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Contemporary Public Administration in New Zealand : Stories, Culture, Values.
De Gruyter Bristol University Press/Policy Press Complete eBook-Package 2025 Available online
View online- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Scott, Rodney.
- Language:
- English
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource (0 pages)
- Edition:
- 1st ed.
- Place of Publication:
- Bristol : Bristol University Press, 2025.
- Summary:
- This book provides an up-to-date account of New Zealand public administration, including insider stories of leading reform. Hailed for its distinctiveness and high performance, New Zealand’s radical public service reforms of the 1980s were studied, praised, criticised, and emulated around the world. However, New Zealand has not stood still. The 80s model had tremendous strengths, reducing some problems but also creating new problems and exacerbating others. More recent reforms layered cultural and behavioural approaches on top of earlier changes. This book, co-authored by the former head of the New Zealand public service, describes decades of change, what worked, what didn’t, and what challenges remain.
- Contents:
- Front Cover
- Contemporary Public Administration in New Zealand: Stories, Culture, Values
- Copyright Page
- Table of Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- Small and weird, but effective
- New Zealand public administration has moved on
- Recent changes have happened slowly, progressively
- The organisational metaphor has changed
- Autonomy and discretion
- Administrative discretion
- Research approach
- Outline of this book
- Exclusions
- A note on proverbs and aphorisms
- 2 Old and New
- Te Tiriti o Waitangi/.The Treaty of Waitangi
- More Westminster than Westminster
- What was it like working in a rules-.based bureaucracy?
- Radical autonomy
- Organisational theory
- The practice of radical autonomy
- Same Day Service
- The downsides of radical autonomy
- Contractualism
- New institutional economics
- Contractualism applied
- Initial enthusiasm, drift, and decoupling
- Priority setting
- The 21st century
- Managing for Outcomes
- Resilience
- Better public services
- The Public Service Act 2020
- Think strategically, act opportunistically
- 3 Culture and Values
- Burning down the village and losing our heart?
- Public service culture
- Defining public service values
- A cultural approach in a cultural context
- Kaitiakitanga
- Manaakitanga
- Whanaungatanga
- Values in this book
- Values versus compliance
- New Zealand's historical approach to culture and values
- Unified public service culture
- Social identity
- Differentiated and unified culture
- Building culture
- Contested values
- Political neutrality and civic activity
- Exemptions from the merit principle
- 4 Stewardship
- Conceptions of stewardship
- Stewardship as responsible management
- Stewardship as goal alignment
- Stewardship as an intergenerational obligation.
- Stewardship as connectedness
- Braiding rivers
- The path dependence of a distinct New Zealand public service bargain
- The historic public service bargain in New Zealand.
- The Public Service Leadership Team
- The emergence of stewardship
- The treasures of the public service
- Trust and relational assets
- Successes, tensions, constraints, and unfinished business
- Public service bargains thrive in ambiguity
- Two communities
- Who voted for you, anyway?
- Explain but don't advocate
- If you want to go fast, go alone
- if you want to go far, go together
- The normative power of peer expectation
- 5 Purpose
- Public service motivation, altruism, prosocial motivation, mission valence
- Public service motivation
- Prosocial motivation
- Altruism
- Mission valence
- Nurturing the spirit of service that public servants bring to their work
- Selecting for a spirit of service to the community
- Cultivating public service values
- Promoting leaders who display a spirit of service
- Leadership models
- Leading with mission
- Leveraging the meaningfulness of work
- Goal setting
- The challenges of institutionalising change
- The dark side of a spirit of service to the community
- Implications of a spirit of service to the community
- 6 Inclusion
- Equal employment opportunity, diversity management, and representative bureaucracy
- A history of inequality in New Zealand public service organisations
- Equal employment opportunity in New Zealand
- Past perceptions of inclusion in the New Zealand public service
- Practices for building a more diverse and inclusive New Zealand public service
- Addressing bias
- Cultural competence
- Employee-.led networks
- Fostering diverse leadership
- Inclusive leadership
- What has made a difference?
- The current state of diversity, representativeness, opportunity, and inclusion.
- Pay gaps and pay equity
- Current perceptions of inclusion
- Shifting from the easy steps to the hard ones
- Selecting the most salient dimensions
- It is not clear what the numbers should be
- Unifying, not dividing
- 7 Open Government
- Fostering a culture of open government
- Transparency and comprehensibility
- Transparency in practice
- Accountability or countability
- Accountability in practice
- Own it, fix it, learn from it
- Types of participatory processes
- Participatory processes
- Emerging practices
- Partnership
- Barriers to sharing decision-.making
- Fear of letting go
- Attitudes towards expertise
- The representativeness of representative groups
- Churn and relationships
- 8 Coordination
- What is coordination?
- Common outcomes
- Common functions
- Common service delivery
- Categories of organisations
- The emergence of fragmentation as the defining challenge
- The Results programme
- Functional and professional leadership
- System leadership and the Public Service Leadership Team
- Service integration
- Changes to the funding system
- Expanding the toolkit
- Joint ventures
- Networks
- Clans
- From structure to culture
- Structures and trust
- Partnerships outside of government
- Collaborative capacity
- Up-.and-.down and side-.to-.side
- A cultural view
- 9 Conclusion
- Revisiting discretion
- Generalisability and transfer
- COVID-.19 and stress-.testing the public service
- How did the public service respond?
- Reform moments, windows, and tides
- A three-.legged stool
- Acting opportunistically
- The battles not fought
- Further changes to the public management system
- Everything is digital, and digital is everything?
- From a narrow to a broad conception of public service
- Public service values as a subset of public values
- Challenges ahead
- The glide path.
- The ever-.present risk of politicisation
- Reflections on leading reform
- References
- Index.
- Notes:
- Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.
- ISBN:
- 1-5292-3889-7
- 1-5292-3886-2
- 1-5292-3888-9
- OCLC:
- 1509443057
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