During the era of New Public Management (NPM), a change in performance strategies from production orientation to customer orientation has been emphasized within Swedish central government agencies. This development has brought about new questions concerning the outcome of the undertakings. When both central government and citizens are asking for outcomes, a focus only on output control is insufficient in terms of accountability. As a consequence, in such situations, the NPM-logic does not fit to make a modern central government agency governable. Instead there has been a shift in focus towards Public Value Management (Moore, 1995, 2013) which is driven by a New Public Governance logic (Wiesel & Modell, 2014).
This paper presents a study between February and December 2016 of management control practices at the Swedish Transport Administration – a state agency responsible for accessible transport systems that enables growth and welfare. Since 2010, the Swedish Transport Administration has been given the task of acting as a societal developer, a mission that goes beyond their traditional domain of providing long-time planning of rail and road transport systems. This expanded mandate – from a rail and road infrastructure provider to a societal developer – puts more emphasis on cooperation for sustainable societal development at large. Much is expected to be done through co-production with other actors by means of formal and informal interactions (cf. van Popering-Verkerk & van Buuren, 2016).
The main research question of the study is how the societal aspects are valued and accounted for by the Swedish Transport Administration given the complexity of co-production for results aiming at overarching governmental transport policy goals.
The empirical material is derived from regular participation in meetings and interviewing 15 senior regional managers in five regional offices of the Swedish Transport Administration. In addition, a survey was sent to a representative sample of line function employees in the organization (n = 1 341; response rate 57%).
The preliminary results, as of October 2016, show that employees tend to translate the new role of societal developer to suit their already existing tasks in a production-oriented environment, together with existing external partners. The risk is thus apparent that the new expanded mandate does not permeate the organization beyond what is stated in official documents.
References
Moore, M. H. (1995) Creating Public Value: Strategic Management in Government. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
Moore, M. H. (2013) Recognizing Public Value, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
van Popering-Verkerk, J. & van Buuren, A. (2016) ”Decision-making patterns in multilevel governance. The contribution of informal and procedural interactions to significant multilevel decisions”, Public Management Review, Vol. 18, No. 7, pp. 951-971
Wiesel, F. & Modell, S. (2014) ”From new public management to new public governance? Hybridization and implications for public sector consumerism”, Financial Accountability & Management, Vol. 30, No. 2, pp. 175-205
H6 - Public Value – Governance mechanisms for creating public value
