PUBLIC SECTOR ORGANIZATIONS NORDIC ADMINISTRATIVE REFORMS Lessons for Public Management Edited by Carsten Greve, Per Lægreid and Lise H Rykkja Public Sector Organizations Series Editors B. Guy Peters Pittsburgh University, USA Geert Bouckaert Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium Aims of the Series Organizations are the building blocks of governments The role of organizations, formal and informal, is most readily apparent in public bureaucracy, but all the institutions of the public sector are comprised of organizations, or have some organizational characteristics that affect their performance Therefore, if scholars want to understand how governments work, a very good place to start is at the level of organizations involved in delivering services Likewise, if practitioners want to understand how to be effective in the public sector, they would be well-advised to consider examining the role of organizations and how to make organizations more effective This series publishes research-based books concerned with organizations in the public sector and covers such issues as: the autonomy of public sector organizations; networks and network analysis; bureaucratic politics; organizational change and leadership; and methodology for studying organizations More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/14525 Carsten Greve • Per Lỉgreid • Lise H Rykkja Editors Nordic Administrative Reforms Lessons for Public Management Editors Carsten Greve Copenhagen Business School Denmark Per Lægreid University of Bergen Norway Lise H Rykkja Uni Research Rokkan Centre Bergen, Norway Public Sector Organizations ISBN 978-1-137-56362-0 ISBN 978-1-137-56363-7 DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-56363-7 (eBook) Library of Congress Control Number: 2016947275 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 This work is subject to copyright All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd London ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This book takes stock of contemporary administrative reforms in the Nordic countries We ask whether there is a Nordic model of public management reforms that separates the Nordic family of countries from other groups of countries in Europe and if, at the same time, there are major similarities across the five Nordic countries Reform trends characterized as New Public Management, the Neo-Weberian State, New Public Governance and post-New Public Management are addressed The traditional Nordic model is used as a benchmark for assessing variation across countries We examine the institutional features of the Nordic countries, focusing on politicization, autonomy and coordination; the role identities of administrative top-level executives, their public sector values and work motivation; the reform processes, content and trends; the use of different management tools and the perceived effects of reforms, as well as the perceived performance of the public administration The financial crisis of 2008 played an important part for reforms in many countries, and it is also addressed The book is a result of the European Union’s Seventh Framework Program research project, Coordination of Cohesion in the Public Sector of the Future—COCOPS. The COCOPS project gathered a team of European public administration scholars from 11 universities in 10 countries (Belgium, Estonia, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain and the United Kingdom) and set out to assess the impact of New Public Management-style reforms in Europe The project was led by Professor Steven Van de Walle (Erasmus University Rotterdam) and Professor Gerhard Hammerschmid (Hertie School of Governance, Berlin) v vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS and coordinated by the Erasmus University Many thanks to Steven Van de Walle, Gerhard Hammerschmid and Anca Oprisor for their correspondence, encouragement and backing for a book on the Nordic perspective to public administration reform based on the COCOPS data This book draws extensively on the COCOPS executive survey to top level administrative executives in ministries and central agencies conducted during 2012–2014 It is one of the largest online data collections on public sector reform available, covering 7027 top-level public sector executives throughout Europe, including 1907 from the Nordic countries The sample used for this book contains data from 19 European countries, including all five Nordic countries—Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden—as well as Austria, Croatia, Estonia, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Portugal, Serbia, Spain, and the UK. The 19 countries represent different administrative traditions—the Nordic, the Anglo-Saxon, the Germanic, the Napoleonic and the East European An acknowledgement goes to our colleagues in the COCOPS network and their publications on the database which we draw on in this book More information about the COCOPS project and links to publications can be found on this website: http://www.cocops.eu/ This book would not have been realized without the support of the Nordic Council of Ministers (Nordic Committee of Senior Officials for Finance) for the ‘Nordic COCOPS Project’ (Project no 14225) The editors wish to thank all COCOPS partners as well as the Nordic Council of Ministers Without them this book’s completion would not have been possible Our thanks also go to the numerous government officials across Europe who graciously shared their knowledge and expertise by answering the questionnaire The book has been a joint effort by a Nordic team of seasoned public administration researchers who have contributed to making it a coherent and well-structured monograph: Senior Researcher Niels Ejersbo, Danish Institute for Local and Regional Government (KORA); Professor Carsten Greve, Copenhagen Business School; Professor Gunnar Helgi Kristinsson, University of Iceland; Policy Research and Advice Pétur Berg Matthíasson, OECD; Professor Per Lỉgreid, University of Bergen; Senior Researcher Lise H. Rykkja, UNI Research Rokkan Centre, Bergen; Adjunct Professor Turo Virtanen, University of Helsinki; Associate Professor Helena Wockelberg, Uppsala University; and Associate Professor Shirin Ahlbäck Öberg, Uppsala University ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii We wish to thank the Copenhagen Business School, the University of Uppsala and KORA for hosting our book project meetings Special thanks go to Ulrikke Schill at the Department of Administration and Organization Theory, University of Bergen for excellent technical assistance in supervising the preparation of the manuscript and to Melanie Newton for very competent language assistance June 2016 Frederiksberg, Denmark Bergen, Norway CONTENTS Introduction: The Nordic Model in Transition Carsten Greve, Per Lægreid, and Lise H. Rykkja Data, Methods, and Some Structural and Individual Characteristics Per Lægreid and Lise H. Rykkja Reform Context and Status Carsten Greve and Niels Ejersbo Nordic Administrative Heritages and Contemporary Institutional Design Shirin Ahlbäck Öberg and Helena Wockelberg Roles, Values, and Motivation Turo Virtanen Administrative Reform: Processes, Trends, and Content Per Lægreid and Lise H. Rykkja 23 37 57 79 105 ix ... administrative reforms and not on policy reforms or changes in general Some administrative reforms can be “big bang” reforms, while others are more incremental “Big bang” reforms are reforms that... takes stock of contemporary administrative reforms in the Nordic countries We ask whether there is a Nordic model of public management reforms that separates the Nordic family of countries from... of public management reforms, especially in the Nordic countries This is the approach used by this book The transformative approach sees public sector reform and the ability of the political-administrative