2007年公共管理国际会议论文集-公共部门冲突管理专题（860页WORD版）Conflict Management in the Public Sector.doc

Part Eleven Conflict Management in the Public Sector Public Interests Based Choice-making Administrative Competency in Public Sector Civil Servants Management The Role of Arm’s Length Agency Governance in Westminster Governments in Promoting Accountability to the Public David Stuewe Dalhousie University, Canada Abstract Service quality and costs concerns have caused governments to restructured delivery systems through a phenomenon know as New Public Management. This approach is reported to have two key changes from traditional government organizations 1) a separation of policy from service delivery through the use of separate service delivery organizations and 2) a change in the contractual governance arrangements- organizational reporting. Historically theorists have debated the ability of principals to effectively hold their agents accountable due to the agent’s superior access to information and agent self interest. This study considers the implications of the two changes and suggests public accountability can be enhanced through contractual change. Key words Accountability, Service delivery reform, Distributed public governance, Arms length agencies, New public management, Corporate performance measures, Workers’ compensation 1 Introduction “Peace, Order and Good Government” The British North America Act of 1867, which brought Canada into nationhood, used these three broad concepts to “generally state the scope of legislative jurisdiction of the parliament” of Canada.(McLellan and Gall 2007, 1) Canada is still a relatively young nation and has primarily drawn its governance model from the United Kingdom. Like other countries using the Westminster model of government, it has been experimenting with new governance models to deliver the promise of ‘Good Government’. ‘Good Government’ can be variously defined, but for the purpose of this study I shall focus on the delivery of services and the accounting for that by Government to its citizens as one of the co