THE ART OF THE STATE: CULTURE, RHETORIC, AND PUBLIC MANAGEMENT

Public Management: Seven Propositions

Christopher Hood (Contributor Webpage)
DOI:10.1093/0198297653.003.0001
Discusses three conventional assumptions that are made about public
management: that it is in the throes of a millennial transformation to a new style;
that today's new public management ideas differ sharply from those of earlier
eras; and that the favoured doctrines of contemporary public management tend to
be dubbed as economic rationalism. Goes on to point out that the book looks at
public management from a different perspective, and reduces its arguments to
seven related propositions, discussed in the remainder of the chapter that:
grid/cultural theory captures most of the variety in both current and historical
debates about how to organize public services; application of a culturaltheory
framework can illuminate many of the central analytic questions of public
management; if we look across time and space, we can identify ideas about how to
organize government and public services that correspond to each of the four polar
categories contained in cultural theory; no one of those recipes for good
organization has a clear claim to be considered more modern than any of the
others and each has inbuilt weaknesses; variation in ideas about how to organize
in government is not likely to disappear; the dimensions identified by cultural
theory enable analysis of organizational variety to be pursued at a range of levels;
and the understanding of cultural and organizational variety, within a historical
perspective, merits a central place in the study of public management. These
seven propositions overlap, and some of them are given more space than others in
the book; this chapter concentrates mainly on the first proposition, and aims to
introduce grid/group cultural theory in the context of public management, but the
other six propositions are also discussed more briefly, as a way of setting the scene
for the remainder of the book.

Calamity, Conspiracy, and Chaos in Public Management
Christopher Hood (Contributor Webpage)
DOI:10.1093/0198297653.003.0002
In Chapters 23 of the Introduction, the culturaltheory framework is used to
explore two central problems of public managementthe analysis of the
characteristic ways in which different forms of organization can collapse and fail
(this chapter), and the analysis of the range of forms of control and regulation (in
the broadest sense) available in public management (the next chapter); in both
cases, an examination through the lens of cultural theory can add an extra
dimension or an alternative perspective to the analysis. Aims to show how a
culturaltheory perspective can assist the analysis of public management failure
and collapse in two ways. First, such a perspective can help bring out some of the
varying and contradictory attitudes towards scandal or catastrophe in public
management, in the sense of who to blame or how to put matters right. Second,
the four basic organizational ways of life that cultural theory identifies (as
introduced in the first chapter) can each be expected to have its own characteristic
pattern of inbuilt failure. The different sections are Responses to
PublicManagement Disasters; Four Types of Failure and Collapse; Private Gain
From Public Office; Fiascos Resulting from Excessive Trust in Authority and
Expertise; Unresolved Conflict and Internecine Strife; Apathy and Inertia: Lack of
Planning, Initiative, and Foresight; and Accounting for Failure in Public
Management.

Control and Regulation in Public Management
Christopher Hood (Contributor Webpage)
DOI:10.1093/0198297653.003.0003
In Chapters 23 of the Introduction, the culturaltheory framework is used to
explore two central problems of public managementthe analysis of the
characteristic ways in which different forms of organization can collapse and fail
(the last chapter), and the analysis of the range of forms of control and regulation
(in the broadest sense) available in public management (this chapter); in both
cases, an examination through the lens of cultural theory can add an extra
dimension or an alternative perspective. Aims to build on four important insights
by putting them together in a single framework that identifies a set of basic forms
of regulation or control linked to a view of what makes different groups cohere.
Four generic types of control and regulation in public management are discussed,
each of which is loosely linked to one of the polar ways of life identified by cultural
theory. The four approaches are bossism (control by oversight); choicism (control
by competition); groupism (control by mutuality); and chancism, (control by
contrived randomness). Each of these approaches to control and regulation can
operate at several different levels of organization: i.e. they can be applied to the
ways organizations control their clients, to the way control relationships operate
inside organizations, and to the way organizations are themselves controlled by
external forces; each is also capable of being linked to a broader view of good
government and accountability, these four types will be returned to in Parts II and
III of the book.


Doing Public Management the Hierarchist Way
Christopher Hood (Contributor Webpage)
DOI:10.1093/0198297653.003.0004
In the four chapters of Part II, public management ideas that loosely correspond to
each of the four polar world views identified by cultural theory are discussed.
Here, the culturaltheory framework is mixed with a historical perspective to
survey recurring approaches to public management that can be loosely
characterized as hierarchist (this chapter), individualist (Ch. 5), egalitarian (Ch. 6),
and fatalist (Ch. 7). Looks briefly and selectively at four classic hierarchist
approaches to public management. Two of them (Confucian public management in
classical China and the cameralist tradition of early modern Europe) rarely receive
a mention in conventional publicmanagement booksbut those older traditions
merit attention from presentday students of public management, and not just for
pietist or antiquarian reasons, for they show some of the different contexts in
which hierarchist ideas have flourished, and their fate can help assess the
strengths and weaknesses of doing public management the hierarchist way. The
other two hierarchist approaches discussed are Progressivism and Fabianism.

Doing Public Management the Individualist Way
Christopher Hood (Contributor Webpage)
DOI:10.1093/0198297653.003.0005
In the four chapters of Part II, public management ideas that loosely correspond to
each of the four polar world views identified by cultural theory are discussed.
Here, the cultural theory framework is mixed with a historical perspective to
survey recurring approaches to public management that can be loosely
characterized as hierarchist (Ch. 4), individualist (this chapter), egalitarian (Ch. 6),
and fatalist (Ch. 7). What can loosely be called individualist approaches to public
management start from the assumption that the world is populated by rational
egoists who are bent on outsmarting one another to get something for nothing
rivalry and competition are central to the individualist view of what the world of
public management is and should be like. The individualist bias embodies at least
four basic propositions that contradict the underlying assumptions of hierarchism
and of the egalitarian bias: first, an individualist bias does not automatically begin
with a view of public management from the apex of the state, it rejects the
viewpoint of the chancellory or presidential palace and is not disposed to examine
public management in the context of power play among states, and instead is
more predisposed to start bottom up; second, instead of assuming that the
interests of the rulers and those of the ruled can go together in a positivesum
game, an individualist bias is more likely to start from the assumption that rulers
will tend to look after themselves at the expense of the ruled unless the
institutions and incentive structures are very carefully engineered; third, instead of
assuming that economic development and social order require hands on state
administration guided by an enlightened technocratic elite, individualists will tend
to assume that markets will ordinarily produce better results than bureaucratic
hierarchies; and fourth, instead of assuming people that are only corrupted by evil
institutions, individualists will tend to work on what Thomas Carlyle called the pig
principlethe assumption that human beings, from the highest to the lowest, are
inherently rational, calculative, opportunistic, and selfseeking. These four
assumptions taken together make a relatively coherent philosophy of institutional
design for government; it is the first two assumptions that mainly distinguish the
individualist bias in public management from the hierarchist approach considered
in the last chapter, and the second two that mainly distinguish it from the
egalitarian approach to be considered in the next.

Doing Public Management the Egalitarian Way
Christopher Hood (Contributor Webpage)
DOI:10.1093/0198297653.003.0006
In the four chapters of Part II, public management ideas that loosely correspond to
each of the four polar world views identified by cultural theory are discussed; here
the culturaltheory framework is mixed with a historical perspective to survey
recurring approaches to public management that can be loosely characterized as
hierarchist (Ch. 4), individualist (Ch. 5), egalitarian (this chapter), and fatalist (Ch.
7). Like individualism and hierarchism, egalitarianism embodies a particular vision
of control of public management both within organizations and by the society at
large, and that approach to organization can be linked to a broader vision of good
government that takes groupism rather than bossism, choicism, or chancism as the
point of departure or central organizing principle for cooperative behaviour. The
egalitarian approach to organization involves at least three closely interrelated
elements: these are group selfmanagement, control by mutuality, and maximum
facetoface accountability. A fourth idea often associated with egalitarianism is
the view that the process by which decisions are reached in an organization or
group is just as important, if not more so, than the results or outcomes in a narrow
sensei.e. the achievement of the substantive policy goals of egalitarians is not
held to be more important than reaching the process goal of decisionmaking
through highparticipation weakleadership structures. The main sections are:
What Egalitarians Believe; The Managerial Critique of Egalitarianism; and Varieties
of Egalitarianism.

Doing Public Management the Fatalist Way?
Christopher Hood (Contributor Webpage)
DOI:10.1093/0198297653.003.0007
In the four chapters of Part II, public management ideas that loosely correspond to
each of the four polar world views identified by cultural theory are discussed; here
the culturaltheory framework is mixed with a historical perspective to survey
recurring approaches to public management that can be loosely characterized as
hierarchist (Ch.. 4), individualist (Ch. 5), egalitarian (Ch. 6), and fatalist (this
chapter). Starts by asking whether there can be a fatalist approach to public
managementcultural theorists have identified fatalism as a viable way of life, but
it does not figure prominently in conventional accounts on the provision of public
services; Banfield has stated that in fatalist societies (such as Montegrano) public
management will be (only) narrowly bureaucratic and statist because only paid
officials will be concerned with public affairs, and the citizenry at large will be
cynical about the motives of public officials; in spite of this widespread belief,
however, there are likely to be few effective checks on public officials in a fatalist
society, and Banfield sees fatalism as a social pathology bound to produce social
backwardness and stagnation. Cultural theory is ambiguous on whether fatalism
can be a viable basis of organization in the sense that a Montegranotype society
could survive and reproduce itself over time, nor is it clear from the work of
cultural theorists exactly what fatalists focus on karma amounts to. The last
possibilitythat fatalism might link to howtodoit ideas about organizational
design, as distinct from a view of the world as ineluctably ruled by the fickle
goddess of fortunehas had little attention: from conventional culturaltheory
accounts, it would seem the most appropriate role, for fatalist social science in
public management would be like that of the chorus in classical Greek theatre
and the second section of the chapter examines such a perspective on public
management, looking particularly at one influential strain of new institutionalist
literature, which portrays the functioning of organizations as a highly
unpredictable process, involving eclectic decisionmaking unavoidably dependent
on chance connections. It then moves on to build on the recipe for contrived
randomness, and argues that a fatalist perspective can at least in some sense be
taken beyond commentary and criticism into a positive prescription for conducting
management and designing organizations to operate on the basis of chance.

Public Management, Rhetoric, and Culture
Christopher Hood (Contributor Webpage)
DOI:10.1093/0198297653.003.0008
Returns to the general question of what sort of science public management is or
can be and how cultural theory can contribute to that science. If public
management is (as suggested earlier) dominated by rhetorical forms of argument,
cultural theory can help take one step further than conventional analyses of
rhetoric by differentiating rhetorical familiesthis theme is explored in this
chapter, which looks at what a culturaltheory framework can add to the analysis
of public management as an arena for rhetoric, and aims to do three things. First,
it briefly expands on a now familiar argument (noted in the first chapter)that
shifts in what counts as received ideas in public management work through a
process of fashion and persuasion, not through proofs couched in strict deductive
logic, controlled experiments, or even systematic analysis of all available cases.
Second, and more ambitiously, it aims to bring together the analysis of rhetoric in
public management with the four ways of doing public management that were
explored in Part II, to show how each of those approaches can have its own
rhetoric, in the sense of foreshortened proofs, analogies, and parables; the aim is
to put a culturaltheory perspective to work in a different way, to identify multiple
rhetorics of public management. Third, it briefly develops the suggestion made in
Chapters 1 and 2 that shifts (change) in received ideas about how to organize
typically occur in a reactive way, through rejection of existing arrangements with
their known faults, rather than through a positive process of reasoning from a
blank slate.

Contemporary Public Management: A New Global Paradigm?
Christopher Hood (Contributor Webpage)
DOI:10.1093/0198297653.003.0009
Returns to the general question of what sort of science public management is or
can be and how cultural theory can contribute to that science. Critically discusses
the pervasive ideas of modernization and global convergence in a culturaltheory
framework, suggesting there are more forces for divergence and less common
ground on what modernity means in matters of organization than is commonly
recognized. It argues that modernization is a rhetorically successful idea because
when the powerful but implicit metaphor of technological development that
underlies it is carried over into human organization it is inherently ambiguousso
it lends itself to quite different and contradictory ideas about the wave of the
future that fit with each of the world views identified by cultural theory. Further, it
argues that a vision of global transformation of public management into a
convergent modern style is likely to be exaggerated because it ignores powerful
forces of pathdependency and selfdisequilibrationi.e. the capacity of
management reform initiatives to produce the opposite of their intended result.
The main sections of the chapter are: Modern, Global, Inevitable? The Claim of a
New Paradigm in Public Management; PublicManagement Modernization as Deep
Change; PublicManagement Modernization as Irreversible Change;
PublicManagement Modernization as Convergent Change; PublicManagement
Modernization as Beneficent Change; and Modernizationor Fatal Remedies?

Taking Stock: The State of the Art of the State
Christopher Hood (Contributor Webpage)
DOI:10.1093/0198297653.003.0010
Returns to the general question of what sort of science public management is or
can be and how cultural theory can contribute to that science. Concludes by taking
stock of the culturaltheory approach as a framework for analysing public
management, surveying its strengths and weaknesses. It does not claim there are
no problems with the approachon the contrary, there are major gaps and
ambiguities and some of the underlying logic needs attention, but in spite of such
weaknesses, the claim is that a culturaltheory framework has much to contribute
to a way of thinking about the art of the state that is neither sham science nor
mere craft. To assess the culturaltheory approach, this concluding chapter
discusses three sorts of objections to the culturaltheory framework as a way of
analysing public management. One possible line of criticism might be called the
nursery toys objectionthe claim that cultural theory is too simple for
sophisticated analysis and is therefore better suited for the elementary stages of
understanding than for advanced or professional analysis; a second possible line of
criticism might be called the soft science objectionthe claim that, whatever its
level of sophistication or applicability to management, the theory is, even on its
own terms, limited, ambiguous, and perhaps even unfalsifiable; a third line of
criticism might be called the wrong tool objectioni.e. the claim that cultural
theory, however sophisticated, cannot be an adequate basis for a theory of
management, because ultimately it has little to say about the central whattodo
questions of organization that management and managers need to be concerned
withand by this view, it is the wrong tool for the job.