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ANTONINO PALUMBO

The Reform and Innovation as Rhetoric and Method

Abstract

We start from an observation from a well-known Swedish organisational analyst, Nils Brunsson, which reads like irony but feels like reality: the only guaranteed outcome of (organisational) reform is the next reform. What Brunsson calls ‘the reform of reform’ will be – all too – familiar to many readers, particularly those working in the public sector. Given repeated exposure to permanent reorganization – brought in under the mantel of reform and innovation – it is tempting to ascribe this permanent revolution to one or both of two causes: the failure of previous reform attempts and/or the need of senior managers to demonstrate their ‘transformative’ effects upon their organization in order to meet their KPIs and/or enhance their CVs. While these responses are understandable, they do not, we argue, explain the recursive nature of reorganisation. Rather, building on the Polanyian analysis we developed in The Remaking of Market Society (2018), we argue that the recursive nature of reform is a core aspect of New Public Management, and that it has strategic ends: pre-empting gaming, weakening old solidarities, and building new coalitions. Moving beyond the analysis we developed in that volume, here we shall also draw on Albert Hirschman’s work to identify the value inversions of terms such as ‘reform’ and ‘innovation’, which provide the basso continuo accompanying reorganisation.