Discerning the impact of managerial reforms is a tough task that faces almost insurmountable barriers. These barriers partly explain the lack of evaluation and the often-unsatisfactory findings of those few evaluations that are undertaken.

 

It seems a hopeless cause to try ascribe causality to elements of specific reforms for weakly drawn descriptors of civil service effectiveness and ultimately government effectiveness. Each link in that causal chain is contested, buffeted by context, culture, power, stakeholders and an almost infinite set of variables.

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One promising avenue for getting past this problem is to draw on research which is establishing an increasingly plausible case for the impact of intermediate outcomes such as dynamic capabilities on the organisational effectiveness and longevity to provide a foundation for my approach (see: 'searching for success' below). 

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I have drawn on my initial research to produce a conceptual framework which will guide my research into the practice of successful reforms.

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I shall take these intermediate reform outcomes and investigate the design and practice of reforms which led to them.

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Amongst the resources below are two of my previous efforts to draw out some success factors firstly, 4 noted reforms in the UK (Success factors #1), and secondly a cross programme of civil service reform in Ireland and Northern Ireland (success factors #2).