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To date, no single, large scale empirical study has been undertaken on the nature of the public sector management job in Scotland. Instead, accounts of public sector managerial work amount to no more than a personal epitome of skills managers need and roles that they assume, anecdotes preferred to empirical evidence. Where empirical research has been undertaken on managerial work, this is based almost entirely upon senior managers in business and industry, public managers ultimately featuring in studies as `token gestures'. Consequently, generalisations and typologies emerge about a `typical' managerial working day from the study of a selective group of predominantly business managers. Furthermore, the `New Public Management' (NPM) would appear to be the product of implicit and explicit assumptions about public management rather than the outcome of research. Academics provide an account of the reforms facing public managers based on opinions and conceptions, not on empirical evidence. Moreover, these academics pull together different managerial practices and contexts and lump them under the umbrella term `NPM'. Given that public managers have been exposed to reform in different ways, a break must surely be made from treating public management and managers as homogenous. By using a combination of observation and questionnaire research, this Thesis will attempt to redress the main deficit currently inherent in both the managerial work and NPM literatures, namely a complete disregard of the context in which individual managers work. Whilst observation will allow an in-depth examination of the impact of context on the management job, the questionnaires will provide an insight into managers' perceptions of the context in which they work and the values which they draw upon. Only by communicating with the very people who run public sector organisations can a full understanding be grasped of the nature of public sector managerial work.

This thesis analyses Human Resource Management (H.R.M) in English local government. The research shows how H.R.M in local authorities has been influenced by the development of New Public Management (N.P.M) that has adopted some but not all of the characteristics of H.R.M. N.P.M and H.R.M appear to have important differences arising from the unique nature of local government culture, organisation and structure. These differences were found in this study to prevent the full implementation of a strategic and effective form of H.R.M. As a result of these differences local government in England has developed a hybrid form of H.R.M suitable to the particular to the needs of local authorities. The study presents evidence that some cultural change has occurred in local authorities under H.R.M, particularly in the structure of organisations, and in the relationship between HR staff and managers. However, the inability of local authorities to overcome specific barriers to H.R.M means that the contribution H.R.M might make to the organisational performance of local councils is still unknown. These barriers are the inability of councils to produce integrated business and H.R strategies; underdevelopment of line managers; incomplete processes of devolution and decentralisation of HR responsibilities and issues arising from the political nature of local authorities.

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One of the outstanding features of capitalist society is its fluidity. What is the orthodoxy today stands a very good chance of being supplanted by a new orthodoxy tomorrow. Similarly, today's problems have every chance of being tomorrow's solutions. Accordingly, individuals and organisations are often faced with situations, contexts and environments which are new and challenging and contain the potential to disrupt existing control structures. Essentially, this contention is at the heart of this piece of work. The following pages will describe and discuss the impact that a 'new orthodoxy' has had on an existing organisational arrangement. Specifically, the work focuses on the child protection system of England and Wales to examine the effect that New Public Management, and its accompanying tendency to fragment organisations into managerialised purchaser or provider units, has had on the established organisational discourse of partnershipworking. It argues that the central features of nianagerialism core tasks, ownership, audit and ideology run counter to those features required to facilitate partnerships co-operation, sharing and resources exchange. Moreover, it suggests that the inherent mis-match between these two prominent organisational discourses is acting as a barrier to the effective implementation of either.

New Public Management (NPM) has been one of the dominant paradigms in public management since the 1980s. Its various elements have been adopted by many countries around the world in their public sector reforms. This research examines the most influential models of NPM and draws out the recurring elements among them. These elements are then employed to build the theoretical framework of how NPM may be related to the reforms in higher education sectors in two countries with highly contrasting contexts: the United Kingdom and China. The UK is an industrialized country that has been one of the pioneers in implementing NPM reforms in its public sector; whilst China, being a socialist country where its public sector has long been under the tight control of the government, is among the developing countries as one of the "late adopters" of NPM techniques in its public management reforms. The aim of this study is to examine the extent to which NPM reforms in these two countries shared any commonalities and divergences. Multiple cases studies are adopted as the main research method. Four universities are chosen: two in the UK and two in China. A comparative analysis of issues relating to the application of NPM techniques in the reforms in these two countries is provided. The NPM elements adopted during the reform processes in the four case studies are analyzed respectively according to the theoretical framework. The conditions under which various NPM elements have been introduced during the reforms are examined and the extent to which they have been applied in the higher education sector in both countries is explored. Results indicate that there has been a translation of NPM techniques from its original country (the UK) to the Chinese socio-economical and political environment. It has been found that although some of the NPM elements such as delayering and devolution of power are shared by both countries, divergences still exist in many aspects of their organizational changes. Meanwhile, the elite and non-elite group of universities in both countries have chosen different pathways in their reforms, which I have significant impacts on the outcomes. The implications of these case studies for future research on public sector management are discussed in the conclusion.

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The aim of this bachelor´s thesis is to examine the motivational factors for project management as a method for the regional library Kultur i Väst in Sweden, using qualitative content analysis and New Public Management (NPM) as the theoretical framework.. It was performed on eight applications for Kulturrådet from 2010 to 2015. The theoretical framework is based on New Public Management theory and a schematic for the analysis was constructed from several scientists established characteristics of NPM. The results showed that Kultur i Väst primary focus has been intercommunication and united action. Many of the projects were also focused on establishing a network between libraries and methods for collective marketing. These work proceedings correlated with established traits in NPM such as standardization and greater focus on reporting and evaluation. Three different reasons for this correlation were discussed. User demand, standardization and legitimation were all found to have implied or outright stated to be the motivational factor in the projects. The study came to the conclusion that the similarities between how Kulturrådet formulates demands on regional libraries and how Kultur i Väst plan and motivate their own strategies supports the idea of a connection between NPM and project as a method for regional libraries.

The focus of this research is on New Public Management and the implementation of public policy with specific reference to the policy on performance indicators and the management of further education in Scotland. The thesis considers the body of literature on public policy implementation and the current state of knowledge of performance indicators and their use in public management in general and in further education in Scotland in particular. Scottish further education faced radical change in the period from 1990 and part of the change was the introduction by Government of prescribed performance indicators. This research examines the public policy-action relationship by considering the implementation of this policy with particular reference to the differences associated with the relationships between performance governance, performance management and consumerism. The empirical elements of this thesis comprise a study of stakeholder perception of the purpose and utility of performance indicators. From this empirical work conclusions are derived which relate to the main beneficiaries of performance indicators and the extent to which public policy is best understood from a `top-down' or a 'bottom-up' perspective. The thesis concludes that neither of these perspectives is sufficient but both are necessary. The recognition of multiple stakeholder interest leads to a conclusion that implementation can only be examined by considering all stakeholder perceptions of the outputs and outcomes of the public policy on performance indicators in Scottish further education. Performance indicators are themselves a good reflection of the way in which NPM is evolving within public services.

Purpose: The study tries to drive back the concept of [policy] entrepreneurship to its basics according to Schumpeterian/Kirznerian approach by displaying its process of emergence and implementation in the public sector, and its interaction with institutions and their changes. Method: The study was conducted by using a qualitative content analysis examining the protocols of the board of the municipality Ö-vik under the current mandate period (2010 - 2013), internal documents related to policy acceptance, a citizen proposal and a proposition from a politician. Even interviews were conducted with some members of the board, an administrator and the external policy entrepreneur. Conclusions: Entrepreneurial act occurs when unnoticed opportunities are discovered, when a policy domain is in disequilibrium. The driving toward equilibrium is performed as a collective act and the entrepreneurial profit emerged returns to the discoverer. The implementation occurs when the politicians composing the majority in the board guarantee that their monopoly in the political market is maintained, the new actors (external policy entrepreneurs) neutralized and the change is controlled. A process of creating meaning/ proactive manipulation that is the rhetoric of NPM ideology submits entrepreneurial acts to the logic of economic rational calculation and neutralizes its creativity.