The dangers of internationalization and “one‐size‐fits‐all” in public sector management
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop a theoretical framework to explain the failure in public management of wholesale policy transfer from well developed to developing economies. Design/methodology/approach The paper relies extensively on organizational surveys and specialized interviews in both jurisdictions, as well as on a review of government (primary) and other institutional documents. It is qualitative in nature. Findings The paper reveals that the context in which public sector reform policies are implemented matters. In short, the environment (with structural and contextual variables) is an essential element in the success of policies. It highlights important factors such as culture, institutional dynamism, the role of the external actors, etc. as issues that must be carefully looked at in the development and implementation of reform policies. Research limitations/implications The number of cases needs to be expanded to further confirm the results. Furthermore, before it is possible to generalize about the theory's applicability, it is necessary to test the theoretical framework by examining the issue of policy transfer among developing countries. Practical implications The findings point to the need for theorists, policy makers, and policy implementers to be open‐minded as they attempt to develop and implement policies for public sector reforms in different circumstances. They thus emphasize the need to adapt reforms to a particular environment rather than pursuing a one‐size‐fits‐all approach. The paper thus argues that the most appropriate management strategies for reforms must be cognizant of local environmental conditions so as to tailor policies that fit the environment. Originality/value The paper contributes to both theory and practice by participating in the discussion on what must be considered administrative reforms. The paper will be of interest to those searching for ways to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of public sector organizations through reforms and, in particular, of performance management, as well as to stakeholders interested in well‐functioning public sector organizations.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.049 | 0.046 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.007 | 0.055 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.014 | 0.029 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.016 |
| Research integrity | 0.005 | 0.008 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".