Public Administration and The Managerialist Fervour For Values and Ethics: Of Collective Confusion in Control Societies

Recent managerialist discourse on modernizing, reinventing or reengineering the State has often placed strong emphasis on values and ethics as a preferred means (so-called strategy) for large-scale organizational change (Frederickson & Johnston, 1999; Kettl, 2000). Building on a pragmatist understanding of organizational cultures and identities, managerialism presupposes a fusion between rule-value and action, where individual behaviour can be modulated by a flexible set of norms secreted by spontaneous “leaders.” Hence, from this perspective, proper values should lead to proper behaviour in a context of individual autonomy. Building on a syncretism of critical theory (Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2000) and poststructuralism (Foucault, 1975, 2004; Foucault & Deleuze, 1972; Hardt & Negri, 2000), this paper intends to discuss the theoretical relevance of the managerialist perspective on values and ethics for the renewal of public administration and, in the larger scheme of things, the renewal of public governance. Simply stated, the paper asks: Does the current emphasis on ethics and values in public administration, most notably in regards to its claims of individual and organizational empowerment, lead to unintended consequences, such as collective confusion (Rouillard, 2003)? Indeed, we state that the managerialist shift in public administration appears as a symptom of a more global shift from a disciplinary society to a control society.