Administrative reform is about changing structures, institutions and about changing the attitudes, motives and work conduct of the people working within those structures. Our previous research (Sobis and De Vries 2008) into the process of technical assistance to governments in CEE countries in transition, during the period 1990-2004, found that the ineffectiveness thereof was due to a combination of problems. We pointed to a combination of contrary objectives among the organisations involved and awkward resource dependencies within the aid-chain, and also to the emergence of a specific kind of attitude among professionals. In public administration, one often thinks that performance measurement, monitoring and evaluations can solve that problem. This approach, however, has proven to have serious negative side effects. The main objective of this paper is to search for alternatives to this approach.
In this paper, we seek these alternatives within the discipline of social psychology. This discipline sees human behaviour as the result of the interaction of mental states and immediate social situations. We will argue that public administration can learn from theories in social psychology and the application thereof to organisational behaviour in the public sector. An application on the technical assistance by western advisors to the governments in CEE countries in transition illustrates the findings.
Network of Institutes and Schools of Public Administration in Central and Eastern Europe (NISPAcee)