From New Public Management to New Public Governance? Hybridization and Implications for Public Sector Consumerism

• Author: Sven Modell,Fredrika Wiesel
• Published date: 01 May 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/faam.12033
• Date: 01 May 2014

Financial Accountability & Management, 30(2), May 2014, 0267-4424

From New Public Management

to New Public Governance?

Hybridization and Implications

for Public Sector Consumerism

FREDRIKA WIESEL AND SVEN MODELL∗

Abstract: This paper examines how variations in the notion of public sector

consumerism become embedded in diverse governance practices. To this end, we

extend the literature on public governance logics with insights from research on

public sector consumerism and hybridization in public sector management reforms.

Through a comparative, multi-level analysis we trace the development of two

governance logics largely corresponding to the distinction between New Public

Management (NPM) and New Public Governance (NPG) in Swedish transport

infrastructure policy. In contrast to research predicting or prescribing a relatively

radical shift between such governance logics we show how they partly co-evolved along

two reform paths entailing notable variations in the degree of hybridization and the

embedding of consumerist notions in emerging governance practices. In doing so,

we draw attention to how the hybridization of governance logics is contingent on

the alignment of diverse interests and differences in the process through which

such logics are brought together. We discuss the implications of these findings for

future research into public sector consumerism and hybridization in public sector

management reforms.

Keywords: consumerism, governance, hybridization, public management

∗The first author is from Stockholm University School of Business, Sweden. The second

author is from Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, UK and NHH –

Norwegian School of Economics, Bergen, Norway. Earlier versions of this paper were presented

at the 32nd Annual Congress of the European Accounting Association, Istanbul (2010), the

6th International Conference on Accounting, Auditing and Management in Public Sector

Reforms, Copenhagen (2010) and a research seminar at Ritsumeikan University, Japan

(2012). The authors are grateful for the insightful comments of Gustav Johed and two

anonymous referees on earlier drafts. The research was funded by the Swedish Research

Council and the Jan Wallander and Tom Hedelius Foundation. The paper was partly

completed whilst the second author was a Visiting Professor at the University of Sydney

in 2011.

Address for correspondence: Sven Modell, Manchester Accounting and Finance Group,

Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, Crawford House, Booth Street West,

Manchester M15 6PB, UK.

e-mail: Sven.Modell@mbs.ac.uk

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176 WIESEL AND MODELL

INTRODUCTION

Over the past decade the emphasis in the literature on public sector

management reforms has gradually changed from focusing on the management

of individual organizations to broader concerns with the governance of complex

systems of service provision. This development has been described in terms

of a shift from New Public Management (NPM) to New Public Governance

(NPG) or similar acronyms signaling a rather fundamental change in reform

ethos across a number of countries.1However, the broad and variegated

literature on public governance provides mixed evidence of whether such a

shift is indeed manifest in practice. Some authors have prescribed or predicted

a relatively linear development where such changes fulfill the movement away

from traditional, hierarchical forms of governance instigated through the earlier

shift from Progressive Public Administration (PPA) to NPM (e.g., Denhardt and

Denhardt, 2000; Dunleavy et al. 2005; and Entwistle and Martin, 2005). On the

other hand, several commentators see considerable continuity and suggest that

governance practices associated with diverse reform movements often overlap or

develop in tandem without fully replacing PPA (e.g., Ferlie and Andresani, 2006;

Hill and Lynn, 2005; Hood and Peters, 2004; Lapsley, 2008; and Newman, 2001).

One manifestation of such continuity is the tendency to conceive of citizens and

beneficiaries of public services as ‘customers’ or ‘consumers’. Whilst earlier NPM

reforms often tended to equate such changes with the ability of beneficiaries to

exercise choice under competitive market conditions, the idea of public sector

consumerism has since expanded to assume broader meanings and does not

necessarily require the existence of market-like arrangements (Clarke et al.,

2007; Fountain, 2001; Modell and Wiesel, 2008; Powell et al., 2010; and Tuck

et al., 2011). This development has also entailed hybrid forms of governance

blending consumerist notions with diverse public management practices (Clarke

et al., 2007; and Fotaki, 2011).

Whilst the emergence of hybrids in the wake of public sector reforms is

a widely documented phenomenon (e.g., Brown et al., 2003; Jacobs, 2005;

Joldersma and Winter, 2002; Koppell, 2001; Meyer and Hammerschmid, 2006;

and Thomasson, 2009), the literature on this topic has been dominated by static

analyses of organizational forms or professional identities. Few studies have

examined the process of hybridization in any greater detail (e.g., Kurunm¨

aki,

2004; and Kurunm¨

aki and Miller 2006 and 2011). The present paper contributes

to this process-orientated stream of research by examining how the hybridization

of diverse governance logics affected the embeddedness of consumerist notions in

the field of Swedish transport infrastructure policy. The notion of governance

logics has emerged as a key concept for examining variations in public

governance practices over the past decade (Heinrich et al., 2004; Hill and Lynn,

2005; and Lynn et al., 2000) and can be used to derive analytical archetypes that

enhance our understanding of how such practices shape the idea of public sector

consumerism. We argue that the governance logics underpinning the notions

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