Over the past 2 decades, managerial reforms in the public sector have focused on new performance measures aimed at improving accountability, value for money and the use of scarce resources. Through the use of case studies on higher education, the NHS and the police service, this paper argues that this imposition of "private" sector management practices and philosophies is unlikely to deliver the intended transformation. Instead, the paper argues, it represents further commodification which will resolve "worth into exchange value" and covert "the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the man of science into paid wage labourers" (Marx and Engels, 1848). The most likely outcome of these changes is negative cultural changes on public sector organisations through a process of de-professionalisation.

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Keywords

• Public sector reform
• Management by Objectives
• Commodification
• De-professionalisation
• Cultural Change

(30 min. Conference Paper, English)