A “New” Public Sector in the Modern Age

Introduction

Public administrations followed an important process of change over the past few years. The reforms, which have involved European countries since the 1990s, have been mainly oriented to privatization and efficiency of the public sector, but also to outsourcing, flexibility, decentralization, and training of personnel (Emery, 2019). Consequently, public administrations have become more and more complex, gaining managerial logics belonging to the private sector and new elements relating to organizational structure and culture (Christensen & Lægreid, 2011). Reforms are processes of intentional change to the administrative and organizational apparatus (Verhoest & Lægreid, 2010). Change can generate uncertainty (Bordia, Hobman, Jones, Gallois & Callan, 2004), and therefore stress (Perry & Christensen, 2015), in an attempt to improve the current situation.

As part of this reform trend, the traditional distance between public and private organizations has thinned out starting with the New Public Management (NPM) movement (Barzelay, 2001). The way of working changes, the way of interpreting work changes, the concept of performance, efficiency, and economy changes, the managerial style changes. In particular, the way of being a manager changes (Fernandez & Rainey, 2006), e.g., the new public manager must communicate to all the members of the organization the need for change, s/he must create internal and external support for change, and so on.

Despite these premises, the administrative system does not always work correctly (Lynch, 2014): just think about politics, which abuse the command over administrations to nourish clients, distribute armchairs, obtain financing, look for votes (e.g., Cordis & Milyo, 2016; Graycar & Jancsics, 2017). The reforms of recent years have often failed: above all, the umpteenth reform of the public administration, located on the “privatization” line, the culture of neoliberalism, the “less State more market” direction, which led to spending cuts on public services, failed. Moreover, it has produced a narrowing of the public sector through the privatization of the main State companies. For the performance of particular functions, the public administrations have set up private companies, while other functions have been outsourced, from information technology to support services. The consequences of these “innovations” on the efficiency of services and the spread of corruption are well known (Villoria, Van Ryzin, & Lavena, 2013).

These experiences reveal the heavy contradiction at the base of the culture of privatization, according to which, in order to better achieve general interests, the public system should follow the model of private companies, designed to achieve particular interests. In reality, the decision-makers of the public system use privatizations to violate the general interest and pursue their own particular, party, or personal interests, even though the easiest connections with the strong interests of finance, income, large companies (Aucoin, 2012).

The solution is the definition of progressive public policies, in the general interest, with an increase in resources and an improvement in public health, public education, public protection of the environment, and so on, up to tax, that with the struggle evasion and the effective taxation of rents and large assets will have to cover the increase in expenditure (Grimmelikhuijsen, Jilke, Olsen, & Tummers, 2017). A targeted program of hiring of public employees is needed, to rebalance the massive retirements in place, to stabilize too many precarious workers, to increase the headcount of some key offices (Graycar & Masters, 2018). These policies must then be declined by the governing bodies in terms of specific programs, plans, and projects, evaluated in their implementation by elective assemblies, at different institutional levels. In practice, it is not possible to carry out any reform unless there is a public administration capable of implementing it (Frederickson & Rohr, 2015).