Schizophrenic Public Administration Reform in Hungary. Tension between anti-NPM systemic and pro-NPM organizational reforms

The aim of this paper is to shed the light on the relationship between New Public Management and Hungary’s Zoltán Magyary Public Administration Development Programme. As will be shown, the Magyary Programme has a dual structure. The systemic reforms run counter to the NPM philosophy because the main goal is the centralization of public administration, while NPM clearly advocates decentralization. At the same time, reform proposals on the organizational level conform to NPM. The inconsistencies in the Magyary Programme itself and the probable political and organizational resistance towards its proposals could delay the introduction of reforms on the organizational level.

Systemic country differences in the European innovation performance - Does institutional context matter?

The so-called "High Performance Working System" (HPWS) and the lean production are representing the theoretical and methodological foundations of this paper. In this relation it is worth making distinction between various theoretical streams of the HPWS. The first theoretical stream in the literature is focusing on the diffusion of the Japanese-style management and organizational practices both in the US and in the Europe. The second theoretical strand comprises the approach of sociology of work and dealing with the learning/innovation capabilities of the new forms of work organization. Finally, the third theoretical approach is addressing on the types of knowledge and learning process and their relations with the innovation capabilities of the firm. The authors’ analysis is based on the international comparison, both in regional and in cross country comparison. For regional comparison the share of ICT clusters in Europe, USA and the rest of the world was assessed. For the purpose of the cross-country comparison in the EU, the innovation performance measured by the index Innovation Union Scoreboard (IUS) was used in both the before and after the financial crisis.

Schizophrenic public administration reform in Hungary. Tension between anti-NPM systemic and pro-NPM organizational reforms

The aim of the paper is to highlight the main characteristics of the recent Hungarian public administration reform, as well as to reveal the inconsistent nature of some of its elements and to describe the connected risks. The starting point of the article is the Magyary Zoltán public administration development programme. The reform steps are compared to the ideal type NPM approach. The Hungarian public administration reform can be characterized by strong centralization and the revitalization of Hungarian anti-liberal traditions at macro level, and by the support of the enhancement of market rules and management at micro level.