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Education General

Under New Public Management

Institutional Ethnographies of Changing Front-Line Work

edited by Alison I. Griffith & Dorothy E. Smith

Publisher
University of Toronto Press
Initial publish date
Aug 2014
Category
General, General, Public Affairs & Administration, General
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9781442649101
    Publish Date
    Aug 2014
    List Price
    $100.00
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781442626560
    Publish Date
    Aug 2014
    List Price
    $48.95
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781442619470
    Publish Date
    Sep 2014
    List Price
    $38.95

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Description

The institutional ethnographies collected in Under New Public Management explore how new managerial governance practices coordinate the work of people doing front-line work in public sectors such as health, education, social services, and international development, and people management in the private sector.

In these fields, organizations have increasingly adopted private-sector management techniques, such as standardized and quantitative measures of performance and an obsession with cost reductions and efficiency. These practices of “new public management” are changing the ways in which front-line workers engage with their clients, students, or patients.

Using research drawn from Canada, the United States, Australia, and Denmark, the contributors expose how standardized managerial requirements are created and applied, and how they affect the practicalities of working with people whose lives and experiences are complex and unique.

About the authors

Alison I. Griffith was a professor emerita in the Faculty of Education at York University.

Alison I. Griffith's profile page

Dorothy E. Smith is an adjunct professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Victoria and the author of Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology (UTP 1988) and The Conceptual Practices of Power (UTP 1990).

Dorothy E. Smith's profile page