Annie Hondeghem

Staff Participation in the Public Services

The aims of this chapter are to provide an overview of the nature and scope of the main types of staff participation found in public services, to identify staff as key stakeholders in public management reform and to indicate the sorts of processes through which public officials can become involved in the reform process. This is done by drawing on the literature, comparative data and selective empirical evidence, provided by our contributors. This background informs the country studies in Chapters 4–15, where more determinate relationships between staff participation and the modernization agenda in central governments are examined in some detail.

Trajectories, Institutions and Stakeholders in Public Management Reform

Not all countries have embarked upon root-and-branch reforms of their political and administrative systems, despite some convergence among them, although the environmental forces and trends facing them are similar. The aim of this chapter is to explore the reasons for this, arguing that the actions of governments are path dependent and context specific. Superficial similarities and a common rhetoric often conceal very different actions and responses to common problems (Pollitt 2002). So despite a great deal of mimetic isomorphism, there is a lot of variance ‘in how political systems have interpreted the ideas and responded to the demands or opportunities for introducing administrative change’ (Peters 1997: 227). In line with a neo-institutionalist approach, this chapter stresses the impact of institutions as well as the role of actors in public management reforms. Institutions have a shaping, facilitating or constraining effect on reforms, which are the result of actions taken by individuals or groups and their responses to the pressures acting upon them.

Making Sense of Staff Participation Within Public Management Reform

Most studies of public management reform focus on ‘what’, ‘why’ and ‘how’ questions and pay little attention to the role of stakeholders who are affected by it or play a part in the reform process. There is also an implicit or explicit assumption underlying most analyses of public management reform that it is a top-down process dominated by decision-making elites of top politicians, mandarins and political advisors (Halligan 2002, Pollitt and Bouckaert 2004). This study has concentrated on the influence of one key actor in public management reform: staff and their representative organizations. Staff participation has been analysed in terms of ‘indirect staff participation’ and ‘direct staff participation’. Indirect staff participation was defined as those power-based arrangements either across organizations (i.e., covering more than one employer) or within organizations (i.e., covering a single employer or an undertaking) that enable workers, employees or public officials to take part in those policy or managerial decisions affecting their daily working lives such as pay, terms, conditions, benefits and procedures of employment relations including discipline and grievances. Direct staff participation is a wider-based concept than indirect participation and consists of all those management-driven initiatives directed at involving individual employees or workgroups in the workplace.

The Contexts of Staff Participation and Public Management Reform

Most accounts of public management reform are ‘top-down’ and focus on the role of politicians, senior civil servants and policy advisers in fashioning the change process (Pollitt and Bouckaert 2004). Yet public officials (staff) have to interpret and apply the policies of governments and implement them and they have an interest in what reforms are introduced, as it affects their jobs, ways of working and economic position. They also have an interest in the substantive content and direction of reforms since, as public servants, many have a sense of responsibility for the public services they deliver. In other words, staff are a major stakeholder in the work of the state and activities of governments. This book explores to what extent staff in public services have been involved in the reform process and whether there is an alternative ‘bottom-up’ interpretation of public management reform. The aims of this chapter are two-fold. First, it identifies and analyses some of the main contextual forces influencing governments and their strategies for public management reform. Second, it examines how these contexts help shape staff expectations of work and their participation in the reform process.