Culture and Public Management Reform

In an international context, public management arrangements differ significantly from country to country, but also regionally and locally. One reason for these differences may be different civic cultures with differing views of the state and its institutions. This may sound trivial, but it becomes highly important when public management reform models are proposed and transferred from one country to others such as was (and still is) the case with, for examle, the new public management. Scholars in public management as well as internationally acting practitioners should be aware of the impact civic culture has on the possibilities and limits of concept transfers between different justisdictions.

Having said this, one precondition for a better consideration of cultural elements in public management reforms is a better understanding of culture itself. Among the public management community, cultural theory has gained considerable attention. There are, however, other concepts for the analysis of cultural facts that may be of interest to the subject, too. Examples of this could be:

* What is the influence of religious concepts on public management arrangements?
* New public management's lingua franca is English. This is, non-English speaking countries had to translate the concept into their own language. What is the impact of this fact on different understandings of NPM worldwide?
* How - through which processes - do different cultures influence public management arrangements?