Summary:

Attempts to understand the global public management reform movement suggest two
general implications for research. First, there is a glaring need to understand the shortand
long-term outcomes of the reforms where they have been implemented. Second,
despite the importance of conducting this research, doing so is almost impossible in the
short term and exceedingly difficult in the long term. It is hard enough simply to keep
pace with management changes in each nation. It is even harder to make sound multicountry
comparisons. Efforts to solve this problem sometimes have led researchers to
use a particular nation’s reforms -- often New Zealand’s --as a benchmark, but the
particular problems facing each nation weaken the value of such comparisons. The
paucity of “results about reforms” -- and the need to assess whether management
reforms have helped each nation solve its particular problems -- should motivate
researchers to press ahead.