New Public Management (new + public_management)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Distribution within Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting


Selected Abstracts


STRINGS ATTACHED: NEW PUBLIC MANAGEMENT, COMPETITIVE GRANT FUNDING AND SOCIAL CAPITAL

FINANCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY & MANAGEMENT, Issue 2 2009
Helen Irvine
This paper first investigates the impact of New Public Management (NPM) practices, particularly competitive grant funding, on Bushcare New South Wales (NSW), an Australian environmental volunteering organisation. Secondly, identifying such local volunteering organisations as repositories of valuable social capital, it explores the link between volunteering and social capital. Using mixed methods and institutional theory, the study reveals that an increased level of professionalism and accountability is required of Bushcare groups, and that local coordinators face a challenge in balancing local, regional and national priorities without sacrificing Bushcare's mission. These dynamics, it is proposed, have potentially serious social capital implications. [source]


MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING CHANGE AND NEW PUBLIC MANAGEMENT IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT: A REASSESSMENT OF AMBITIONS AND RESULTS , AN INSTITUTIONALIST APPROACH TO ACCOUNTING CHANGE IN THE DUTCH PUBLIC SECTOR

FINANCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY & MANAGEMENT, Issue 3 2008
Henk J. Ter Bogt
Dutch municipalities and provinces, denoted here as local government, have seen a succession of changes in their management accounting systems and have also introduced other changes related to New Public Management (NPM) in the last twenty years. This paper examines accounting changes, such as the introduction of accrual accounting, output and outcome budgets and performance measurement, from an institutionalist point of view. The paper presents experiences of 23 politicians and professional managers with the various changes over a period of fifteen to twenty years. The interviewees, just like various researchers in the field of NPM, were critical of the accounting changes and their effects. However, several of them also made clear that, seen over the long run, the changes did have some effects that they liked and seem to be in line with the ,ideals' presented in NPM literature. The paper suggests that an institutionalist perspective is helpful for studying change processes in organizations and for observing factors and developments that might not be noticed when a more functional and short-term perspective is adopted. [source]


NEW PUBLIC MANAGEMENT: PERSPECTIVES ON PERFORMANCE AND THE USE OF PERFORMANCE INFORMATION

FINANCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY & MANAGEMENT, Issue 2 2008
E. Pieter Jansen
Performance information is a key-element of NPM, but politicians and managers rarely use this information. On the basis of three case studies, this paper seeks to explain the use of the newly developed performance information. The paper argues that there is a distinction between the customer perspective and the citizen perspective on performance. NPM implies a customer and an internal perspective on performance. These perspectives may be relevant to managers, but politicians are primarily interested in a citizen perspective and a financial perspective. Two situations are identified in which governmental organizations more actively use performance information with a customer perspective and an internal perspective (as implied in NPM): (1) a crisis in the organization's internal processes with political and/or financial consequences and (2) loose coupling of the performance reports to politicians and to managers, which stimulates the information use by both politicians and managers. [source]


OBSTACLES TO IMPLEMENTATION OF NEW PUBLIC MANAGEMENT IN AN IRISH HOSPITAL

FINANCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY & MANAGEMENT, Issue 1 2007
Geraldine Robbins
First page of article [source]


Changes in the Management of Doctoral Education

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATION, Issue 1 2010
LUKAS BASCHUNG
This article deals with the current reform of European doctoral education. It is argued that the concrete results of the reform can be better understood by analysing changes in the management of doctoral programmes. This rests on the case study of a Norwegian PhD programme in finance and is based on an analytical framework composed of three public management narratives: New Public Management (NPM), Network Governance (NG) and Neo-Weberian-State (NWS). The latter allows for a particular focus on the instruments, actors and objectives of governance. The article concludes that the examined doctoral programme's management story can be divided into two episodes. The first , the ,internationalisation' episode , is shaped by the academic profession in finance which uses a wide range of constraining NPM instruments and applies them in a comprehensive manner to doctoral education in order to achieve its overall objective, namely to implement an internationally competitive PhD programme. The second , the ,integration' episode , is about a recently developed policy instrument with relatively non-constraining NWS elements, used by the State to establish National Research Schools. The latter are principally aimed at the better development and coordination of doctoral training between small and large higher education institutions. Due to those differences between the two episodes in terms of constraining character and scope, the reform of the examined doctoral programme is strongly shaped by the first episode. Hence, the reform essentially consists in a doctoral programme with an international and academic character. [source]


Engaged Elites Citizen Action and Institutional Attitudes in Commission Enforcement

EUROPEAN LAW JOURNAL, Issue 1 2000
Richard Rawlings
The subject of this article is a classic one in European law and administration: the general powers of the Commission to take infringement proceedings against the Member States. The topic merits a basic reconsideration by reason of contemporary developments that put in question the role and nature of the process. Emphasis is laid on the challenges to an e´lite model of regulatory bargaining, in the form both of demands for citizen ,voice' and pressures for a firmer and more formal approach to Commission enforcement. The dynamic character of the process is seen in part to reflect different institutional attitudes, with particular attention being paid to the stance of the European Ombudsman. Practical proposals include a re-balancing of Commission procedures to improve the position of complainants, a central role for the principle of complementarity in terms of public and private legal action, and a creative application to the Commission of the disciplines of the New Public Management. A further aim of the article is to demonstrate the utility of socio-legal studies in European administrative law: for many years a retarded, insufficiently theorised discipline, with too narrow a court-oriented focus. [source]


RESTRUCTURING THE NHS AGAIN: SUPPLY SIDE REFORM IN RECENT ENGLISH HEALTH CARE POLICY

FINANCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY & MANAGEMENT, Issue 4 2009
Pauline Allen
Introducing market-like structures to public services is a key aspect of New Public Management. The restructuring of the NHS into an internal market of the 1990s is an example. Recent policies have further developed this notion. A new aspect of the restructuring is a focus on increasing the diversity of types of provider of healthcare organisations. The objectives of the restructuring policy entailing the increase in supply side diversity are examined, and the challenges raised by these changes are discussed. It is argued that the government is too optimistic about the benefits, and insufficiently concerned about possible undesirable consequences. [source]


EXPLAINING THE UTILIZATION OF RELATIVE PERFORMANCE EVALUATION IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT: A MULTI-THEORETICAL STUDY USING DATA FROM SWEDEN

FINANCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY & MANAGEMENT, Issue 2 2009
Tobias Johansson
One of the more lasting imprints that New Public Management (NPM) has made in the public sector is an increase in the popularity of performance measurement. In Sweden, performance measurement has gained popularity in the public sector, not least at the local government level with the use of relative performance evaluation (RPE). Because utilization of RPE is a decentralized and optional mode of governance, a somewhat heterogeneous practice has evolved. The aim of this paper is to examine the causes of this differentiated practice. We jointly examine economic, political and institutional/cultural explanations in order to account for the utilization of RPE. The empirical material consists of archival data and a questionnaire sent to all Swedish municipalities in late 2005. We show that RPE adoption and use partly has different antecedents and that the institutional/cultural perspective appears to have greater explanatory power than economic and political, not least as a consequence of the potential to explain decoupling and the importance of change facilitating capabilities. The investigation contributes specifically to the literature on the utilization of RPE in local governments and more generally to the literature on why and to what extent management accounting practices are utilized. [source]


STRINGS ATTACHED: NEW PUBLIC MANAGEMENT, COMPETITIVE GRANT FUNDING AND SOCIAL CAPITAL

FINANCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY & MANAGEMENT, Issue 2 2009
Helen Irvine
This paper first investigates the impact of New Public Management (NPM) practices, particularly competitive grant funding, on Bushcare New South Wales (NSW), an Australian environmental volunteering organisation. Secondly, identifying such local volunteering organisations as repositories of valuable social capital, it explores the link between volunteering and social capital. Using mixed methods and institutional theory, the study reveals that an increased level of professionalism and accountability is required of Bushcare groups, and that local coordinators face a challenge in balancing local, regional and national priorities without sacrificing Bushcare's mission. These dynamics, it is proposed, have potentially serious social capital implications. [source]


MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING CHANGE AND NEW PUBLIC MANAGEMENT IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT: A REASSESSMENT OF AMBITIONS AND RESULTS , AN INSTITUTIONALIST APPROACH TO ACCOUNTING CHANGE IN THE DUTCH PUBLIC SECTOR

FINANCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY & MANAGEMENT, Issue 3 2008
Henk J. Ter Bogt
Dutch municipalities and provinces, denoted here as local government, have seen a succession of changes in their management accounting systems and have also introduced other changes related to New Public Management (NPM) in the last twenty years. This paper examines accounting changes, such as the introduction of accrual accounting, output and outcome budgets and performance measurement, from an institutionalist point of view. The paper presents experiences of 23 politicians and professional managers with the various changes over a period of fifteen to twenty years. The interviewees, just like various researchers in the field of NPM, were critical of the accounting changes and their effects. However, several of them also made clear that, seen over the long run, the changes did have some effects that they liked and seem to be in line with the ,ideals' presented in NPM literature. The paper suggests that an institutionalist perspective is helpful for studying change processes in organizations and for observing factors and developments that might not be noticed when a more functional and short-term perspective is adopted. [source]


THE COMMODIFICATION OF THE DANISH DEFENCE FORCES AND THE TROUBLED IDENTITIES OF ITS OFFICERS

FINANCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY & MANAGEMENT, Issue 3 2007
Peter Skærbæk
The accounting literature has given much attention to the New Public Management and attempts at making the government's performances auditable while influencing the core working of the public sector. This paper contributes to this debate by demonstrating how particular accounting devices participate in the definition of the identities of the officers in the Danish Defence. It shows how the definition of the officers' identities is complex and dynamic and does not necessarily have outcomes of stability and closure. Applying Actor-Network Theory we demonstrate how their identities are caught up in processes of continual or never ending reconfigurations. The major implication is that the occupational identity of the Danish officers is subject to attempts of being defined as ,a manager' in the period 1989-2006. The paper demonstrates how accounting devices participated in defining a hybrid identity of the officers as ,warrior' and ,manager' and that officers in different spaces and times experienced problems with the hybrid identity. [source]


Intellectual capital and the Discourses of Love and Entrepreneurship in New Public Management

FINANCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY & MANAGEMENT, Issue 3 2005
Jan Mouritsen
First page of article [source]


Accounting and NPM in UK Local Government , Contributions Towards Governance and Accountability

FINANCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY & MANAGEMENT, Issue 2 2005
Andrew Goddard
Despite its size and economic importance, accounting in UK local government is still relatively under-researched. Two important developments which have emerged in recent years across the whole public sector are governance and New Public Management. It is timely to study the contribution which local government accounting makes in this changing context. Governance has proved a particularly contentious concept to define. This study has attempted to understand governance from the participants' perspective and consequently a grounded theory methodology has been used. The empirical research comprised four UK local authority case studies over a twelve month period. The grounded theory developed makes two important contributions to our knowledge of accounting and NPM in relation to governance and accountability in local government. These are the relative importance of accountability rather than governance per se to participants, and the more significant contribution to accountability made by budgeting practices rather than NPM practices such as performance indicators, contracting out of services and Best Value studies. The reasons for these findings are explored and theorised in the paper, using Bourdieu's concept of habitus. [source]


Ordering a Profession: Swedish Nurses Encounter New Public Management Reforms

FINANCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY & MANAGEMENT, Issue 1 2003
Maria Blomgren
This article deals with professional responses to and handling of New Public Management reforms in the context of Swedish health care. The focus is on Swedish nurses, and the argument is that the extent to which a profession is heterogeneous and embraces a variety of ordering processes explains differing, and even contradictory, responses within a single profession. The paper shows that the ordering processes within the Swedish nursing profession provided a wide variety of conditions for nurses' encounter with the reforms. Overall, the transformations brought about by the New Public Management reforms aligned more easily with the process of ordering nurses into administrative leaders than with the process of ordering nurses into experts in caring. [source]


The Cult of Modernity

FINANCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY & MANAGEMENT, Issue 4 2001
Barbara Townley
This article examines Strategic Performance Management Systems oftenintroduced as a key component of New Public Management. In doing so, it identifies some of the common and long-standing difficulties identified with the introduction and use of performance measures. The article then questions why such management systems are consistently advocated given some of the apparently serious dysfunctions that their introduction and use can engender. It concludes that these systems reflect a deeper attachment to what has been characterised as Enlightenment thinking, and that an archaeology of this style of thought is a necessary pre-requisite for understanding models of management that are promulgated. [source]


Converging New Public Management Reforms and Diverging Accounting Practices in Flemish Local Governments

FINANCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY & MANAGEMENT, Issue 2 2001
Johan Christiaens
This paper aims at presenting a comparative study of the diverging development of accounting reforms in Flemish local governments in terms of accounting from a technical point of view. On the one hand, the objectives and the framework of current governmental accounting reforms aiming at improving New Public Management are currently converging. On the other hand, a conceptual examination reveals that the prescribed accounting practices are widely diverging and apparently this is also the case for the practical implementation of the reformed accounting systems. By way of conclusion, a number of possible reasons for this unsuccessful proliferation are presented. [source]


Autopsy of Change: Contextualising Entrepreneurial and Accounting Potential in the NHS

FINANCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY & MANAGEMENT, Issue 4 2000
Sue Richardson
Set in the context of New Public Management (NPM), this paper uses two NHS Pathology departments to provide a clearer picture of what reforms have really achieved. Contrasting illustrations of management processes, entrepreneurialism and accounting practices are provided in the case studies. The paper seeks to explain these differences and concludes that the impact of NPM, in terms of entrepreneurial management and accounting practices, is not just contingent upon the type of activity undertaken but also upon the ,antecedent conditions of possibility' embedded therein and the personality and competence of individuals managing front line change. [source]


Is Financial Stress an Incentive for the Adoption of Businesslike Planning and Control in Local Government?

FINANCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY & MANAGEMENT, Issue 1 2000
A Comparative Study of Eight Dutch Municipalities
Hood has formulated the hypothesis that financial stress is a motive for the adoption of New Public Management (NPM), and particularly of businesslike instruments and styles in government. He has illustrated this hypothesis on a macro-level by comparing different OECD countries. The aim of this paper is to make a start with a micro-level test of this hypothesis by studying individual governmental organization, i.e. eight municipalities in the Netherlands. The financial stress hypothesis has been operationalised by assuming a negative relationship between the financial position of a municipality and the existence of businesslike planning and control instruments. The research shows that there is no evidence for the existence of this relationship. However, a conclusive judgement about the financial stress hypothesis seems to be impossible due to the fact that non-technical aspects of NPM were not taken into account, and also because of an , on average , upward bias in the financial position of the municipalities in the empirical investigation. [source]


Gender and New Public Management: Reconstituting Academic Subjectivities

GENDER, WORK & ORGANISATION, Issue 4 2002
Robyn Thomas
This article is located within the context of British Higher Education. It examines the ,radical reforms' of New Public Management (NPM) (marketization and managerialism) in the management of university organizations. The article has two main aims. First, to explore the extent to which NPM initiatives have influenced individual women academics's day,to,day experiences of the gendered academy and their professional identities. Second, to understand individuals' active responses to NPM to develop theorizing of individual resistance in public service organizations. Adopting a Foucauldian feminist framework, it is suggested that the introduction of NPM presents a site for political struggle for women academics. The article explores the gendered nature of NPM, to determine how, in three individual universities, different women academics have responded to the ,managerialist challenge'. Finally, the article focuses on the ways in which different women academics might accommodate, resist, or transform the discourses of NPM, the factors facilitating this, and the material outcomes. [source]


From "New Institutionalism" to "Institutional Processualism": Advancing Knowledge about Public Management Policy Change

GOVERNANCE, Issue 4 2006
MICHAEL BARZELAY
Research on public management reform has taken a decidedly disciplinary turn. Since the late 1990s, analytical issues are less often framed in terms of the New Public Management. As part of the disciplinary turn, much recent research on public management reform is highly influenced by the three new institutionalisms. However, these studies have implicitly been challenged by a competing research program on public management reform that is emphatically processual in its theoretical foundations. This article develops the challenge in a more explicit fashion. It provides a theoretical restatement of the competing "institutional processualist" research program and compares its substantive findings with those drawn from the neoinstitutionalisms. The implications of this debate about public management reform for comparative historical analysis and neoinstitutional theories are discussed. [source]


Reshaping the State: Administrative Reform and New Public Management in France

GOVERNANCE, Issue 4 2005
ALISTAIR COLE
This essay examines the administrative reform process in France since the late 1980s. The key reforms undertaken during this period have sought to delegate greater managerial autonomy to the ministerial field-service level. We undertook semistructured interviews with officials in the field services of three French ministries (Education, Agriculture, and Infrastructure) in the Champagne-Ardennes region, as well as with members of the wider policy communities. The capacity of the field services to adopt a proactive approach to management reform depended on five key variables: internal organizational dynamics; the attitude of the central services to mesolevel autonomy; the degree of institutional receptivity to change; the type of service delivery, and the extent of penetration in local networks. The Infrastructure Ministry was more receptive to management change than either Education or (especially) Agriculture, a receptivity that reflects the institutional diversity of the French administrative system, and that supports new institutionalist arguments. The essay rejects straightforward convergence to the New Policy Management norm. Changes in public management norms require either endogenous discursive shifts or else need to be interpreted in terms of domestic registers that are acceptable or understandable to those charged with implementing reform. [source]


Senior Civil Servants and Bureaucratic Change in Belgium

GOVERNANCE, Issue 3 2003
Guido Dierickx
The Belgian civil service used to be a Weberian bureaucracy, with a strict division of labor between civil servants and politicians, administrative careers based on both seniority and partisan patronage, and a technocratic culture coupled with a high level of alienation from both politics and politicians. Administrative reform came in the wake of the constitutional reform that transformed unitary Belgium into a federal state with several governments, each with a civil service of its own. The fiscal crisis prompted them to look favorably on the promises of New Public Management (NPM). The new Flemish government was first to take advantage of this opportunity, as it had the financial resources, the tendency to refer to Anglo-Saxon and Dutch examples, and the right political and administrative leadership. The staying power of these as yet precarious reforms depends on the continuity of political leadership, the establishment of an administrative culture matching the institutional innovations, and resistance to the endemic temptation to use them for partisan purposes. [source]


The U.S. Federal Executive in an Era of Change

GOVERNANCE, Issue 3 2003
Joel D. Aberbach
This article examines changes in the background characteristics, attitudes, and behavior patterns of high-level U.S. federal executives. It also considers the impact of the New Public Management (NPM) movement. The data indicate that despite intense struggles about the role of the public sector, top civil servants remain a well-educated, experienced, and highly motivated group, the members of which compare favorably to top executives in the private sector. The data also suggest that the Civil Service Reform Act (CSRA) of 1978 has been effective in producing a more politically responsive corps of career civil servants, and that administrators (both career and noncareer) are increasingly attuned to the more technical and legal aspects of their roles and less oriented to protecting particular interests or clientele groups. NPM-style changes are still in progress and remain controversial, but it appears that political leaders continue to have an excellent (and increasingly diverse) group of career people to work with and a system that,at least in part due to the CSRA reforms,is more responsive to them than before. The top part of the U.S. bureaucracy may have been bent and reshaped in many ways over the last thirty years, but, despite widely publicized fears, it has not broken. [source]


Administrative Reform: Changing Leadership Roles?

GOVERNANCE, Issue 4 2001
Tom Christensen
Three interwoven change elements characterize New Public Management: substantial horizontal and vertical specialization, substituting an integrated sector model for a fragmented functional model, and extensive use of contracts as part of a "make the manager manage" kind of incentive system. This article discusses the effects and implications of these reform elements on political-democratic processes in general, and on political, administrative, and public enterprise leadership roles more specifically. Examples from Norway and New Zealand illustrate the discussion. [source]


Business Models and the Transfer of Businesslike CentralGovernment Agencies

GOVERNANCE, Issue 2 2001
Oliver James
At the same time as many researchers in public administration are suggesting the emergence of similar New Public Management (NPM) forms in Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, a substantial number of those working in comparative political economy are rediscovering differences between countries. This paper explores a key component of NPM,business-like central government agencies,in four countries: the UK, the U.S., Germany, and Japan. So far, the private sector side of the NPM story has largely been neglected. However, the business-like agency model as developed in the UK was influenced by the Anglo-American system of corporate governance. In comparative political economy, the Anglo-American system is seen as different from that in Germany or Japan. These differences are important for understanding transfer through emulation of the UK agency model by policy-makers in other countries. An apparent inconsistency may be developing, with governments using an NPM form based on an Anglo-American model of business that is far from universal in business itself. [source]


Adaptive Strategies of Nonprofit Human Service Organizations in an Era of Devolution and New Public Management

NONPROFIT MANAGEMENT & LEADERSHIP, Issue 3 2000
Jennifer Alexander
This article reviews the results of a multiphase study of nonprofit human service organizations serving children and youth in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. The purpose of the study was to identify adaptation strategies organizations found effective for the current environment. The study reviews the results of longitudinal focus groups and a final workshop directed to analyzing strategies for maintaining organizational viability. Effective adaptations included strategic expansion of services and client bases, networking as a means to acquire and stabilize revenue streams and resources, and increased use of business techniques and technology to generate outcome measures and an image of effectiveness with funders. [source]


BETTER REGULATION IN EUROPE: BETWEEN PUBLIC MANAGEMENT AND REGULATORY REFORM

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, Issue 3 2009
CLAUDIO M. RADAELLI
Can the European regulatory state be managed? The European Union (EU) and its member states have looked at better regulation as a possible answer to this difficult question. This emerging public policy presents challenges to scholars of public management and administrative reforms, but also opportunities. In this conceptual article, we start from the problems created by the value-laden discourse used by policy-makers in this area, and provide a definition and a framework that are suitable for empirical/explanatory research. We then show how public administration scholars could usefully bring better regulation into their research agendas. To be more specific, we situate better regulation in the context of the academic debates on the New Public Management, the political control of bureaucracies, evidence-based policy, and the regulatory state in Europe. [source]


PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SECTOR MANAGERS OVER 20 YEARS: A TEST OF THE ,CONVERGENCE THESIS'

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, Issue 4 2006
MICHAEL POOLE
This paper sets out to test the ,convergence thesis' in respect of managers in the public and private sectors in Britain. New Public Management (NPM) initiatives have had the objective of making managerial behaviour in public sector organizations more similar to that in the private sector. Based on unique national surveys undertaken in 1980, 1990 and 2000, using quite large random samples of fellows and members of the Chartered Management Institute (CMI), comparisons are made to investigate whether ,convergence' between public and private sector managers has actually occurred. The patterns are found to be complex and, although there are some signs of convergence, the two sectors continue to exhibit similarities, persistent differences and parallel movements evident in managerial attitudes, behaviour and experiences. [source]


Talking Cop: Discourses of Change and Policing Identities

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, Issue 4 2003
Annette Davies
This paper presents empirical and theoretical analysis of the enactment of New Public Management (NPM) within the UK police service. It draws on empirical material gathered in a two-year study that explores the ways in which individual policing professionals have responded to, and received, the NPM discourse. Theoretically informed by a discursive approach to organizational analysis, the paper focuses on the new subject positions promoted within NPM that serve to challenge traditional understandings of policing organization and identities. The paper examines the implications of this for policies that promote community orientated policing (COP) and increased inter-agency partnership. The paper argues that the promotion of a more progressive form of policing, based on community orientation and equality principles, may struggle to gain legitimacy within the current performance regime that legitimizes a competitive masculine subjectivity, with its emphasis on crime fighting. [source]


Maintaining a distinctive public administration: the Isle of Man civil service since 1962

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, Issue 2 2002
Paul Carmichael
Emphasis on ,globalization' within academic literature is reflected in the contention within public administration that the prescriptions of the New Public Management are an inescapable fact of life from which states have little scope for resisting. However, variation persists both between and within countries. Since 1997, devolution within the UK and novel intergovernmental structures occasioned by the Belfast Agreement for Northern Ireland have transformed the territorial governance of the UK and the wider British Isles, providing further evidence of the differential impact of NPM. In seeking a better understanding of these differences, examination of the administrative arrangements of small communities or micro states can offer fascinating comparative insights into the workings of larger states, especially those with whom they enjoy a direct relationship. Frequently, however, small communities are overlooked in favour of studies of countries with more political weight. The micro states of the British Isles (namely, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands) illustrate the point. However, with a few notable exceptions, relatively little is published. To correct this deficiency, this article seeks to explore developments in the Isle of Man, specifically its civil service. In so doing, the article aims to broaden our understanding of the changing governance not only of the Isle of Man, but also of the UK and beyond. [source]