Whole system development ‐ rethinking public service management

Pressure for reform and change in the public services will continue irrespective of the political composition of governments. There are many interrelated pressures for change, some of the key ones being the need to contain public spending (to under 40 per cent GNP?) in the face of ever increasing global competition, changing demographic and employment patterns, increasing need and demand for services, and the need to find innovative solutions to obdurate problems of local levels ‐ health, housing, community safety, unemployment and so on. Above all, this will require greater productivity; changing skill boundaries, demarcations and mixes; far greater applications of technology and innovative community‐based multi‐agency working ‐ beyond rhetoric. Unfortunately, much current research, scholarship and commentary is “locked into” individual public sectors ‐ health, education, public administration and so on. This means that it is likely to be informed by existing frames of reference which already lie within these sectors. A wider flow of ideas, theory and critical analysis across private and all public sectors could lead to the development of new paradigms of insight, understanding and practice. This would prove a further impetus for a bottom‐up social movement with a communitarianist agenda. Unfortunately this is most unlikely to be promoted top‐ down because most politicians are also “locked into” the binary thinking of Fordist modernism.