Challenging Scandinavian employment relations: the effects of new public management reforms

Abstract

Building on the convergence/divergence approach, this paper examines whether recent new public management (NPM) inspired reforms entailing inter alia cutbacks in the public sector, marketisation and management by performance measures have had significant implications for service provision and employment relations in the Danish, Norwegian and Swedish public sector. In this paper, we argue that although differences exist across the Scandinavian countries, it is evident that they have managed to adopt and implement NPM-inspired reforms without dismantling their universal welfare services and strong traditions of collective bargaining in the public sector. However, this restructuring is taking its toll on the work environment.

Keywords:

• comparative research
• employment relations
• new public management
• Scandinavia

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the editors of this special issue and the two anonymous referees for their useful comments and suggestions. Also, we would like to thank Stephen Bach and Lorenzo Bordogna for their hard and invaluable work of getting us together for the workshop in Sydney and for organising this special issue.

Notes

1. Public service expenditures cover social care, health care, education and other services including labour market police, police and the armed forces. These figures do not cover total public expenditure as other expenses such as social transfers, public debt and research are excluded.

2. We translate amt/fylke/län with the word ‘regions’ although they are often also translated with the word ‘counties’. Usually, regions are larger units than counties.