Browsing by Author "Norman, Richard"
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Item Restricted HRIR201: Human Resource Management and Industrial Relations: Managing Human Resources and Industrial(Victoria University of Wellington, 2009) Norman, RichardItem Restricted HRIR301: Human Resource Management and Industrial Relations: Strategic Human Resource Management(Victoria University of Wellington, 2011) Norman, RichardItem Restricted HRIR307: Human Resource Management and Industrial Relations: Human Resource Development(Victoria University of Wellington, 2015) Norman, RichardItem Restricted HRIR307: Human Resource Management and Industrial Relations: Human Resource Development(Victoria University of Wellington, 2009) Norman, RichardItem Restricted HRIR307: Human Resource Management and Industrial Relations: Human Resource Development(Victoria University of Wellington, 2014) Norman, RichardItem Restricted HRIR307: Human Resource Management and Industrial Relations: Human Resource Development(Victoria University of Wellington, 2011) Norman, RichardItem Restricted HRIR307: Human Resource Management and Industrial Relations: Human Resource Development(Victoria University of Wellington, 2005) Norman, RichardItem Restricted HRIR307: Human Resource Management and Industrial Relations: Human Resource Development(Victoria University of Wellington, 2008) Norman, RichardItem Restricted HRIR307: Human Resource Management and Industrial Relations: Human Resource Development(Victoria University of Wellington, 2013) Norman, RichardItem Restricted HRIR307: Human Resource Management and Industrial Relations: Human Resource Development(Victoria University of Wellington, 2007) Norman, RichardItem Restricted HRIR307: Human Resource Management and Industrial Relations: Human Resource Development(Victoria University of Wellington, 2010) Norman, RichardItem Restricted HRIR307: Human Resource Mgmt and Ind Rels: Human Resource Development(Victoria University of Wellington, 2012) Norman, RichardItem Restricted HRIR320: Human Resource Management and Industrial Relations: Strategic Issues in HRIR(Victoria University of Wellington, 2015) Norman, RichardItem Restricted HRIR320: Human Resource Management and Industrial Relations: Strategic Issues in HRIR(Victoria University of Wellington, 2014) Norman, RichardItem Restricted HRIR320: Human Resource Management and Industrial Relations: Strategic Issues in HRIR(Victoria University of Wellington, 2013) Norman, RichardItem Restricted HRIR320: Human Resource Mgmt and Ind Rels: Strategic Issues in HRIR(Victoria University of Wellington, 2012) Norman, RichardItem Restricted Letting and Making Managers Manage in the New Zealand Public Service(Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 2002) Norman, RichardBusiness-like control systems that seek to let managers manage and hold them accountable for results have been a feature of New Zealand’s public management model since the late 1980s. This model has been a significant break with earlier traditions of delivering public services through a centralised bureaucracy and has attracted considerable interest internationally. New Zealand was an early and comprehensive adopter of ideas known as New Public Management (NPM). The thesis examines the experience of a representative sample of 91 public servants, Members of Parliament (MPs) and informed observers with the control systems of the New Zealand model. Control systems are defined as ‘the formal, information-based routines and procedures managers use to maintain or alter patterns in organisational activities' (Simons, 1995). The New Zealand systems involve a cycle of planning and reporting that provides a ‘thermostat-like’ accountability whereby results are assessed against pre-set standards. The purpose of the control systems is to create clear objectives, provide managers with freedom to manage, generate quality information about performance and make it possible for managers to be held accountable for efficiency and effectiveness. An examination of interviewees' experiences reveals that at each stage of this planning and reporting cycle, there are observable paradoxes or contradictions. Clear objectives are difficult to achieve in a political environment and politicians have sought to rein in management freedoms. What constitutes ‘quality’ information depends on the perspective of the user, and formal accountability processes have tended to focus on measurable and auditable outputs. The New Zealand model of control is seen to be one-dimensional in its focus, having overlooked the paradox that effective control systems require a balance between control and empowerment. A greater balance is needed between the formal focus on easily measurable diagnostic information and less easily observed controls that relate to organisational purpose and opportunities to learn from experience. The control systems have been based on a model of business and market efficiency that was dominant during the 1980s and 1990s. Thinking about what constitutes effective control systems is currently subject to a pendulum swing away from the doctrines of the 1980s, as a result of a change in political leadership but also because of the type of frustration experienced by interviewees. The challenge for the creation of a new model of control is to avoid an extreme swing of the pendulum, and achieve a necessary balance between control and empowerment.Item Open Access New Zealand public management - tensions of a model from the 1980s(Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 2009) Norman, RichardThis year, the systems established in the late 1980s to reform the New Zealand public sector turn 21, and, as in the 1980s, economic pressures and the election of political leaders of a different generation from those they defeated are prompting a rethink about how best to organise and deliver public services. This paper explores the extent to which policies from the 1980s might affect the development of a 21st century public sector.Item Open Access Restructuring – an over-used lever for change in New Zealand’s state sector?(Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 2011) Norman, Richard; Gill, DerekIs restructuring the hammer of organisational change in New Zealand’s state sector? A State Services Commission (SSC) survey of state sector employees in 2010 identified that 65 per cent of the 4,600 staff sampled had been involved in a merger or restructure during the previous two years, a sharp contrast with a similar survey of the federal government of the United States, which found that only 18 per cent were affected. These statistics raise questions which form the basis of this paper: why, how and to what effect are state sector organisations restructured in New Zealand? Our research started with a review of empirical data on restructuring and of perspectives from the literature on restructuring in the public and private sectors. We then explored these perspectives in three separate focus groups in May 2011, with chief executives, human resource managers and Public Service Association (PSA) delegates and organisers. Not surprisingly, chief executives (CEs) who initiate restructuring have a considerably more optimistic view about its role and impact than those who are affected by it. Annex One is a reflection piece written by one of the most experienced New Zealand public service chief executives, Christopher Blake, Chief Executive of the Department of Labour, (and Chief Executive of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra from 2012), provides a balance to the more sceptical argument presented in this paper. We conclude that restructuring has indeed become the ‘hammer’ of organisational change in New Zealand, a result of the ‘freedom to manage’ formula adopted in the late 1980s to break up a unified and ‘career for life’ bureaucracy that was seen to respond to slowly to the economic crises of the 1980s. Restructuring has become almost an addiction, reinforced by short, fixed term contracts for chief executives and a belief by those chief executives that their employer, the State Services Commission, expects them to be seen to be ‘taking charge’. Restructuring is a symbol and sometimes and substitute for action. It treats organisations as though they are mechanical objects with interchangeable parts rather than as living systems of people who have choices about the extent to which they will commit to their work. Organisational change receives considerably less scrutiny than funding proposals for major capital works. We advocate that restructuring should be subject to such scrutiny and chief executives need to act more like stewards of their organisations and less like owners.
