Professionals, Quality and the Marketing Change Process

Abstract

The election of the Conservative Government in 1979 heralded a diversion from the post‐war, Keynesian public policy model which envisaged incrementally expanding, centrally‐funded service provision (Hall, 1988). Largely in response to mounting financial crises, and building on earlier managerialist initiatives (eg. Griffiths, 1983), a new public sector management paradigm began to emerge at the beginning of the 1990s (Booth, 1993). This new paradigm, which was informed by the New Right's ‘public choice theory’ emphasised: fiscal re‐organisation, privatisation, the separation of purchaser and provider roles within quasi‐markets and the sovereignty of the customer (Butler and Vaile, 1991; Thompson, 1992). These ideological and structural changes are now recognised as a significant break with the past (Fitzgerald, 1993), and even John Major acknowledges the programme as a ‘revolution in progress’ (Major, 1989:1). Importantly, the reformers have often ritualistically, cast aside traditional, public sector and professional values (Pollitt, 1990a; Hood, 1991). In their place, a diffuse set of management ideas have been imported from the private sector. These have subsequently been aggregated and termed the “New Public Management” by commentators such as Harrow and Wilcocks (1990) and Steward and Walsh (1992).

Citation

Kitchener, M. and Whipp, R. (1994), "Professionals, Quality and the Marketing Change Process", Management Research News, Vol. 17 No. 7/8/9, pp. 73-73. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb028368