1. Transferring New Public Management to the Periphery: UK International Development Organizations Applying Project Technology to China.
- Author
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KERR, RON
- Subjects
PUBLIC administration ,ORGANIZATIONAL behavior ,ORGANIZATIONAL structure ,INTERORGANIZATIONAL relations ,ORGANIZATIONAL change ,KNOWLEDGE transfer - Abstract
This paper addresses the following question: what happens when ideas from new public management from the West are used in the context of international development? Drawing on empirical data from the field of international development, it follows the trajectory of the "logical framework" as a governance technology from the level of government in the United Kingdom to the level of operations in China. This trajectory can be reconstructed as moving downward through a hierarchical structure of carrying organizations—from an ideology that is ervasive in government, through the government departments to the quasi-independent international development agencies, and then to the practitioners in the field. As shown in this paper, what is transferred to the periphery is not the only intended aims of the project—in this case, teacher training—but also the policy preoccupations of the central bureaucracy with how to perform accountability by translating the messy local context into uniform categories in order that the center may monitor and hold the periphery to account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2008
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