Beyond New Public Management
This is a guest post by Kevin Wong of Manchester Metropolitan University on a realist review he undertook with Professor Chris Fox, David Adams-Guppy, Ben Hall & myself.
New Public Management
Performance targets, performance management, resource frugality (do more for less… and now do even more for even less), marketisation, competition, auditable standards, outputs focus, visible hands-on management – the doctrine of New Public Management NPM has been the dominant governance paradigm of the last forty years. Its influence has seeped into every aspect of how public services have been delivered, managed, commissioned and received by the public. So much so that it’s difficult for public service managers to countenance how else to do it.
We offer an alternative. Our new paper based on a realist review of effective management commissioned by HM Inspectorate of Probation argues that the public administration orthodoxy of NPM has taken a toll on public services, in particular the probation service in England and Wales.
Our paper’s focus on senior probation officers is illustrative. Subject to scrutiny by the Probation Inspectorate (HMIP), top-down management demands and public expectation, they face a crisis of performance management, staffing and caseload pressures. Their duties to protect the public, monitor and rehabilitate people with convictions, or more pointedly, perceived failure to do so leave them vulnerable to backlash and public opprobrium. Poor management oversight and poor work quality have been highlighted in serious further offence inquiries, prompting a racheting-up of management oversight unintentionally breeding a culture of fear and excessive countersigning.
Of course, the crisis which probation faces is not wholly attributable to NPM. The service is just one more complex system, jostled, nudged and put upon by of other complex systems equally feeling the strain: health, social welfare, prisons, policing, courts. That said, the system shocks of privatisation, reunification and fear induced by serious case reviews, have left probation practitioners and front-line managers reeling and executives struggling to contain the crisis.
What to do?
We argue for a governance reset which marries the components of effective management identified in our review with New Public Governance NPG, an alternative paradigm to NPM which emphasises collaboration, network management and public value creation. In sum, recognising that the human volition of frontline staff, managers and service users, their disgruntlement, despair, disappointment, relief, hope, betterment and satisfaction are at the heart of public services.
Our review evidenced support for effective management being comprised of the interactive components of: management oversight; clinical supervision; reflective practice; senior practitioner; and self-managing teams, as shown in the infographic below.
Co-production
In practice this means, designing and implementing processes which enable co-production in probation delivery such as:
- Meaningful staff involvement in key operational decisions about how they organize and undertake their work;
- Protecting time and space for staff reflection and learning
- Encouraging and enabling peer learning;
- Providing real time day to day support in making practice decisions;
- Ensuring general practice support to facilitate learning and staff development;
- Maintaining the sanctity of scheduled one to one supervision sessions;
- Enabling team autonomy to make operational adjustments; and
- Enabling role fluidity to assist staff cope with challenges and change.
At a more granular level, enabling interactions between managers and practitioners which meaningfully encompass:
- Task assistance;
- Social and emotional support;
- Supervisory interaction;
- Valuing staff perspectives;
- Listening to staff concerns and taking this into consideration;
- Practice credibility of managers; and
- Managers being open-minded, embracing and valuing reflective practice.
Adopting these approaches has the potential to maintain the twin aims of probation (public safety and rehabilitation) while securing benefits for: practitioners, people on probation, the service itself and public. This is demonstrated in this adapted version of Osbourne et al’s public service value creation matrix where value is created through two interactive processes: effective management as ‘produced’ by managers and as ‘consumed’ by practitioners and people on probation.
What next?
During the development of our paper, we shared the review findings and NPG principles (as a governance framework for effective management) with Probation Service executives. Their response was encouraging. They acknowledged the fault-lines of frontline management. Our change proposals presented opportunities, but they were cautious. Nervous perhaps about retreating from the NPM doctrine that has dominated their working lives but recognising their responsibility to lighten the burden on their colleagues. We suggest that a mixed approach offers executives a way to transition probation that eschews the whole system shocks of the past decade or more.
We advocated that a focus on “changing relationships; value and values; and workforce capabilities and capacities” piloted fully in one region, while retaining current arrangements in the remainder. Empirically testing and refining these proposals is a pre-requisite, but we urge swift action. The burden and morale of practitioners demands to be lifted. Notwithstanding empirical testing, the propositions as they stand are useful, they move us from some knowledge to more knowledge As Karl Popper, the noted philosopher of science said: “we cannot know, we can only guess”. What we have presented is our best guess. We’d love to hear your views.
2 responses
Russell, I am delighted that at last someone else is demonstrating a serious interest in the topic of how Probation needs to be *managed*. Please put me in direct contact with Kevin Wong, because I have already made my own proposal direct to HMPPS. My Modern Probation Theory is available on andrewbridgesprobation.com
Thanks Andrew, Good to hear from you. I’ve forwarded your comment on to Kevin