Roger Latham

Managing the Change — What Are the Implications?

Why would anyone want to make the change? If the existing arrangements work well enough what would be the point? It’s a valid observation. The traditional ‘rational-legal’ hierarchical bureaucracy was thought by Max Weber to represent the culmination of greatest efficiency from the personal charismatic leadership and traditional patronage type alternatives. It has substantially been the key vehicle from delivery of UK public services since the middle part of the 19th century. As we’ve seen, alternatives have been around at least since the end of the Second World War, and substantially developed for the past 30 or more years. Yet there has been little shift towards an alternative paradigm.

UK Public Services — Attempts at Reform

The current UK model for planning and managing public services did not appear overnight. Neither is it really the product of one or more periods of radical and substantial change which might have taken place in extreme circumstances such as enemy occupation during wartime or major economic collapse. Instead the current model has largely evolved over a period of perhaps a hundred years or so as a consequence of a series of changes and reforms which have been implemented by successive governments.

Postscript — Not Far Enough

Shelby Foote in his monumental work on the American Civil War (Foote 1958–1974) relates a conversation after Gettysburg between a British Army military observer to the Confederate States and some Confederate commanders. The observer remarked: ‘Cannot you see that your system feeds upon itself? Your men do wonders, but each time it is at a price that you cannot afford.’ By this he meant the attritional damage to Southern Confederate society not only from the loss of men and material, but particularly from the impact on the younger generation who provided many of its junior officers. It was this disparity in resources that President Abraham Lincoln called ‘the arithmetic’. The North, with its significantly more dynamic economy, and larger resources of raw materials and manpower, could absorb losses even on a more proportional scale than that of the Confederate South, and would still end up with more than enough to win the war in the long-term. And although history has tended to romanticise the significant military achievements and superiority of Confederate forces over their Union opponents, in truth the South was fighting for hopelessly bad cause. It was fighting to maintain the dominance of an economic system that was in decline; that was supported by a substantially hierarchical society that was at odds with the ‘American Dream’ of personal achievement and social mobility; that was sustained by the morally indefensible practice of slavery; and which, in the long-term, by deforestation and agricultural monoculture, was stripping the fragile physical environment and creating the conditions for subsequent ecological disasters.

A New Paradigm

Paradigms can be seen as the constellation of beliefs and values and techniques which are shared by the members of a given community. Most organisations that have a coherent focus will have a paradigm that is either explicit or implied. The paradigm of an organisation is supported by a number of elements that can be measured and evaluated. These elements tend to be mutually supporting, and reinforce the overall shape of the paradigm — which can be broadly described as ‘the way we do business round here’. The most common ones are illustrated in Figure 8.1, and are self-explanatory.

The Wider View

Niels Bohr, the quantum physicist, is reputed to have said that ‘predictions were difficult to make, especially about the future’! Although his remark made sense in context, I’ve no doubt that it has been reproduced repeatedly as clear evidence of a confusion of mind. A similar fate awaited Donald Rumsfeld when he famously talked about ‘known unknowns, and unknown unknowns etc’. What both of them were aiming to get across was the inevitability of genuine uncertainty about the future path for any system or society with imperfect knowledge. So, it is with some trepidation that we now embark on the final chapters and begin to draw together the threads and thinking that we have laid out in the past 9 chapters to see if we can come up with some prognosis and predictions the likely trajectory of public policy and public services in the age of austerity that confronts us.

The Development of Modern Public Services

In our consideration of the issues facing UK public services we have, so far looked at a range of issues which, although dominated by thinking about the current economic situation, also include a number of major structural changes in the nature of society and our economic future that are in danger of being ignored. Considering how to face up to these issues the experience from other countries who are in a broadly similar situation (or have been in such a situation in the past and have addressed the issues) does not give us any firm guidance as to the strategy and policies which will deliver satisfactory outcomes. We, thus, find ourselves in a situation where the UK is about to embark on an economic experiment and readjustment of its economy, and the pattern of public service delivery, long-term, which is pretty well unique. No doubt other countries in Europe, and the United States, will look with interest at how the UK copes over the next few years with the social, political, and economic adjustments that will be called for.

We Are Not Alone — How Others Have Coped

Countries generating large public budget deficits with increasing levels of public debt implement policies which are described as ‘fiscal consolidations’. There are international examples worth looking at for help in achieving fiscal consolidation. However, one has to be focussed. Over history there are lots of examples of such consolidations but many occurred so long ago as to have little relevance to the current situation. Also many will have taken place in developing countries which again will have little or no relevance to the UK and developed countries.

The Characteristics of the Current UK Public Service Model

Ask for a diagrammatic representation of almost any UK public service organisation and almost invariably you will be presented with a chart (usually outdated) describing a hierarchical bureaucracy. The pattern will be that of a triangle rising to a senior management position — a chief executive role at the top and extending through numerous layers to teams and frontline staff at the bottom of the pyramid. Within the pyramidal structure you may find individual departments which will, in turn, be almost a fractal representation of the whole organisation — that is, they will be small hierarchical bureaucracies in their own right contained within the larger organisational entity. So common is this model that if you try and draw a new organisation using a standard software package the only option that you will be presented with is one that draws a hierarchical bureaucracy; and the only relationships you will be presented will draw a manager/subordinate relationship, and manager/assistant relationship, or a subordinate/co-worker relationship.