NPM and beyond - leadership, culture, and demography

Abstract

In this paper we ask what happens to NPM and post-NPM reform elements when they encounter the realities of the Norwegian civil service. The empirical data used in the analysis are taken mainly from surveys of civil servants in the Norwegian ministries conducted in 1996 and 2006. Main research questions are if the administrative culture has changed over the past decade towards a greater NPM emphasis; to what degree NPM-related reforms have been put into practice; what have been the most significant reform elements; and how to explain the variation in the use of different administrative reform tools? How important is leadership relative to other structural factors and to demographic and cultural features? A general finding is that cultural features make a significant difference, but having a leadership position and task structure also have explanatory power. Generally we face a combination of robustness and amenability to administrative policy reforms.