The Collaborative State Collection
This collection will outline the lessons to be learned from inter-organisational collaboration in practice, through case studies looking at successful collaboration in action, and conceptual and systems analysis.
People, collaboration and public choice
4:30pm Wednesday, 14th March 2007
Anyone else watch Adam Curtis's film The Trap on the BBC the other night? I really enjoyed the way that it nailed public choice theory - essentially the assumption that we tend to compete rather than collaborative, to be selfish rather than altruistic. One result is the kind of inspection, incentive and market based reforms we've seen in public services over the past decade. And while it's produced results, that approach very clearly has not delivered the kind of transformation the public thought it was signing up for in 1997.
One of our big themes at Demos over the last year or two has been trying to explore new ways for public servants to interact with the people they serve - we want to find ways of running the public sector that encourage collaboration, innovation and personalisation.
But all those things have to involve creating the space for public servants to try new approaches - we have to trust frontline staff a bit more. And we can't do that if we imagine that doctors and teachers are the selfish brutes of public choice theory. We need a richer understanding of human nature if we want to drive successful reforms in schools and hospitals.
Me and Niamh are going to try and propose an alternative approach later this month, when we launch a collection of essays that looks at how collaboration could provide the basis for a new generation of public service reform. One of the most telling articles is by Yochai Benkler, who are argues that we are neither angels nor devils, but what he calls 'reciprocators'. In other words, we tend to meet kindness with kindness.
That seems a more realistic assessment of who public servants really are - not angels, but certainly inclined to do things that help the people they serve in the right circumstances.
The steady demolition of the new public management continues here, in a paper that takes on another neo-liberal shibboleth: principal-agent theory. The argument goes that principal-agent doesn't work in public services because it has to assume that there's a principal somewhere who knows what the public wants and how to solve their problems. The truth is that no one is quite that superhuman - our best bet is long-term collaborative experimentation at the local level.
Not so different from the ideas we put forward for New Zealand last year...
One of our big themes at Demos over the last year or two has been trying to explore new ways for public servants to interact with the people they serve - we want to find ways of running the public sector that encourage collaboration, innovation and personalisation.
But all those things have to involve creating the space for public servants to try new approaches - we have to trust frontline staff a bit more. And we can't do that if we imagine that doctors and teachers are the selfish brutes of public choice theory. We need a richer understanding of human nature if we want to drive successful reforms in schools and hospitals.
Me and Niamh are going to try and propose an alternative approach later this month, when we launch a collection of essays that looks at how collaboration could provide the basis for a new generation of public service reform. One of the most telling articles is by Yochai Benkler, who are argues that we are neither angels nor devils, but what he calls 'reciprocators'. In other words, we tend to meet kindness with kindness.
That seems a more realistic assessment of who public servants really are - not angels, but certainly inclined to do things that help the people they serve in the right circumstances.
The steady demolition of the new public management continues here, in a paper that takes on another neo-liberal shibboleth: principal-agent theory. The argument goes that principal-agent doesn't work in public services because it has to assume that there's a principal somewhere who knows what the public wants and how to solve their problems. The truth is that no one is quite that superhuman - our best bet is long-term collaborative experimentation at the local level.
Not so different from the ideas we put forward for New Zealand last year...
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Comments
Simon
It has been a while since I have seen an educational output that was provoking as well on bbc. Makes one feel the licence fee is almost worth paying.
I work in central government in Scotland and we have elections soon. We do not have a collaborative view up here. There is east v. west, country v. town, local v. central etc..
Do we meet kindness with kindness ? We probably think we do, although surveys of our attitudes to visitors and crime records may tell a different story.
Anyway, after May 2007 when the polls close, we will have another set of politicians. This time around we have PR at the Parliament and local government level, so we will have a rich cross-section of parties represented.
Do we put the customer / citizen at the centre of public services. Absolutely, 100% not. For a huge number of public servants, the person to serve is themselves, and in order to keep working, we look after number one.
The lack of money in the 2007 spending review may drive change. It won't be a good driver, and won't change peoples' underlying behaviour.
Politicians get where they are by dint of their focus, ego and commitment. These are not traits of people who are happy to then delegate and allow experiments and freedom of action to those at the front line.
I look forward to seeing your work on collaboration. With the demographic pressures in Scotland, the climactic ones for us all, and the move towards a more caring society, things can only get better.
Regards
Alex