It is now taken for granted that policy and public service interventions should be justified by the impact they make on public service outcomes: the key indicators of social value like health inequalities, educational attainment, crime rates or wellbeing. However, outcomes-based approaches to commissioning, performance management, strategic management and planning have routinely fallen short of expectations at a time when public finances are most stretched (Wimbush, 2011; Lowe, 2013).
We argue this pattern of failure reflects a paradigmatic – rather than procedural or methodological – failure in dealing with the inherent wickedness of outcomes as the emergent products of complex systems (Finegood, 2011; Jayasinghe, 2015; Fink et al., 2016; Lowe and Wilson, 2015).
Drawing on Thomas Kuhn’s (1962; 1970) conception of the paradigm, we compare two paradigms of outcomes-based public management. Firstly, we argue that outcomes-based approaches have in general derived from a 'Rationalist' Paradigm, combining the assumptions of self-interested rationalism from Public Choice theory (Buchanan and Tulloch, 1962) with the assumption of objectivity and linearity necessary for rational decision making. In practice, this paradigm routinely presents a set of anomalies which have proved irresolvable within its paradigmatic confines.
The paper then adopts complexity theory in a constructive capacity to explore the contours of an alternative complexity-friendly 'Complex Systems' paradigm for public management practice, discussing its implications for accountability and performance management, leadership and coordination, and strategic planning and learning.
While offering scholarship a useful alternative conceptual framework, we see the primary value of this new paradigm in supporting public service professionals and policymakers to commission, manage and deliver services that tackle outcomes more meaningfully. The paper concludes by specifying a research agenda to take this forward.
