The Civil Service in Transition – The Ongoing Transformation of Administrative Culture

This chapter describes the prior developments and future challenges that resulted in fundamental and ongoing changes in administrative culture in the European civil service. It first presents the key characteristics and consequences of archetypical personnel systems that have shaped the civil service landscape in the past. Prior waves of reforms are then illustrated with a focus on transformations linked to New Public Management (NPM), fiscal austerity and societal change. Current developments are discussed next to highlight the five most impactful developments and challenges that will shape the administrative culture of the 21st century: legitimacy, pragmatism, innovation, digital-era governance, and value-based governance. The chapter concludes that European administrative cultures are still in transition and continue to converge in many relevant aspects with private-sector logic. However, NPM-related reforms and modernisation stimulated by several waves of crises and societal change have not led to the predicted disintegration of the civil service and the erosion of its traditional core values. In primarily career-based public personnel systems, many traditional elements remain and will have to undergo further reform to successfully meet future challenges of public personnel management in a changing labour market and society.