Austerity and Authenticity

1. Austerity and Authenticity Approaches to Result-Based Management Copenhagen February 27 2012

2. Contents • Challenges • Diagnosis: • The Dilemma Game • Fleeing from management • Without mutuality – no rationality • Seven recommendations for result-based management

3. Challenges • Austerity • The need for focus, simplicity, and effectiveness • Innovation • The need for re-orienting services and the partnership with civil society • Dialogue • The need for honesty and real commitment

4. The Dilemma Game • Management that transfers complexity and dilemmas from one level to the next • Sets up a double message: A squeeze of conflicting demands • Appeals to to the next level to take up the challenge – in the name of decentralization and self-governance • To refuse is exclude one self • Double Bind and Desperate Governance

5. Fleeing from management • Critique of New Public Management • A silent boycott of implementation • A preference to speak of ”Leadership” in stead of ”Management” A need to renew management as a rational project

6. Without mutuality – no rationality • The basis for rationality is the mutual recognition of each other as subjects who can present arguments and make normative commitments • Dilemma games erode the basis for rationality and real commitment • We need to develop the quality of management dialogue in order to restore rationality

7. Recommendation 1Acknowledgethe autonomy and interdependence of each level Professional Citizen Institution The organization as chain of learning contexts District Local Agency City Council

8. Recommendation 2Simplicity – few long term objectives • A need for long term objectives, continuity and learning • Result-based contracts covering several years • Focus on effects • In stead of regulating activities in substance – demand a learning organization

9. Recommendation 3Language diversity and dynamics Causal languages: Programme Theory Narrative languages: Narratives Pre-scriptive languages

10. Recommendation 4Reinstate oral dialogue Oral documentation Written documentation Blind faith that writing implies reflecting and learning! Exploit the comparative strength of genres

11. Recommendation 5Management through partnerships Central Government Local Government Professions Agreement on long term objectives Forming programme theories and meta-narratives Meta-Governance

12. Recommendation 6Trust as discipline • Today: Overspending in municipalities is met with economic sanctions • Alternative: Selective de-regulation: • High level of performance secures exemption from parts of central regulation – higher degrees of local freedom • Low level of performance means continued control effort

13. Recommendation 7Qualify your participation • Not even the most clever structure or tool can give rise to authentic relations in human interaction • Management is first of all developed by us qualifying our participation • The ability to be rational is equal to the ability to be open, honest and constructive in the face of severe dilemmas • This means working with our own defensive mechanisms, patriarchal anxieties, and inclination toward competitive conversations games