University of Edinburgh Business School
Desperately seeking Susan..?’
In search of innovation in the
era of the New Public
Governance
Professor Stephen P Osborne,
Chair of International Public Management
and Deputy Dean, University of Edinburgh
Business School, Scotland
University of Edinburgh Business School
This presentation
• Genesis of the New Public Governance (NPG)
• Key challenges of the NPG
• Enabling innovation under conditions of the NPG
• ‘The one-liner’
University of Edinburgh Business School
I - Genesis of the NPG
• Public Administration (PA)
• The New Public Management (NPM)
• The New Public Governance (NPG)
• Not a linear history but a layering added complexities
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Public Administration
• Focus on implementation of public policy and
administration of law
• Politics-administration dichotomy
• Flawed in enactment
• Public officials as self-serving elite and little genuine citizen
engagement
• Inefficient allocation of public resources
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New Public Management
• Management of public services not administration of
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policy, with disaggregation of services to units/unit costs
Focus on efficient allocation of public resources and
(variable) focus on markets and competition
Performance management and output control
Re-casting of citizens as customers
Draws upon managerial theory developed from
experience of the manufacturing sector
• A product-dominant and intra-organisational business logic
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But…
• ‘The world has changed’
• Fragmented
• No longer possible for one organisation to meet social/economic
need in isolation
• Current public management theory not ‘fit for purpose’ , if
it ever was
• Policy not service-user focus
• Product not service orientation (outputs not processes)
• Intra-organizational focus in a plural and pluralist world
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New Public Governance
(Osborne 2006, 2010)
• Acknowledges fragmentation of needs
• Embraces plural and pluralist service delivery
• Focus on inter-organisational relationships and service
systems
• From administration and management to negotiation and
governance
• Of needs, service delivery, and outcomes
• Service users as co-producers
• A different, service-dominant, business logic (Osborne et
al 2013): beyond the ‘missing product’ of public services
delivery
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Two caveats…
• NPG is not a normative term but a descriptive and
evaluative one
• NPG does not replace the administrative or managerial
imperatives of PA or NPM – it adds a new layer of
complexity that conditions the other two
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II - Key challenges of delivering public
services under conditions of the NPG
• Beyond product-dominant to public service-dominant
business logic
• Beyond silo organisations and inter-organisational
relations to public service systems
• Beyond policy dominance to a user orientation
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A public service-dominant business
logic (Osborne et al 2013)
• Public service delivery is not a process of manufacture
but of service realisation
• Public services are not tangible goods: there is no ‘missing product’
but a process of service delivery
• Public service delivery is about the transformation of (professional)
knowledge to produce added value for end-users (Lusch & Vargo
2006)
• You cannot separate production from consumption: all public
services are co-produced by users and staff
• The service system is the key unit of analysis
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The service system
• Beyond inter-organisational working to service systems
• Public policy creation is a pluralist process: negotiation between
stakeholders
• Public service delivery requires plural elements: public service
organisations, staff, hard and soft technology, end-users,
communities…
• Not just inter-organisational working and networks but service
systems
• Moving from closed and natural systems to open systems
• A process of negotiation and governance to produce public
services
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Making a reality of ‘user orientation’:
Co-production
• ‘User orientation’ and co-production a long time goal of
public policy
• BUT
• Seen as an add-on, under professional/political domination
• The reality
• (public) service-dominance logic identifies co-production as an
inalienable element of service delivery: this way to ‘best practice’…
• ‘The lunatics are taking over the (public policy) asylum…’ (Bekker
et al 2011)
• Towards consumer, participative and enhanced co-production
(Osborne & Strokosch 2013)
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NPG: five implications for innovation
I
• From manufacturing design to process governance: from
the ‘missing product’ to ‘realising the promise’ (Osborne et
al 2013)
• ‘Hard’ innovations can support public services but..
• Away from R&D and technocratic dominance
• Meshing user expectations and experience to produce performance
• From rivalrous competition to open (collaborative)
innovation
• Share risks, costs, knowledge - and benefits
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NPG: five implications for innovation II
• Innovation is socially constructed within social systems
(Osborne & Brown 2011)
• What is acceptable?
• ‘Pin down’ and biometric ID
• Risk is (also) socially constructed (Brown & Osborne
2013)
• From technocratic risk management to risk governance
• Who are the stakeholders?
• How much risk, for what benefit?
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NPG: five implications for innovation III
• The user is at the centre of public service innovation
(Osborne & Strokosch 2013, Radnor & Osborne 2013)
• Co-production not an ‘add-on’ but the driver
• ‘Sticky knowledge’ plus professional knowledge leads to innovation
• From R & D and policy dominance to understanding the reality of
co-production in service systems
• Beyond the technocratic and political imperatives to innovation rooted in
a public service-dominant logic
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The ‘one-liner’ for the NPG?
• Service users (not technocrats, politicians or
professionals) are at the heart of the public service
system and drive public service innovation across
that system
• Their needs, their public services, their
innovations, their outcomes