Reviews of the reform process in OECD countries reveal variation in the uptake
and application of the NPM (Pollitt and Bouckaert 2004 ). An OECD ( 1996 : 23 )
report reviewing developments in central government noted, ‘in the area of human
resource management... reform strategies are highly context speciWc and shaped
by the cultural and institutional details of each particular country.’ In some
countries NPM practices were used selectively, but in others such as the UK,
they were taken forward in combination. Deployed in this way there are some
important linkages between the diVerent practices. To highlight these links, the
HR implications are considered under three headings: management, changing
organizational structures, and resource utilization.
- 1 Management
A striking features of NPM has been its emphasis on the establishment of a cadre of
managers to enforce a more ‘business-like’ approach. These managers are ceded
greater operational control but are also more subject to centralized forms of audit.
To achieve their performance goals, managers were expected to change employ-
ment practices, including tighter control of staV, through clearer performance
targets linked to individual performance-related pay and more forceful manage-
ment of issues such as absenteeism. In addition, pay determination was to be
devolved to enhance management authority, with rewards more closely linked to
local labor market conditions and organizational requirements.
These developments had implications for the career systems of managers as well
as for the staV. There has been the growth of senior management roles and chief
executive posts (often with experience of the private sector). The emergence of this
cadre of managers was especially marked in the UK health service, and between
1985 and 1995 the number of employees categorized as NHS managers rose from
300 to over 23 , 000 (Kirkpatrick et al. 2005 : 91 ). Senior managers were expected to be
change agents, recruited on short-term contracts with substantially higher salaries,
but required to achieve demanding performance targets (Ferlie 2002 : 284 ). This
trend signals a shift away from a predominantly career-based model of employ-
ment in which public servants remain in the public sector for their whole working
life. Instead, a position-based system has emerged in which the best-suited candi-
date is selected for each individual position from internal or external sources. Shifts
to position-based systems in the last two decades are most evident in Canada, New
Zealand, Sweden, and the UK. There is a danger, however, that countries which
have moved away from career-based systems for civil servants have encountered
negative consequences in terms of a loss of collective responsibility and a unifying
culture (OECD 2004 a: 3 ).
A key aim of the introduction of professional managers was to curb the
entrenched power of professionals. It is widely assumed that a tension exists
476 stephen bach and ian kessler