Searching for managerial discretion: how public managers engage managerialism as a rationalization for increased latitude of action

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the managerial discretion that public managers experience. More specifically, it discusses how managerialism is an embedded ideological stance that influences understandings of public sector governance. I argue that managers’ perceptions of discretion are affected by these understandings. The analysis draws on empirical data from a longitudinal study, demonstrating how public managers engage discourses emanating from managerialism in order to rationalize increased discretion. The findings suggest that customer perspectives functions as a rationalizing factor for engaging public managers’ transition towards increased discretion. As such, this article contributes to knowledge about managerial discretion as well as managerialism.

KEYWORDS:

• Public management
• managerialization
• management as ideology
• latitude of action
• customers

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Erratum

Introduction

The vast majority of researchers in public management would agree that New Public Management (hf. NPM; Hood 1991) has come to be outdated. The term that came to be coined with Christopher Hood’s seminal article from 1991 has since been called middle aged (Hood and Peters 2004) and even dead (Dunleavy et al. 2006). Osborne (2006) argued that NPM had become a transition phase between more traditional public administration and a New Public Governance, whereas Denhardt and Denhardt (2000, 2001) advocated a New Public Service. The global pandemic (Pollitt and Bouckaert 2000) of NPM reforms aimed at increasing efficiency is thus said to have been exchanged for ideas of cooperation and co-creation (Ansell and Gash 2008; Sørensen and Torfing 2011; Lægreid and Rykkja 2015). But, although it may be true that NPM has played out its relevance from an academic perspective, several decades of reform have continued consequence for actors within the public sector.

Ideas about creating a public sector that would work better and cost less (Hood and Dixon 2015; Gore 1993, 1994) come from a larger and more fundamental idea about managerialism (Pollitt 1993, 2016; Clarke and Newman 1997). Managerialism as I see, it is about discourses and practices ‘…which, in the public sector, will deliver more with less, and in the private sector, will ensure competitiveness in the global market-place’ (Pollitt 2016, 431). It is thus a much broader concept than NPM. It is a fundamental ideological stance (Eagleton 1991; Deem and Brehony 2005; Clarke and Newman 1997) that creates a normative pressure of what the public sector is and what methods are considered particularly legitimate to govern and organize it. In the public sector, this has come to manifest itself as, e.g. entrepreneurial thinking (Osborne and Gaebler 1992; Arnold 2013) where managers are expected to have generic knowledge about governance and organizations (Lapsley 2008, 2009; Pollitt 2000; Hood 1991). Together with dominant ideas about separating policy and administration (Aberbach, Putnam, and Rockman 1981; Frederickson et al. 2012), it has created disaggregated (Rhodes 1994; Milward, Provan, and Else 1993; Frederickson 1999b) and complex political organizations (Lapsley and Skærbæk 2012; Lapsley and Knutsson 2017) where performance measurement (Arnaboldi, Lapsley, and Steccolini 2015; Speklé and Frank Verbeeten 2014), accountability, and discretion have become key factors (Kaboolian 1998; Hood 1995). This undoubtedly affects all actors in the public sector, even though I argue that it has especially affected individuals in managerial positions. These individuals are expected to act in a way that contributes to increased organizational performance and accurate policy implementation. Managers who are expected to be managers in the sense that management literature describes should also be given discretion in terms of decision-making, a widespread approach taken in much of the normative literature (cf. Drucker 1954; Mintzberg 1971; Otley 1980).

The theoretical concept of managerial discretion is well developed in the literature. The concept has come to be defined as the latitude of action managers have in a given situation (Hambrick and Finkelstein 1987; Hambrick and Abrahamson 1995; Finkelstein and Peteraf 2007). A high degree of discretion allows for more effective decision-making (Frederickson 1999a) as actors have an opportunity to take control of the implementation process to a greater extent. From this perspective, managerial discretion as a concept can be linked to the general trend of focusing on outputs in terms of performance in that the power to make decisions has been decentralized. Actors’ ability to use discretion in the public sector has primarily been discussed in relation to street-level bureaucrats’ policy implementation (Brodkin 1997; Brodkin 2011; Sandfort 2000; Tummers and Bekkers 2014), although there are studies on management (Wynen et al. 2014) and on an organizational level (Verhoest et al. 2004) as well. Studies have stressed that higher degrees of discretion amongst bureaucrats and managers empowers effective policy implementation (Lipsky 2010 [1980]) and helps to make the policy meaningful to citizens (Tummers 2012). Although understandings about managerial discretion are well described in the literature, I argue that there is less knowledge about how individuals in public organizations relate to latitude of action in their role as managers. To my knowledge, there are no studies that take a distinct public sector perspective in describing and understanding how individuals strive for and rationalize a perceived need for increased managerial discretion.

This article explores how a growing management culture (Lapsley and Skærbæk 2012; Arnaboldi, Lapsley, and Steccolini 2015) affects actors’ understandings and conceptualizations of how the public sector should be organized. I argue that managerialism (Pollitt 1993, 2016; Clarke and Newman 1997) from an ideological perspective (Eagleton 1991; Deem and Brehony 2005; Clarke and Newman 1997) shows that ideas about and how the public sector is to be governed and organized has mimicked the private industry to a large extent, and that this has carried effects and consequences in its wake. The purpose of the article is to critically discuss and empirically show how managerialism has resulted in an embedded understanding of an endeavour towards increased managerial discretion within the public sector. In this article, this is expressed in particular in actors’ use of a managerial discourse (Gewirtz and Ball 2000; Clarke, Gewirtz, and McLaughlin 2000a, 2000b), where customer and customer engagement ideas play decisive roles for their rationalization.

This brings us to the outline of this article. In the next part, I will discuss the analytical framework. The focus is on describing and discussing managerial discretion and managerialism in more detail. The discussion is primarily based on management literature, but I have taken care to specifically position the concepts within public management. I do this primarily by discussing literature concerning street-level bureaucracy. I further develop the discussion about managerialism based on a critical perspective on public sector reforms. In the following section, this study’s methods approach is presented. To support the claims presented in this article, information is provided from an empirical case concerning the Swedish Social Insurance Agency (SSIA). I conclude the article with an analytical discussion and conclusions, where I especially elaborate on the main contributions to public management research.

Managerial discretion and managerialism

Managerial discretion as a theoretical concept has been widely discussed in many different disciplines. In this article, I draw from a rich body of literature of economics (Migue and Belanger 1974; Crew and Kleindorfer 1979; Williamson 1963), strategy (Hambrick and Finkelstein 1987; Hambrick and Abrahamson 1995; Finkelstein and Peteraf 2007), and public management research (Sandfort 2000; Brodkin 1997; Brodkin 2011; Lipsky 2010 [1980]; Hupe and Buffat 2014; Tummers and Bekkers 2014) in order to outline my understanding of the concept. Although the literature is diverse in regard of ontological underpinnings, it carries many similarities.

Hambrick and Finkelstein (1987) introduced the concept of managerial discretion to organizational theory in the late 1980s, arguing that organizations’ performance is affected by the latitude of actions available for individuals making decisions in a given situation. They argued that managerial discretion was an effect of characteristics emanating from environmental, organizational, and individual levels. There is much literature concerning the identification and measurement (Hambrick and Abrahamson 1995) of how these different levels affect managerial discretion (see eg. the extensive review by Wangrow, Schepker, and Barker 2015), but much still remains unclear.

Hambrick and Finkelstein’s text came as a response to the growing field of research purposing to understand the facilitation of top executives’ performance. They constituted managerial discretion as something that top executives should be given in order to enable better organizational performance, implying that it was better with high managerial discretion as compared to low. In many ways, this came to contrast the dominating view held by economics scholars (cf. Williamson 1963; Migue and Belanger 1974; Crew and Kleindorfer 1979). From an economics perspective, managerial discretion was understood as something potentially problematic that ought to be curtailed through precise and detailed control on an environmental or organizational level. By reducing the delegated latitude of action, it was argued that gaps between principals’ intentions and managers’ actions could be reduced. Within the field of policy implementation, this can be understood as the gap between politics and administration (Aberbach, Putnam, and Rockman 1981; Aberbach and Rockman 1994; Mouritsen and Svara 2002; Svara 2006a).

Discretion within the public sector became highlighted by theories of client responsiveness (Frederickson et al. 2012), the most well-known being Lipsky’s (2010[1980]) observations about a street-level bureaucracy. According to these theories, bureaucrats that are charged with tasks of implementing policy want large amounts of autonomy and discretion (Brodkin 1997, 2011; Sandfort 2000; Tummers and Bekkers 2014). They want and need this, so that they may provide citizens with fast and accurate services, intended through policy. As policies are often vague and ambiguous, street-level bureaucrats need some latitude between the two states of ‘policy as written’ and ‘policy as performed’ (Lipsky 2010 [1980], xvii). The latitude between these two states make up the discretion that bureaucrats can engage in order to make the implementation of policy more meaningful (Tummers 2012; Tummers and Bekkers 2014).

I expand Lipsky’s ideas that discretion happens between policy as written and as performed, and argue that actors can enact their latitude of action in different manners. It is not enough to have the opportunity for latitude of action, actors must also recognize that it is there to be used (Crossland and Hambrick 2011). Managers that have knowledge about their latitude of actions and that are ready to use it even though there might be discretionary constraints from environment or organization (Hambrick and Finkelstein 1987; Williamson 1963; Hambrick and Abrahamson 1995) are perceived as high discretion managers (Finkelstein and Peteraf 2007), characterized by high internal locus of control (Rotter 1966; Tummers and Bekkers 2014; Wynen et al. 2014). Drawing on Hupe and Buffat (2014) who make a distinction between granted and used discretion, I argue that high discretion managers acknowledge and use existing latitude of actions or will resist attempts of limiting it.

In his seminal article, Hood (1991) describes a public sector undergoing pivotal changes in terms of NPM. Hood’s observations of how managerial knowledge and logics had gradually seeped into the public sector over a couple of decades came to highlight a slow shift in the public sector. In the United Kingdom and the United States, neoliberal politicians were gaining ground, arguing for the primacy of market solutions and a minimal state. Bureaucracies were perceived as monolithic, autonomous, and non-transparent forms of organizing (Riccucci 2001; Dunn and Miller 2007) and targeted as one of the major flaws of the public sector during the 1970s and 1980s (Dunleavy and Hood 1994; Lapsley 2009). A common argument was that bureaucracies failed to adjust to the needs of modern societies and their citizens. The (in)famous analogy by Osborne and Gaebler (1992) about steering rather than rowing was launched as one possible solution to this (bureaucratic) problem. Politicians should, the argument goes, focus on governing and managers on managing (Dunleavy and Hood 1994; Wynen and Verhoest 2013; Pollitt and Bouckaert 2011).

It is in this context that managerial discretion within the public sector can be understood. The construction of managerial (Wynen et al. 2014) or organizational (Verhoest et al. 2004) autonomy was instigated as an effect of decentralization and deregulation (Kaboolian 1998). The public sector with its tradition of being politically governed quickly became very complex when management cultures emerged (Arnaboldi, Lapsley, and Steccolini 2015; Lapsley and Skærbæk 2012). Attempts of separating policy from administration (Svara 2006a; George et al. 2012; Mouritsen and Svara 2002) came to increase the need and presence of managerial discretion (Bryson, Crosby, and Bloomberg 2014), leading to a formation of an audit society bureaucracy (Power 1997). Although many scholars have raised concerns about the failure of NPM (Osborne 2006, 2010; Hood and Dixon 2015), its effects and presences still dominate current public management (Pollitt 2016). This is what I refer to as managerialism.

Managerialism concerns the already mentioned trend of breaking with traditional forms of public administration (Maesschalck 2004) in order to engage ‘managerial forms of organizational coordination’ (Clarke, Gewirtz, and Eugene 2000b, 6). This trend includes the increased focus of cost-cutting (Pollitt 1993; Pollitt and Bouckaert 2000), a focus on efficiency (Pollitt and Bouckaert 2011) and working in a more entrepreneurial manner (Osborne and Gaebler 1992; Arnold 2013). Managerialism furthermore entails ideas and reforms about competitiveness of the public sector while maintaining a publicly funded base (Megginson and Netter 2001). From an international perspective, managerialism has arguably led to a fragmentation and disarticulation of states (Frederickson 1999b) or hollowing out the public sector (Milward, Provan, and Else 1993; Rhodes 1994), wherein political control over welfare services are lost.

This article focuses upon the words, conversations, and expressions by which actors construct and validate an actionable social world. Giddens (1984, 376) argues that rationalization of action refers to the ‘capabilities competent actors have of “keeping in touch” with the grounds of what they do, as they do it, such that if asked by others, they can supply reasons for their activities.’ In this article, I focus on the rationalization of managerialism within the public sector. It thereby focuses on how the effects of discourses come to play out within society in general (Eagleton 1991; Clarke and Newman 1997; Deem and Brehony 2005) and the public sector specifically. I argue that such discourses become visible as actors speak and act as though they were managers (Gewirtz and Ball 2000). I furthermore argue that as managerialism has increased its presence and dominance within the public sector, actors’ rationalizations of administration have shifted into a more managerial mindset.

Methods

The empirical study presented in this article consists of a longitudinal study of a large governmental agency in Sweden: the SSIA. The SSIA is responsible for administering the Swedish social insurance system, which consists of more than forty different welfare services, ranging from long-term health benefits to short-term reimbursements for parental leave, to mention just two quite different services. The agency has a long-standing position in Swedish welfare, going back to the voluntary work of the nineteenth century, and continuing through its formalization as a formal governmental welfare status in the 1960s. The analysis draws from a large empirical set gathered within the research programme. From many, one – A research programme about the Swedish Social Insurance’s change and its consequences led by prof. Fredrik Andersson (Lund University School of Economics and Management) consisting of 129 interviews, six months of participatory observations, and a large set of internal policy documents. The interviews were conducted with individuals employed as managers at different levels of the organization by different researchers between 2008 and 2013, with the purpose of understanding how political governance affected the agency, and in what sense strategic decisions were taken to meet such governance. The interviews were very open, with the aim to make it possible for researchers to engage in discussions about the participants’ social world rather than obtaining a truth (Alvesson 2003; Kvale 1996).

The participatory observation, on the other hand, was undertaken with low-level public servants as they worked with constructing new guidelines for administering applications from citizens. These public servants met for two full days every week for six months, and a majority of these meetings were observed by a researcher. The observations were unstructured in the sense that the researcher submerged as a full observer (Gold 1958), intending to understand the organization and its actors (Rhodes 2007; Czarniawska 2008, 2016). Extensive field notes were made during the observations, and interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. The representations of quotes in the empirical analysis are intended to give ‘thick descriptions’ of actors’ rationalizations (Geertz 1973).

The analysis focuses on the organizational and managerial context between 2008 and 2015, a time during which many reforms were launched and expressions of managerialism became very noticeable. Of special interest are manifestations of managerialism through discourse and practice (Pollitt 1993, 2016; Clarke and Newman 1997) in the form of managerial talk (Gewirtz and Ball 2000). In the empirical analysis, this becomes manifested through the emergence of two important first-order concepts – bravery and obedience – by which I mean such concepts that are ‘appropriated within social life itself’ (Giddens 1984, 284), i.e. they are engaged empirically by actors in order to assist in rationalizing their social life.

The extracts presented in this article have been chosen to portray how actors engage in conversation concerning roles, tasks, and mission within the agency. The representation has been translated into idiomatic English. The representations of quotes often contain several actors in order to clearly demonstrate how conversational dialogue enables consensus and rationalization (Markóva et al. 2007; Geertz 1973) amongst the informants. The following empirical analysis is therefore a summary of many different events, indicating how managerialism has come to be internalized by public managers within the agency.

An empirical analysis of managerialism

My story begins in an organization that has undergone a wide range of changes over a relatively short period of time. The SSIA has deep historical roots within the Swedish state. The organization stems from the Swedish welfare services during the 1960s, a period when the number of services provided by the Swedish welfare state increased greatly. It was originally organized in smaller local offices, with a review board on the national level. The main responsibility was to administrate the majority of the national social insurance. This held true for many decades. However, in the late 1990s and the early 2000s, the organization’s ability to handle its administrative duties efficiently came into question. An increasing level of citizens displayed open disagreement and distrust with the agency’s ability for fair and just treatments, and there were political voices advocating substantial reforms. In 2002, an official government investigation was launched with the task of analysing the administration of the social insurance. The government emphasized that the future of the administration should be characterized by leadership responsibilities, common personnel policy, and uniform handling of beneficiaries’ cases (Karlsson 2014; Andersson et al. 2011). After much inquiry, a new organization was launched in 2005, a merger between different local and national organizations.

After the merger, several additional reforms were launched within the organization in order to come to terms with the alleged inefficiency. Many of these reforms focused on the manner in which management was implemented within the agency: especially in terms of increasing productivity, initiating measurable outputs, and focusing on doing more with less resources. In support of implementing the reforms required from a political perspective, the SSIA engaged a consulting company that became deeply involved in the actual reorganization process. There was now talk about introducing matrix-organizations, engaged leadership, and increasing efficiency through detailed business processes. Efficiency quickly came to be a key word in the reformed agency, especially in regard of delivering something to a perceived recipient, often referred to as a customer. During one observation, the following was stated:

Frej:

[…] it is also about efficiency. For example, reducing the waiting time for the customer. That’s good for both…well, all our citizens. And the customer, and so on. It’s really to think about ‘what’s my mission’ and ‘what should I do’. And not just lie down and wait for things to [happen] without reason, but to have that drive.

Efficiency and the construction of an external recipient in the shape of a customer were used as a rationale within the organization. Striving for efficiency was not merely about doing more with less resources, but fundamentally about structuring the organizational and managerial context in such a way that the recipient gained something. Turning citizens into customers enabled a framing of sorts wherein efficiency was constructed as a necessary prerequisite. By associating efficiency with a customer perspective and allowing this to become a governing factor in management, some even argued that care for beneficiaries would become internalized by individuals within the agency. Actors’ construction of a customer as the main recipient can be understood as an effect of managerialism (Pollitt 1993, 2016; Clarke and Newman 1997) as discourse and as practice (Clarke, Gewirtz, and McLaughlin 2000a, 2000b; Gewirtz and Ball 2000).

The connection made between efficiency and the (re)construction of customers indicates a deeper shift in terms of ideology and perceptions of the administrative function within the agency. As public servants went beyond the traditional boundaries of plainly following and executing legislation, they evaluated its premises for achieving higher satisfaction amongst beneficiaries, i.e. the customers. Efficiency was not about waiting for things to happen, it was about making them happen. As such, management became a task of taking responsibility for citizens’ rights to fair treatment rather than constructing the legislation as superior. This was expressed by an experienced manager during a meeting where she stated that:

Lotta:

[…] We have completely stopped talking about turnaround times. Now, we speak about the customers’ waiting time instead (Helen: Mmm; Ingrid; Mmm). And that’s a bit more appealing actually, because it’s not like (Helen: Mmm; Ingrid; That’s right) we have any turnaround time, but we do have a customer somewhere who’s waiting for our decision!

The administrative function within the agency implied a management that actively worked with reducing the potentiality of downtime, so that beneficiaries received decisions quickly and efficiently. But, efficiency was also used in this context as an implied mandate to be proactive and take initiative within the agency. The superiority of customer logics has been noted by other scholars, who argue that customer sovereignty fits within managerialism that urges actors to satisfy argued preferences and needs (Aberbach and Rockman 2000; Rhodes 1994). Aberbach and Christensen (2005) argued that the reconstruction of citizens into customers reinforces individuals’ rights and preferences as superior to that of the collective. In this context, the (re)construction of citizens into customers is understood as a discursive effect on the world (Eagleton 1991) wherein efficiency legitimizes proactive management.

By redirecting focus towards customers rather than citizens, informants found it easier to inject human aspects into the administration. Instead of purely focusing on whether or not the application had the correct details and requirements, informants argued that their focus was on caring for the customer. One of the informants argued that:

Stefan:

It’s about…about our customers having money in the bank the 25th each month (Per: Yes). That’s the most important thing I believe, if we should ask them [the recipients, authors note].

From the perspective of the individual manager, focus was redirected to the perceived needs of the citizen rather than to the judicial prerequisites. The latter was instead implicitly structured as an obstruction to ensuring that citizens got their benefits on time. It was argued that in order to deliver this kind of services, management should be characterized by mandate, manoeuvrability, and flexibility. In other words, delivering customer satisfaction was used as a legitimation and rationalization of increased managerial discretion. The move away from legislation indicates how actors widen the gap between policy as written and policy as performed (Lipsky 2010 [1980]) making room for more degrees of latitude. Through the (re)construction of beneficiaries as customers rather than citizens, the administrative function was understood to focus on taking control and making sure that the service was satisfactory. Paraphrasing Aberbach and Rockman (1988), actors transformed their stances from mandarin to mandate.

With government demanding ever-increasing degrees of efficiency while at the same time arguing for a general reduction of resources, the stress of handling an overwhelming situation became perpetuated within the agency. Efficiency from this perspective became the creation of situations wherein productivity could be achieved and maintained at high levels. An important factor in aiming for this concerned the ability to fashion an organization characterized by such behaviour. Within the agency, there was talk about creating ‘conditions for production.’ One of the informants formulated it like this:

Diana:

I think that this thing about creating good production settings, we haven’t spoken about that so much in the past (Gunilla: nah). But it’s really important that we do (Gunilla: mm; Ansgar: yes; Ivar: mm). This way we can ensure…okay, that there’s resources that can be delivered to the customer as intended (Disa: mm; Ansgar: mm; Disa: mm).

Although the demands for increased efficiency proposed by the government were recognized, individuals within the agency revealed some anxiety about how such demands clashed with the needs and wants of citizens. From a strict perspective, all public servants should serve citizens through legislation. However, adhering to both the demands from government as well as the needs and wants of customers was referred to as a ‘balancing act.’ From a managerial perspective, then, there was an apparent gap between interests and stakeholders. The balancing act as an integrated part of public service has been well developed in the literature (Svara 2006a, 2006b; Aberbach, Putnam, and Rockman 1981; Aberbach and Rockman 1988; Frederickson et al. 2012; Mouritsen and Svara 2002), especially concerning policy implementation amongst street-level bureaucrats (Brodkin 1997, 2011; Sandfort 2000; Tummers and Bekkers 2014; Lipsky 2010 [1980]). The balancing act as formed in this situation manifests actors’ perceived need for increased managerial discretion. As different interests emerge and affect administration, public managers will fall back on their discretionary powers. If they believe that they have an appropriate degree of latitude of action to make decisions, they will act given that politicians (Crossland and Hambrick 2011) or management control systems (Evans and Harris 2004) do not prevent them.

During the many meetings observed within the organization, these forms of issues resurfaced time after time. There seemed to be a degree of discomfort due to the fact that individuals were being held accountable for matters which they could not control. The balancing act between demands from the government and the respect for customer satisfaction was highlighted as specifically troublesome for people within the administrative function. A general consensus amongst public managers was that they were needed to be given space and mandate to actually manage the situation. Important empirical first-order concepts (Giddens 1984) that emerged during meetings were those of brave and obedient management.

Felicia:

Sometimes we can be obedient managers rather than brave managers. And I’m more attracted by being able to pick up brave management, because it’s not when everything goes smoothly and everything goes according to the rulebook that it’s hard to be a manager. […] It’s really when we don’t have the means or when something
unexpected happens or there’s a situation that’s not described in the rulebook. That’s when it’s a challenge to be manager!

Brave managers were constructed as individuals that take responsibility, handle business, and get things done. They were described as individuals that can foresee and anticipate different scenarios, making actors highly agile within the organization. These characteristics would allow brave managers to plan and control the parts of the organization they are accountable for. On the other hand, obedient managers were understood to be actors that do what they were told without questioning the underlying reasons. This meant that obedient managers would become intricate parts of the organizational hierarchy and fill important slots in a bigger structure. This resembles the discussion about high versus low discretion managers presented by Finkelstein and Peteraf (2007). According to this idea, high discretion managers will resist latitude limitations and retain an ability to act, whereas low discretionary managers are prevented from acting. When asked more about bravery and obedience, informants made it clear that brave management was favoured. Bravery was desirable as it enabled and encouraged managerial discretion. Obedience, however, engaged ideas about falling in line with given (hierarchical) commands. The emergent empirical concepts can thereby be understood to be attempts of constructing high discretion managers within the organization.

Bravery and obedience, then, functioned as enablers for individuals to rationalize managerial discretion as a necessary prerequisite for administrative accomplishments. Another trait that was highlighted was that of individuality. Being brave meant being able to resist internal organizational controls in order to deliver good service to customers, essentially underpinning the need for managerial discretion. Or rather, managerial discretion was engaged as a rationalizing factor for being able to deliver welfare services to customers. Although bravery was constructed as desirable, it was accompanied with some anxiety since it also demanded more from actors. Brave managers were assumed to deliver good results. By doing this, the brave managers became entrapped by individuality and were basically on their own. Bravery was accompanied with continuous feelings of exposure. One informant described this as a situation of something ‘blue icy cold’ wherein every decision was subjected to scrutiny and questioning.

Diana:

One important part of management is daring to stand in the light of scrutiny (Disa: mm). That blue icy cold (Ansgar: mm yes; Disa: mm; Gunilla: mm)… Because one does that quite often (Disa: mm), and really scrutinises oneself; ‘Will I measure up for this?’ (Disa: mm; Ansgar: mm; Disa: mm). Otherwise, in some sense, you aren’t really…you’re not…you’re not prepared to take the actions (Ivar: nah) required in different ways (Disa: mm).

Managerial discretion through the empirical manifestation of bravery seemed to offer an opportunity to take control of their situations, but it also meant that they were held accountable for their actions to a higher degree. Not that obedient managers were not seen as being held accountable; brave managers, however, would hold themselves accountable for delivering results. My analysis shows how bravery as a first-order concept (Giddens 1984) entails ideas about high discretion managers (Finkelstein and Peteraf 2007) characterized by internal locus of control (Rotter 1966). The rationalization for increased managerial discretion implies that actors internalize ideas of professional management (Hood 1991) and managerialism (Pollitt 1993, 2016; Clarke and Newman 1997) in order to rationalize a managerial approach to the administrative function within the agency. In turn, it reveals how discourse causes actual effects on the world (Eagleton 1991).

An important step towards enabling the emergence of managerial discretion through the conceptualization of brave management as discussed above was the action of section top management within the agency. On several occasions, different informants made reference to speeches that stressed the necessity of managerial action rather than idleness. When top management encouraged public servants to act without regard for the consequences, it provided actors with sanctions that strengthened their belief in managerial discretion. The emergence of managerial discretion as necessary for their roles as public servants may have been a locally observed phenomenon, but it indicates a transition supported by a managerial discourse and practice (Gewirtz and Ball 2000; Clarke, Gewirtz, and McLaughlin 2000a, 2000b).

Paul:

One time, Svante said […] that ‘failure to act is more detrimental for managers than the wrong selection of resources’ (Viktor: yes; Agnes: mm). Which I think is just amazing! (Agnes: mm mm). Because then I’ve gained support for those times when I choose to do just that (Karl: yes mm). It might be wrong, but I trust in the situation (Agnes: mm). Rather than sitting back and just watching it go down (Agnes: mm; Viktor: mm; Erika: mm).

As managerial discourse and practice influenced actors to engage in brave management, essentially rationalizing high discretion managers, the customer satisfaction received more focus. Being receptive to customers’ needs and wants meant delivering good services, which by extension also meant resisting hierarchical controls when these were thought to contradict desired outcomes. However, the underpinning rationale of public service still remained meaning that not all beneficiaries could receive benefits as they were not entitled. This position presented actors with the dilemma of having to decline customers’ applications. In such instances, both first-order concepts served a purpose of assigning reassurance. Bravery constituted a need for individuals to make decisions characterized by a greater good, whereas obedience served as a reassurance of doing what one was told. Such decisions became defined empirically as tough, since it meant that people who were basically relying on the welfare state’s social safety net would be refused help. In order to handle such situations, one informant claimed that they had a responsibility to guard the welfare system. This implied obedience to the constitution as well as it meant instigating enough bravery to tell the beneficiary that they would not receive any financial assistance.

Felicia:

it’s also about protecting
the health insurance and our mission. There’s nothing fancy about that. But we are supposed to handle it so that it lasts for those who need it. And those who are entitled to it according to the medical physicians who have prescribed sick leave. And then it’s clear (pause for 1.17 seconds)…then we sometimes end up in these dilemmas that we have to determine that ‘no, we can’t see in our examination that you are sufficiently ill to be covered by this variant of livelihood.

Obedience became a way to rationalize the fact that some citizens will have to be refused help, even though they rely on it. Following the constitution and constructing the welfare state as something delicate that needs to be guarded, further reduced some of the accountability for decisions. Rather than standing alone with the decisions, the collective was constructed as equally accountable and thereby supporting the individual. Obedience thereby served as a way to rationalize the dilemma that bravery could not, indicating that even though managerialism had come to be an important part within the agency, some situations still required actors to engage in a traditional administrative stance.

Discussion

This article focuses on how managerialism (Pollitt 1993, 2016; Clarke and Newman 1997) as discourse and practice (Gewirtz and Ball 2000; Clarke, Gewirtz, and McLaughlin 2000a, 2000b) from an ideological stance (Eagleton 1991; Deem and Brehony 2005) within society at large has given cause to a growing management culture (Lapsley and Skærbæk 2012; Arnaboldi, Lapsley, and Steccolini 2015) within the public sector. More specifically, this article targets how managerialism has come to affect actors’ understandings and conceptualizations of how the public sector should be organized. The representation of empirical information from the longitudinal study of the SSIA has focused on how actors engage in a managerial discourse (Gewirtz and Ball 2000) in order to rationalize a need to acquire more discretion (Crossland and Hambrick 2011). I have critically discussed and empirically shown how managerialism has resulted in an embedded understanding and in an endeavour towards managerial discretion within the public sector.

The analysis presented in this article concerns the (re)construction of citizens into customers. This process involves a notification of perceived demands and expectations amongst actors as they conceptualize the mission of the public sector. The (re)construction in itself is an indication of how managerialism has gained dominance within the public sector, which is further strengthened by actors’ use of efficiency as a rationalization for the acquisition of managerial discretion. As actors within the public sector demand increased latitude of action (Hambrick and Finkelstein 1987; Hambrick and Abrahamson 1995; Finkelstein and Peteraf 2007) within the scope of their formal roles, they do this by embracing managerialism through discourse and practice (Pollitt 1993, 2016; Clarke and Newman 1997).

Further, the analysis highlights two important empirical first-order concepts: brave and obedient management. Giddens (1984) argues that first-order concepts are such concepts that carry meaning for actors outside of the social sciences. In my analysis, I have taken care to especially highlight these concepts as they reveal actors’ embedded understandings. These two concepts were constructed so as to separate actors’ proactivity from reactivity. Bravery meant assuming a proactive position wherein mandate could be taken in order to generate positive outcomes: good customer service was highlighted as a driving factor. It was furthermore constructed in a manner that instigated sanctions of acting rather than simply awaiting others’ orders. In some sense, there were indications from top management’s speeches that instil bravery to imply sanctions of sidestepping current regulations if deemed necessary. Obedience was constructed in a manner that highlighted abiding to rules and regulations, primarily in the form of the constitution. Thus, the reasoning that underpins obedience can be understood as engaging ideas about protecting and caring for the welfare state in order for it to carry legitimacy within society. By extension, it is argued that obedience involved sanctions for actors to function as guardians of the welfare state, ultimately defending citizens as well as government.

The concepts of bravery and obedience offer an opportunity for scholarly awareness of how managerialism affects actors’ conceptualization of their social context. I have in the above analysis compared bravery and obedience with the concepts of high and low discretion managers (Crossland and Hambrick 2011). According to this perspective, it is expected that high discretion managers will try to resist limitations coming from organizational or environmental contexts (Hambrick and Finkelstein 1987; Hambrick and Abrahamson 1995; Crossland and Hambrick 2011). From a policy perspective, Evans and Harris (2004) discuss this as professional discretion. They argue that discretion is essentially reduced as managerial control is exerted within the organization. More control will inevitably reduce discretion. The importance of the findings presented in the above analysis relates to the enactment of bravery as a first-order concept. Through this enactment, I find indications of how actors embrace managerialism in order to rationalize an approach towards high discretion management. As was shown in the analysis, obedience was portrayed as less attractive. The concept of obedience places the actor in a position where rules are abided to, even though such rules may temporarily hamper their ability to execute their assignments efficiently. Rather than adhering to obedience, and in so doing accepting the restraints, it was found that informants argued for and rationalized the need for brave management, thus increasing managerial discretion.

The concept of brave management was advocated as being a trait wherein actors could gain more discretion simply by resisting the controls exerted on them. Bravery in this sense became an issue of doing what they judged to be best given the current situation, acting as individuals rather than as parts of a larger organization. As I understand bravery to be a rationalization for high discretion management, I can theorize that actors embracing managerialism in this sense are characterized by an internal locus of control (Rotter 1966). This implies that success in terms of performance is primarily related to the individual. By extension, this implies that actors’ conceptualization of obedience is connected to ideas of low discretion managers (Finkelstein and Peteraf 2007). These are in contrast with high-level discretion managers characterized by an external locus of control (Rotter 1966), where success and failure are perceived to be outside the scope of the individual.

High and low discretion managers, or brave and obedient as the informants from the empirical case would phrase it, carry implication for efficient policy implementation, but in very different manners. As actors rationalize their transition into high-level discretion managers, they do so by widening the gap between written and performed policy (Lipsky 2010 [1980]). Although the policy may turn out to be more meaningful for civil servants (Tummers and Bekkers 2014), it highlights a need for increased forms of accountability (Kaboolian 1998) and performance management (Arnaboldi, Lapsley, and Steccolini 2015). The effects would be a strengthening of managerialism as the basis for understanding governance. On the other hand, low discretion managers imply rule-following and docility. Although this would render a situation with tighter political control, it could lead to policy alienation (Tummers 2012) where managers perceive a lower degree of meaningfulness in implementation.

Based on the above analysis, I have shown how the (re)construction of the recipient has acted as a supporting argument. Citizens are transformed into customers, resulting in a relocation of the relationship between administration and recipients (Aberbach and Christensen 2005) and are indicative of how ideas from managerialism have become embedded in the public sector. Customers are expected to want a certain level of service, delivery, and satisfaction. This is distinct from how citizens are constructed. The customer perspective creates an opportunity to argue for increased managerial discretion. In itself, this is not strange. It is reasonable to expect that actors who are held accountable for a certain outcome will also strive for increased latitude of action in order to deliver. What is more interesting, however, is how the customer perspective enables a transition from low discretion managers to high discretion managers.

I argue that managerialism played an important role in actors’ rationalization. By embracing a managerial discourse (Gewirtz and Ball 2000; Clarke, Gewirtz, and McLaughlin 2000a, 2000b), actors’ ideas and understandings of their tasks are affected within the organization. This discourse observed in the above analysis points to increased responsibility and proactive action from a managerial perspective. Literature suggests that high discretion managers will resist limitations regarding their latitude of action (Finkelstein and Peteraf 2007). What this article shows, however, is how managers rationalize a transition into being high discretion managers by enacting embedded understandings coming from managerialism (Pollitt 1993, 2016; Clarke and Newman 1997).

Conclusion

This article contributes to the literature in at least two ways. First, it contributes to studies on managerialism (Clarke and Newman 1997; Clarke, Gewirtz, and McLaughlin 2000a; Deem and Brehony 2005; Pollitt 1993, 2016) and brings attention to the effects that discourses have on the world (Eagleton 1991). An important observation concerns actors’ engagement of a managerial discourse which enables them to reconceptualize their roles as being professional managers leading to a perceived need and search for increased managerial discretion. This search stems from a perceived need to meet the requirements placed externally on the organization. Such a need is primarily revealed through the construction of citizens into customers. As citizens are (re)conceptualized as customers, the legitimacy inherent to their demands is understood differently. As customers’ needs are understood as requests or even demands, it brings with it a need to respond to them, rather than purely adhering to the constitution or a given set of rules within the organization. This transformation together with the overall managerialization of the public sector leads to actors expecting to have managerial discretion that allows them to affect the administrative function of the organization, so that these requirements may be met. Further, the findings suggest that as society incessantly demands that public servants act as if they were managers, they will respond by internalizing the values of managerialism, consequently adapting to the expectations placed upon them. The (re)conceptualization that occurs amongst actors is understood to be an effect of this. When public servants are continuously being told to be professional managers, they will begin to act accordingly.

Second, this study contributes to literature on managerial discretion (Hambrick and Finkelstein 1987; Hambrick and Abrahamson 1995; Finkelstein and Peteraf 2007). More specifically, this article contributes to deeper understandings about the rationalizations actors undertake during a transition from low discretion managers to high discretion managers. I argue that actors’ (re)construction of a recipient as a customer rather than as a citizen has highlighted a perceived need for increased latitude of action. This need, in turn, is linked to a historical situation of relatively tight control within the organization. Actors’ rationalization towards becoming high discretion managers can be understood as a response to existing organizational controls (Evans and Harris 2004). At the same time, demands from the recipient have played an important role in the transition. What the article demonstrates is how actors in a low discretion environment (Hambrick and Finkelstein 1987; Hambrick and Abrahamson 1995) act and rationalize through discourse in order to resist and minimize the limitations.

Finally, I argue that this article contributes to a deeper understanding of how managerialism is embedded in actors’ understandings of the public sector and the role that they themselves play. This embeddedness becomes manifested through discourse and practice as they (re)conceptualize their part of the production of welfare services. In this article, this reconceptualization concerned a transition towards becoming high discretion managers. In turn, this carries implications for the public sector. On the one hand, a growing population of high discretion managers may infuse new energy and efficiency in public sector organizations. As the latitude of actions increases, public managers have a wider ability to engage in quick and qualitative decisions-making. On the other hand, it widens the gap between policy as written and performed (Lipsky 2010 [1980]). This could end up in a loss of control from a political perspective, and a less transparent execution of welfare services. Undoubtedly, more work is needed in order to understand how, when, and why managerialism affects public management.

Acknowledgments

This article has benefitted greatly from the comments made by the anonymous reviewers and from comments at IRSPM 2015 and 2017 together with discussions during NFF 2017. In addition, several close colleagues have read and commented different versions of the article, adding to its theoretical perspectives.

Disclosure statement

There are no expected financial or benefits arising as a result from this original research.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tom S. Karlsson

Tom S. Karlsson holds a position as an assistant professor in public administration. His research focuses on management and administrative reforms (New Public Management) within the Swedish public sector, specifically on central government level.