Impartiality through bureaucracy? A Sri Lankan approach to managing values

This article starts from a crux in Alan Thomas's model of development management: that values‐based development management may require the coercion of employees whose values are different. It uses a case study of Sri Lanka's attempt to inculcate the value of impartiality in staffing, focusing on the restoration of the independence of the Service Commissions. The article concludes that values‐based management is likeliest to succeed in the public sector, whose democratic legitimacy allows politicians to impose values in the form of behavioural norms. Ironically, such management is more complicated in the NGO sector, whose uncertain legitimacy means that managers must negotiate values with staff who may have competing values of their own.