LEAGUE TABLES

League Tables

League Tables

Introduction

In this paper, therefore, we will first set out what we mean by (respectively) NPM, impacts and meta-analysis, and then go on to review the substance of our findings thus far. This definitional exercise was anything but simple, and the interpretation of our results rests significantly on a number of significant definitional and operational choices that we made (and were, in fact, obliged to make, in one way or another). These choices are discussed below (Beniger 1986, p. 8). We have distinguished between impacts on processes, outputs and outcomes. Within those broad categories we have paid particular attention to impacts on efficiency, effectiveness, and the attitudes of those who use public services. We have also looked for evidence of impacts on social cohesion, which for our particular purposes we have defined as having to do with equality of access to services and with the solidarity and commitment of public servants themselves (Beniger 1986, p. 8).

Discussion

The increasingly influential Public Management Committee of the OECD came out with a series of publications that seemed to suggest that most of the developed world, at least, was travelling along roughly the same road (Beniger 1986, p. 8). This direction involved developing performance management; introducing more competition to the public sector, offering quality and choice to citizens, and strengthening the strategic, as opposed to the operational role of the centre (see e.g. OECD, 1995). Whilst it is now fairly clear that the whole of the world was not following the same path it remains true that NPM ideas spread vary widely, and are often still seen as the most obvious route to modernization (Beniger 1986, p. 8).

Use of League tables to Provide Public Services

There have been many definitional disputes and ambiguities about exactly what the key elements of this widespread trend were supposed to be: There is now a substantial branch industry in defining how NPM should be conceptualised and how NPM has changed (Latour 2007, p. 98). For the purposes of this meta-analysis we will assume (like Dunleavy) that the NPM is a two-level phenomenon. At the higher level it is a general theory or doctrine that the public sector can be improved by the importation of business concepts, techniques and values (Latour 2007, p. 98). This was very clearly seen, for example, when the then US Vice President personally endorsed a popular booklet entitled Business like government: lessons learned from America's best companies (Latour 2007, p. 98). Then, at the more mundane level, NPM is a bundle of specific concepts and practices, including:

Greater emphasis on 'performance', especially through the measurement of outputs

A preference for lean, flat, small, specialized (disaggregated) organizational forms over large, multi-functional forms (e.g., semi-autonomous executive agencies)

A widespread substitution of contracts for hierarchical relations as the principal coordinating device

A widespread injection of market-type mechanisms (MTMs) including competitive tendering, public sector league tables, performance-related pay and various user choice mechanisms (Latour 2007, p. 98)

An emphasis on treating service users as 'customers' and on the ...