Re-invented Government: The New Zealand Experience

This paper reports on research among a sample of the senior level managers involved in the radical reform of New Zealand's approach to public sector management during the past ten years. Using a modified Delphi technique, the authors explored the emerging consensus from the sample of managers on what features of the change had worked well, and what had worked least well. The authors create a scorecard, showing several positives and a striking neg ative. They suggest that the real test of re-invented government and public sector management is a capacity to blend successfully the 'bard' (financial and structural) and the 'softer' (people) aspects of change.