Niels Thygesen

Trust and control in public sector reform: Complementarity and beyond

ABSTRACT This paper provides an analysis of trust-based management reform in the Danish public sector from the point of view of the trust–control nexus. Based on a qualitative case study of home care in the municipality of Copenhagen we argue that a complementary view of trust and control is superior to a substitution view when it comes to accounting for public sector reform as structure and process. Also, we propose a widening of the theoretical lens in the form of an emergent view of how trust and control, instead of being beforehand determinable and more or less stable identities, emerge in multiple and singular ways from multiple events in the organisation. Noticing a dearth of research that explicitly addresses trust issues with regard to public sector management and organisation, the paper is a response to the call for more studies of trust as an institutionally embedded phenomenon.

An introduction to understanding technology as illusions

This book aims to show how the concept of technology in systems theory contributes to a better understanding of illusions of control. The book is driven by a double ambition. First, it represents an attempt to describe illusions by means of paradoxes and how they relate to existing technologies of public regulation. Second, it introduces the systems theoretical concept of technology and explores the ways in which it stimulates the analysis of paradoxes of control. The following credo sums up the relevance of the book: no management without technologies. And this pertains to public regulation as well as to management in general. No doubt, the function of public management is to implement policies designed by others, most often within the parliamentary chain of control, or to implement strategies for organizational development. But managers would be lost without technologies to effect such implementation. This has become a generally accepted idea ever since the work of Taylor and Fayol and is maintained within current management literature. And from the perspective of public regulation, technologies are, and have been, imperative for the implementation of New Public Management and Public Governance.

The polyphonic effects of technological changes in public sector organizations

New Public Management (NPM) has established itself as the paradigm to watch when it comes to understanding changes in the public sector. It is generally agreed that the normative purpose of NPM is to improve the market orientation, public choice, competition and cost efficiency of public administration. In order to achieve this purpose, NPM normally emphasizes new steering technologies, largely adapted from the private sector and guided by the tautological maxim that ‘managers must manage’. What is called New Public Management, then, is the meeting of a particular set of normative ends with a specific set of technical means handled by managers who know how to manage. This causal set-up has undoubtedly contributed to the general acceptance of both means and ends, since overcoming the obstacles can now be conceived of as a relatively straightforward matter of implementing technologies.

Management as a Temporal Hybrid

In this chapter we develop the idea of management as a temporal hybrid. What is to be gained from this perspective is displayed in an initial analysis of how management in a Danish municipality adheres to the methods of goal steering. The analysis shows that management makes self-transformation possible by processes of suspensions enabling an oscillation between two temporal logics of change. To this end, the chapter relies on the systems theory concept of technology and its timebinding effects. This contribution is not meant to be conclusive. It is an attempt at the articulation of a strong hypothesis which is valuable for understanding management more generally.