Following on from the success of the editors' previous book, New Public Management: The Transformation of Ideas and Practice, which examined the public reform process up to the end of the last ...decade, this new volume draws on the previous knowledge both theoretically and empirically. It examines and debates the post-new public management reform development in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Australia and New Zealand. The ideal follow-up to the previous volume, this book includes many of the same contributors in addition to some fresh voices, and is a must for anyone looking for an integrated framework of analysis. Comprehensive and analytical, it is an important contribution to the study of public administration and particularly to the reform of public management.
Tom Christensen is from the University of Oslo and Per Lægreid is from the University of Bergen, both in Norway.
Contents: Preface; Introduction - theoretical approach and research questions, Tom Christensen and Per Lægreid; Still fragmented government or reassertion of the centre?, Tom Christensen, Amund Lie and Per Lægreid; Reform design and performance in Australia and New Zealand, John Halligan; Types of state organisations: arguments, doctrines and changes beyond new public management, Paul G. Roness; Convergence and standardization in telecommunications regulation: trajectories of change and reform in the Asian Pacific regulatory state, Martin Painter; Organizing immigration - a comparison of New Zealand and Norway , Tom Christensen, Per Lægreid and Richard Norman; Central banking reform across the world: only by night are all cats grey, Martin Marcussen; Quests for transparency: signs of a new institutional era in the health care field, Maria Blomgren and Kirstin Sahlin-Andersson; Public-private partnerships: a comparative perspective on Victoria and Denmark, Carsten Greve and Graeme Hodge; (The difficult art of) outsourcing welfare services: experiences from Sweden and New Zealand, Anders Forssell and Lars Norén; New public management and the ghost of Max Weber: exorcised or still haunting?, Robert Gregory; Bibliography; Index.
Trust in government is expected to promote effective implementation of public services. However, people in different cultures and on different levels do not always recognize the same concept of ...trust. Using a survey for Japanese and Norwegian citizens, the primary factors determining trust on the local level are examined. The analysis shows that the satisfaction with public service performance is highly influential in both countries, which is partly also true for political-cultural factors, while demographical factors are of minor influence. There are also variations in trust toward different institutions and actors, and the national factor is also significant.
How do Norwegian government officials perceive the dilemma between liberty and security after the 2011 terrorist attacks? A survey from 2016 shows that the central government officials' attitudes are ...rather similar to the general population. Both are willing to trade individual rights for more societal security. Structural, cultural, and demographic features explain variations in the civil servants' views. Position and perceptions of crisis management capacity make a difference. Officials responsible for crisis management are more willing to prioritize security. Low conflict, high trust, and a strong identification with central government creates support for security measures. Furthermore, age and gender matter.
Can dissatisfaction with existing policies lead to the co-production of public goods and services? If so, under what conditions could such dissatisfaction lead to the co-production of public goods ...and services? We posit that when: (1) citizens are dissatisfied with the policy as designed, (2) third-sector organisations are formed, and (3) politicians and street-level managers are engaged, the co-production of public goods and services will take place. Analysing the Israeli religion-based restrictions on public transportation on the Jewish Sabbath (Saturday), this study argues that the intentional lack of public transport on Saturdays is overall met with discontent within the population and, in turn, leads third-sector organisations and local authorities to combine forces to find solutions on the local level. We have employed various mixed methods tools (eg a public opinion survey, existing statistics, in-depth interviews, and textual analysis) in order to test the Israeli case as an illustrative, crucial case study.
Based on a survey of civil servants in the Norwegian central government, this article describes perceptions of coordination capacity and examines to what degree the variations in perceived ...coordinating capacity can be explained by structural and cultural features. In particular, it focuses on the significance of wicked policy areas. Overall the coordination capacity is weaker in wicked policy areas than in other policy areas. Controlling for other features the coordination capacity is primarily related to cultural factors, such as mutual trust, level of conflict, and identification with the central government. Some structural features, such as administrative level, also have an effect.
University governance reforms are very much a reflection of the broader New Public Management reforms that are focusing on increasing efficiency in public organizations. The article deals with how ...university reform ideas of a generic nature, emphasizing that universities should be treated and reformed like any other public organizations, are important and reflected in specific reform measures. The special empirical focus is on that universities through reforms are changing their formal affiliation to superior ministries in a more autonomous direction, implicating more autonomy in financial, management and decision-making matters. One the other hand, universities are also through reforms more exposed to more report, scrutiny and control systems, financial incentive systems, pressure to get resources from other sources than the government, cut-back management, etc. So a main question in the analysis is whether universities, as traditionally having quite a lot of real autonomy, through the reforms in fact are getting less autonomy, not more, like the reforms entrepreneurs often are promising. The analysis is based on a transformational approach from organization theory, representing a combination of structural, cultural and environmental factors of explanation for reforms processes and their effects. Empirically the article is based on the author's own empirical studies of university reform and reviews of comparative studies. (HRK / Abstract übernommen).
This essay addresses how the Norwegian government has handled the coronavirus pandemic. Compared with many other countries, Norway has performed well in handling the crisis. This must be understood ...in the context of competent politicians, a high‐trust society with a reliable and professional bureaucracy, a strong state, a good economic situation, a big welfare state, and low population density. The Norwegian government managed to control the pandemic rather quickly by adopting a suppression strategy, followed by a control strategy, based on a collaborative and pragmatic decision‐making style, successful communication with the public, a lot of resources, and a high level of citizen trust in government. The alleged success of the Norwegian case is about the relationship between crisis management capacity and legitimacy. Crisis management is most successful when it is able to combine democratic legitimacy with government capacity.
This review provides a synopsis of the main findings of individual papers in the special issue Terrestrial Biodiversity in a Rapidly Changing Arctic. The special issue was developed to inform the ...State of the Arctic Terrestrial Biodiversity Report developed by the Circumpolar Biodiversity Monitoring Program (CBMP) of the Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF), Arctic Council working group. Salient points about the status and trends of Arctic biodiversity and biodiversity monitoring are organized by taxonomic groups: (1) vegetation, (2) invertebrates, (3) mammals, and (4) birds. This is followed by a discussion about commonalities across the collection of papers, for example, that heterogeneity was a predominant pattern of change particularly when assessing global trends for Arctic terrestrial biodiversity. Finally, the need for a comprehensive, integrated, ecosystem-based monitoring program, coupled with targeted research projects deciphering causal patterns, is discussed.
In spite of successful adoption of electronic patient records (EPR) by Norwegian GPs, what constitutes the actual benefits and effects of the use of EPRs in the perspective of the GPs and patients ...has not been fully characterized. We wanted to study primary care physicians' use of electronic patient record (EPR) systems in terms of use of different EPR functions and the time spent on using the records, as well as the potential effects of EPR systems on the clinician-patient relationship.
A combined qualitative and quantitative study that uses data collected from focus groups, observations of primary care encounters and a questionnaire survey of a random sample of general practitioners to describe their use of EPR in primary care.
The overall availability of individual patient records had improved, but the availability of the information within each EPR was not satisfactory. GPs' use of EPRs were efficient and comprehensive, but have resulted in transfer of administrative work from secretaries to physicians. We found no indications of disturbance of the clinician-patient relationship by use of computers in this study.
Although GPs are generally satisfied with their EPRs systems, there are still unmet needs and functionality to be covered. It is urgent to find methods that can make a better representation of information in large patient records as well as prevent EPRs from contributing to increased administrative workload of physicians.
Norway’s handling of COVID-19 has been seen as a success. Vulnerable groups among young and elderly people, have however, not been part of this success. Their interests have been defocused in two ...ways. First, they have not been prioritized in the big picture, because the precautionary principle and health concerns, in particular the capacity questions, have dominated. Second, the more specific social policy measures have been indirect and not particular targeted vulnerable children, youths and old people, and had negative effects for them, such as social isolation and lack of daily support and services, resulting in increasing problems.
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