During the course of the past 25 years, management consultants became increasingly important agents of change and a source for external expertise for the public sector (Saint Martin 2005). At first glance, it seems as if... [ view full abstract ]
During the course of the past 25 years, management consultants became increasingly important agents of change and a source for external expertise for the public sector (Saint Martin 2005). At first glance, it seems as if management consultants in the public sector are dealing with management issues only. However, the influence of management consultants does not stop at the boundary between the administrative and the political arenas. In our paper, we question the formally accepted politics-administration dichotomy and, using the example of public sector management consultancy, we show that it plays a considerable role in the relationship between politicians and public servants. This fits into the New Public Governance framework as suggested by Osborne (2006), in which multiple, inter-dependent actors contribute to the delivery of public services and multiple processes inform the policy making system. Considering this context, our paper is of high relevance for the panel topic.
Building upon Osborne’s approach, we see the individual public manager through the lens of contextual ambidexterity (Gibson/Birkinshaw 2004, Duncan 1976), in which each member of an organisation should be able to exploit existing and explore new resources simultaneously. Applied to the public sector, this means that public managers often utilise existing administrative structures and pursue the development of new policies at the same time. Those policies not only mean concepts that lead to new legislation, which would be the case on the ministerial level, but in many cases are confined to the development of new services within the existing legal framework, e.g. in local government. In our paper, we aim to clarify the role of public sector management consultants in this context and to bring this still neglected group of agents into the focus of public sector research.
Based on semi-structured expert interviews, we explore the field by taking three different perspectives. Firstly, we interview experienced public sector consultants. Secondly, we talk to public managers of different government entities as representatives of the administrative side. And thirdly, we interview politicians and political appointees. Our research question “How political is public sector management consultancy?” sheds light on the relationship between politicians and public managers by exploring their interaction with an external actor, i.e. management consultants.
We specify the political impact of management consultants with the help of a stylized policy cycle (Jann 1981). By the means of structural content analysis we find evidence for the interrelatedness of administrative and political processes which finds a strong expression in the political impact of public sector management consultants.
References
Duncan, R. B. (1976). The ambidextrous organization: Designing dual structures for innovation, in: The Management of Organization 1, 167-188
Gibson, C. B./Birkinshaw, J. (2004): The antecedents, consequences, and mediating role of organizational ambidexterity, in: Academy of Management Journal, 47 (2), 209-226
Jann, W. (1981): Kategorien der Policy-Forschung, Speyer.
Saint Martin, D. (2005): Management Consultancy, in: Ferlie, Ewan et al.: The Oxford Handbook of Public Management. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 671 - 694
Osborne, S. P. (2006): The New Public Governance? Public Management Review, 8(3), 377-387
