachon 2007, Emery and Giauque 2003, Pollitt and Bouckaert 2011):

o Emphasizing the measurement of outputs instead of inputs giving preference to 'performance' based evaluations by indicators

o Organizational restructuring as leaner, flatter, smaller and more specialized and autonomous

o Introducing contracts for coordinating services

o Integration of market-like mechanisms to induce competitiveness and thus efficiency of public services

o Increasing private-public partnerships and bringing consumerism to public services by introducing welfare recipients as clients

These aspects are seen as partly contradictory as the NPM introduces mixed elements of centralization and decentralization as well as regulation and control while promoting autonomy and flexibility (Christensen et al. 2007). The issue is related to the dilemma of granting enough autonomy for agencies and commercial units to function efficiently while keeping political control over them (Christensen and Lægreid 2004). The autonomy principle is related to the added value of NPM to empower the people it employs as well as the service users (Dent and Barry 2004).

There are naturally also differences between welfare regimes and countries when it comes to the emphasis on the NPM features listed. The wide variety of NPM related implementation strategies, ideas and practices makes it very hard to make a model in a coherent and unified way (Newman 2005). However, efforts have been made to identify some commonalities in country-comparisons.

The following comparison is based on the comparative analysis of NPM implications in 12 countries consisting of European countries and English-speaking continents by Pollitt and Bouckaert (2011). Mostly oriented to performance – driven strategies and preferring market-like mechanisms were the Anglo-Saxon countries such as the USA, UK and Canada. Performance – orientation entails a high emphasis on the performance indicators in evaluation.

The performance based strategies aim at achieving targets outlined in the provision agreements and contracts and thus set the obligation for local agents to improve their performance. Marketization, in turn, refers to the internationalization of the 'market' in management planning implying that

competitiveness increases efficiency. Instead, the continental European states (Belgium, France, Finland, Germany, and Italy) are described as less pro-NPM however responding to pressures by creating a mix for the country's purposes.

When it comes to Switzerland, NPM strategies have an important role in the public administration, however with relatively low emphasis on marketization (Emery and Giauque 2003). This issue will be further explored in the next chapter focusing on the Swiss welfare system.

Since the introduction of the market mechanisms to public services, the discourses on 'consumer choice' and 'service user' have taken off to describe the people in need of social care services. According to Newman and Tonkens (2011) these developments put an emphasis on choice while providing an entry into the 'public sphere of full citizenship' (p. 193) for some people and thus have a tendency to transfer the relationship from one based on solidarity to that of exchange. While providing opportunities and empowering some individuals, the overall impact of marketization is to undermine public responsibility in society (Newman 2011). In addition, the perception of the increased choice provided by the marketization of public services hides the difference between steered and empowered choices. While the latter promote empowering the citizens to improve their quality of life, steered choices empower the policy makers as the process of decision-making is imposed on citizens reinforcing the marketized governing of social services (Tonkens 2011). Behind the empowering efforts lies, then, the government efforts for activation that in the end support their own ends, not activation that challenges their work (Newman 2011).

For social work in the UK, marketization has meant a development towards a quasi-business focusing on performance standards and 'user involvement' (Heffernan 2006; quotation marks in original). The result has been a 'McDonaldization' of social work, which on one hand refers to the increasing orientation towards consumer logic, and on the other, the development towards higher control of the work done by social workers given to managers. Thereby, social workers have become care managers providing care packages for clients after assessment (Dustin 2007). Also in Finland, which has been described as less oriented towards marketization, new types of management contest the functioning of the public sector by replacing it with the logic and action of a company (Eräsaari 2011). Despite these developments, Osborne and McLaughlin (2005) warn against focusing too much on marketization of public services. Such tendencies have been evident in the past implying an overly narrow perspective on the issue. Instead, they propose that NPM should be more related to a change towards plural state and public services replacing a unitary government provision and management.

The developments towards NPM pose challenges also to social work at the local level. Thereby, implementation of the ethical base guiding the work of the social workers is faced with new challenges and interpretations. The International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW) outlines the ethical guidelines for social work by promoting best practice models and the facilitation of international cooperation. These guidelines recognize the accountability of the workers for their actions before the law and the clients, colleagues and their employer as well as trade unions. At the same time the ethical requirements recognize customer orientation, mutual trust and fairness. The NPM based strategies

introducing the client - based approach of increased control, evaluation and monitoring as well as pressures for efficient and cost-effective service production have been shown to complicate the work of the social workers (Ferguson 2007).

Therefore, the latter have fewer opportunities to fulfill the requirements for ethical social work as the accountability principle is based on economic indicators focusing on outcomes rather than quality. These issues are related with the decrease in chances of building trust with the clients, for early intervention, for respecting the legal frame and for maintaining the ethical requirements of social work (Mänttäri -van der Kuip 2013).

With regard to employment policies, NPM entails a classical top-down approach as the human competences of both the local agents and the clients are instrumentalized and centrally evaluated by quantitative measures (Bonvin and Farvaque 2003). Evidence of Swiss employment services shows that performance indicators are reduced to employment rates decreasing the scope of such evaluations in terms of job quality. In addition, local actors are constrained to intervene in a specific manner by practices such as benchmarking and the use of performance indicators. These guidelines are given from the central level and have a tendency to inhibit targeted and individual case-management (Bonvin and Farvaque 2003, 2007).

Evelyn Brodkin (2011) relates performance indicators used for 'steering' discretionary practices to the flawed assumption that it is not necessary to consider the ways in which this steering is done. Hence, it is enough to control the attainment of the performance benchmarks, which will automatically bring positive results. The assumption includes that it is possible to strategically manipulate the performance indicators and incentives in order to control discretion and direct it towards the targets. She claims that these expectations are too simplistic since the street-level practitioners do not simply respond to the performance incentives. Instead, they use informal ways of adjusting to these guidelines, resulting in substantively different outcomes from those that the reform originally was supposed to bring about.

While proponents of NPM have shown positive effects in the form of cost efficiency and service effectiveness in public and non-profit management (Lane 1999), as demonstrated, wide amount of criticism has been directed to them.

One of these critiques comes from the capability approach claiming that such measures are prone to carry a focus on the human capital of individuals as instruments for enhancing economic growth. From this perspective the simplistic understanding of employability can be criticized as it conceives individuals as a means to increase economic productivity. Instead, the CA perspective consists of promoting the value of a human being as an end per se (Sen 1999). In addition, market based governance models risk overlooking local contexts and individual features by promoting standardized measures and may lead to creaming practices and selectiveness. These are situations where the local agents have a tendency to favor beneficiaries that enable the attainment of fixed targets leading to neglect of the most vulnerable groups (Bonvin 2008).