Improvement complaining: When complainers have the solution to the problem BEAL Mathieu, GRÉGOIRE Yany & SABADIE William

This working paper studies a new conceptual approach of customers' complaints that we called "improvement complaining". The underlying idea is that customers' dissatisfaction can be turned into a creative learning process. Indeed, dissatisfaction is often considered as one of the strongest antecedents leading to creativity (Boichuk & Menguc, 2013;Carbonell et al. 2009;Duverger, 2012;Füller, 2010;Zhou & George, 2001). Many successful products have been suggested by dissatisfied customers or employees (e.g. McDonald's Filet-O-Fish or Starbucks' Frappuccino). Accordingly, we define improvement complaining as the expression of customer's voice following a service failure in which he or she expresses innovative suggestions to improve the firm's practices and/or services. The main question is: "What influence customers' willingness to share ideas while complaining?" To the best of our knowledge, no study has examined the creative potential of customers' complaints and this one can fill that literature gap, about how a service failure may be the starting point for the innovation process

In sum, this work is motivated by three questions related to improvement complaining. Our first research question is about improvement complaining's occurrence. For that, we run a content analysis on 375 complaint letters collected from a French bank's database and find that around 3.5% of customers' complaints can be considered as an improvement complaint. Secondly, we question the customers' motives associated with improvement complaining. Our results show that this complaint is more related with others-oriented motives (company and other customers) compared to other complaining forms. Finally, our third question examines the effect of the organizational climate on complaint intentions. We find that when organizational climate is favorable, customers are more open to complain in an innovative and less in a vindictive way.

To conceptualize improvement complaining and identify its antecedents and effects, we propose a theoretical framework that draws from different literatures, both from marketing and organizational behaviour researches.

First, considering the service failure literature, we consider the main antecedents like dissatisfaction (Bougie et al. 2003), blame (Folkes, 1984), severity (Maxham III & Netemeyer, 2002), inferred firm motives (Joireman et al. 2013) and perceived justice (Tax et al. 1998). We also focus on the customers' desire while complaining. Particularly, customers may frame service failure based on different schemas (Beverland et al. 2010;Ringberg et al. 2007;Tuncay-Zayer et al. 2015), like desire for reparation or desire for revenge (Bonifield & Cole, 2007;Gelbrich, 2010). Here, we argue that improvement complaining is motivated by a special desire for reparation-that to obtain reparation for himself and others by trying to improve the service delivery (De Dreu & Nauta, 2009). It is equally important to note that this desire is closely related to the notion of value co-creation in the service recovery context (Dong et al. 2008;Heindenreich et al. 2015). This idea is consistent with literature dealing with promotive voice (Liang et al. 2012;Van Dyne & LePine, 1998), which considers that employees sometimes complain to their supervisor not only to point failures but also to give ideas that could change the status quo. Bye the bye, Van Dyne and her colleagues (2003) show that promotive voice is a prosocial behavior oriented not only on the self, but also toward others (the company and/or other customers). As said previously, our results confirm that improvement complaining is more other-oriented (toward the company and toward other customers) compared to other complaining forms (De Dreu & Nauta, 2009). Finally, we mobilize antecedents that contribute to build a favorable organizational climate for creative ideas' sharing: procedural justice climate (Moorman et al. 1998;Naumann & Bennett, 2000) and perceived organizational support (Einseberger et al. 1984;Rhoades & Eisenberger, 2002). We demonstrate that a favorable organizational context enhances customers' propensity to make improvement and problem-solving complaining and reduces vindictive complaining.

Finally, we assess that future researches should use antecedents from open-innovation literature (Huizingh, 2011). Specifically, we judge lead-users characteristics (Von Hippel, 1984) and domain-specific knowledge (Luo et al. 2015) to be relevant antecedents to understand customers' willingness to make improvement complaining.


Philippe Bezes

Gilles Jeannot

Van De

Walle Steve

Andrews Rhys

Bezes Philippe

From Smooth NPMization to Structural Changes in France: Accelerated Reforms, Mixed Perceptions

Public administration reforms in Europe, the view from

of French sociologist Michel Crozier"s theory viewing France as a "stalled society" with a "stalled state" [START_REF] Crozier | The Bureaucratic Phenomenon[END_REF][START_REF] Crozier | La société bloquée[END_REF]. However, lessons drawn from neo-institutionalist theories (insisting in the national specificity of reform trajectories due to institutional constraints and structuring historical patterns) invite us to more diverse kind of lenses to describe changes and suggest how framing the analysis in terms of inertia can be rather misleading. Indeed, the policies of administrative reforms have developed intensively in the French context as elsewhere, with specificities [START_REF] Bezes | Réinventer l'Etat. Les réformes de l'administration française[END_REF][START_REF] Bezes | Trajectories of Administrative Reform: Institutions, Timing and Choices in France and Spain[END_REF], that may be related to the kind and modes of changes occurring in a "Napoleonic" state [START_REF] Ongaro | Public Management Reform and Modernization: Trajectories of Administrative Change in Italy, France, Greece, Portugal and Spain[END_REF] or as a Continental State (see [START_REF] Pollitt | Public Management Reform: A Comparative Analysis -New Public Management, Governance, and the Neo-Weberian State[END_REF]. The importance of gradual modes of changes or, at the opposite, upon long-term perspective in the context of resilient institutions have been emphasised for the French case [START_REF] Bezes | Réinventer l'Etat. Les réformes de l'administration française[END_REF]. Another argument is that New Public Management ideas did develop and diffuse in the French context but with specific institutional constraints [START_REF] Rouban | Reform without Doctrine: Public Management in France[END_REF][START_REF] Bezes | État, experts et savoirs néo-managériaux. Les producteurs et diffuseurs du New Public Management en France depuis les années 1970[END_REF]. At last, authors have also emphasized the specificities of ministries, some of them (Public Work, Health, Education) developing their own dynamic of administrative changes and their own accommodation of managerial tools [START_REF] Jeannot | Réformer par les outils ou par les hommes ? Un bilan quantitatif de la modernisation de la gestion de l"Etat[END_REF][START_REF] Guillemot | Modernisation et bureaucratie. L"administration d"Etat à l"aune du privé[END_REF]. With these perspectives in mind, this chapter offers interesting insights to emphasize how French top public officials perceive administrative reform policies in France in terms of trends, tools and scope.

The multiple nexus of the French political-administrative institutions

In order to provide a broad view of the French administrative institutions, four dimensions can be emphasized. The two first are related the degree of pervasivenessof the administrative system. The French state has been recognized as the archetype of a "unitary and centralized state" -a "Napoleonic state" -with strong national integration through a single territorial administrative structure [START_REF] Crozier | La régulation des systèmes organisés complexes. Le cas du système de décision politico-administratif local en France[END_REF]Grémion, 1976). And indeed, national ministerial administrations have subnational units representing subdivisions of the national ministries both at the regional and at the départemental levels. However, second, these regional and départementaldirectorates are also "supervised" by a "prefect" who is an agent of the whole government. These lines have designed a territorially based and vertically integrated administrative system, both from the ministerial point of view and from the more political one with the political control defended by prefects. The third component is the existence of a complex legal entrenchment, ranging from a strong legal body of provisions ruling bureaucratic life as well as a statute that organizes the professional life of all civil servants (statut general des fonctionnaires) [START_REF] Dreyfus | Servir l'Etat en France, en Grande-Bretagne et aux Etats-Unis (XVIIIème siècle-XXème siècle)[END_REF]. The French administration hasthus established a large and separate body of administrative law, consisting of a coherent legal doctrine that covered bureaucratic activities. The existence of this "rigid [legal] backbone" (Knill, 1999, p. 115) explains why any "new" types of ideas -such as the "new public management" movement"have been filtered. The existence of specific training schools designed to train upper-level civil servants (at the top of them, the Ecolenationaled'administration, [START_REF] Eymeri | La fabrique des énarques[END_REF] is another institutional related feature that even accentuated this trend [START_REF] Bezes | The Development and Current Features of the French Civil Service System[END_REF]. The fourth component concerns the political-administrative nexus and points to the relationship between politicians and bureaucrats "at the top". On the political side, the French Fifth Republic is often referred to as a semi-presidential regime. The hybrid nature of its politico-administrative system lies in the fact that, although its Constitution of the 4 th of October 1958 has established a parliamentary system, both the institutional practice and the constitutional reforms have increasingly strengthened the predominance of the President compared with the Prime Minister. The President was initially elected for seven yearswhile the members of the National Assembly"s term lasts five yearsbut the constitutional reform in 2000 has made the president and the deputies" term match; both now last five years, (theoretically) reducing the probability of "cohabitation" between a President originating from a different party than his or her Prime Minister. On the administrative side, by reinforcing the presidential and governmental executive against the Parliament, the Fifth Republic has given great strength to top civil servants and has designed fairly politicised minister/mandarin relations. On the one hand, the French administration relies on a vast majority of state civil servants who are recruited through competitive exams, trained in schools and promoted through rationalized mechanisms. The global image that results from these mechanisms is well known: a unified merit and career based civil service system, traditionally associated with the idea of a strong state tradition (État is always capitalised) and the idea of a disinterested civil servant serving the general interest and guarding the public good while also promoting the principles of impartiality, equality, adaptability and continuity. On the other hand, forms of politicization at the top have always persisted and have even been continuously and growingly used as structuring means for steering, producing loyalty and controlling administration at higher level through ministerial cabinets and discretionary appointments (political loyalty is there in balance with expertise and competences) (for an overview, [START_REF] Bezes | French Top CivilServantsWithinChangingConfigurations. FromMonopolisationtoChallenged Places andRoles ?[END_REF].

The trajectory of public administrative reforms in France

While administrative reforms did not play in France, in the eighties and nineties, the dominant role they had in Anglo-American and Antipodean countries and did not initially claim the same disruptive intentions at changing the very nature of the administrative system, administrative reform episodes in France have been numerous with a steadily growing influence of NPM devices from the nineties and more drastic reforms since the early 2000 [START_REF] Bezes | Réinventer l'Etat. Les réformes de l'administration française[END_REF]. In the early 1980s, France first dealt with decentralisation policies rather than going on focusing on efficiency or managerial tools and the territorial decentralisation was first a response to concerns about the distribution of political power, not about administrative inefficiencies. Competences were transferred to local authorities in several domains (social action, housing, education, culture, transports, sea affairs) but without clearly distinguishing between state and sub-national governments. Although France has been historically considered as a centralized state, local representatives and authorities always played a major role at the central level within Republican regimes in France and obtained benefits (Le Lidec, 2001). In this context, decentralisation has always been "the" major early "reactive" reform that induced reinforcing effects and changed the "Napoleonic" state (Le Lidec, 2007[START_REF] Bezes | Trajectories of Administrative Reform: Institutions, Timing and Choices in France and Spain[END_REF], for instance with a new decentralization Act in 2003-2004. In the eighties, smooth administrative reforms valued service quality, user concerns, some managerial techniques (evaluation, contracts) and a continuing set of distinctive public service orientations with strong participation of public servants and control through mutuality.

By the mid-1990s ideas, policy instruments, goals and the scope of reform were largely redesigned by the mid-1990s, to such an extent that the New Public Management "tool-kit" gradually became the dominant inspiration in administrative reform policies (Bezes, 2005;2009;[START_REF] Bezes | État, experts et savoirs néo-managériaux. Les producteurs et diffuseurs du New Public Management en France depuis les années 1970[END_REF]. At the same time, however, NPM ideas became more influent and growingly adopted by top bureaucrats from the French Grands corps through repeated state reform committees and reports (ibid.)

As a result of these ongoing processes unleashed in the 1990s, many comprehensive and drastic changes have occurred since the early 2000s. The major change for the French administrative systemspecifically in terms of adoption of NPM methods and tools -has come from the 2001 reform of the French budgetary procedure. The reform was voted through the Institutional Act on Budget Legislation (Loiorganique relative aux lois de finances, called "LOLF"), adopted on August 1 st 2001 and implemented since January 2006.

The 2001 Budget Act systematised the use of NPM instruments (programme-oriented budgets, a new performance management system, a "real cost" approach to policy, aggregated headings, constraining capping tools for staff expenditure and a new accountability framework for Parliament) [START_REF] Bezes | Morphologie de la Révision générale des politiques publiques. Une mise en perspective historique et comparative[END_REF][START_REF] Corbett | Public managementpolicymaking in France: legislatingtheOrganic Law on Laws ofFinance (LOLF), 1998-2001[END_REF]. During the 1990s and early 2000s, the process of agencification was not absent in the French context but it was unsystematic and limited compared to other European countries (United Kingdom, the Netherlands) [START_REF] Bezes | Understanding Organizational Reforms in the Modern State: Specialization and Integration in France[END_REF]. The creation of new autonomous public bodies dominantly took the legal form of the établissements publics, used since decades for many already existing autonomous public bodies (Conseild"Etat, 2012). New agencies were numerous in Agriculture, Health and Risk, Social Affairs, Culture and Research, within this legal form of établissements publics.

After the election of President Sarkozy, a General Public Policy Review was launched in July 2007 with explicit reference to the Canadian Program Review initiated by the Liberal Chretien Government in 1995-1996 or the "spending reviews" done in UK since 2002 [START_REF] Bezes | Morphologie de la Révision générale des politiques publiques. Une mise en perspective historique et comparative[END_REF]. The French RévisionGénérale des PolitiquesPubliques(RGPP) claims to engage in "rethinking the state" with direct ties to the fiscal imperatives of dealing with the debt and the deficit. From 2007 to 2012, this process of reform generated two dynamics of transformation of the state organizational form with sharp and specific impacts on the territorial state, the many ministerial field units and the prefects [START_REF] Bezes | L"hybridation du modèle territorial français. La réorganisation de l"administration territoriale de l"Etat et la Révision générale des politiques publiques[END_REF][START_REF] Poupeau | Con)fusiondansl"Etatdépartemental. La mise en place des Directionsdépartementales des Territoires et de la Mer (DDTM)[END_REF]. First, boundaries between ministries were redrawn and the number of full ministers was significantly reduced leading to the creation of meta-ministries. Second, the territorial state administration was reorganized at the regional and the départemental levels through many mergers affecting nearly all state local units. Within the same General Review of Public policies, several austerity measures also affected the civil service (freeze on the point value of civil service pay from 2010, non replacement of one in two retiring civil servants).

The specificities of the major trendsofreforms: high on downsizing and mergers; low on transparency and citizen participation

As regards the big reform trends identified by the respondents in France (question 17), it is no surprise to find that the main responses describe the reforms of the last five years conducted under the general public policy review (RGPP) and reflect the sedimentary layers of previous reforms, which are perceived as less dominant and at work because a bit older. 80% of respondents (scale 1-3) 1 identify the impact of the "Public Sector Downsizing" measures: they correspond to the sustained policy of cutting public sector employment over this period by the non-replacement of one in two retiring civil servants. This trend is specifically strong in the French context and is much above the COCOPS average (see table 1). This austerity trend is confirmed by the 69% that are opposed to the idea that there is and extending state provision into new areas, neatly beneath COCOPS average. The second item particularly identified was the policy of organizational merger (51%), again above the COCOPS average, which actually corresponds to the multiple reorganizations associated with the RGPP: mergers of central government administrations, of ministerial divisions at the regional level and of interministerial divisions at the départemental level. Associated with this is the presence of reforms focusing on collaboration and cooperation between different players (51%). In fact, mergers of central administrations as well as, systematically, of ministerial units at regional level was decided in order to increase 1 In this chapter, we have chosen to provide percentages (on scale 1-3) from the French sample in order to emphasize the way surveyed people have responded to the questionnaire. In the three figures we insert, we use means as the simplest way to compare French responses to their European counterparts. cooperation between them. The reforms relating to performance targets and linked with the LOLF, first implemented in 2006 before the Sarkozy era, take a back seat. However, the respondents underline the importance of focusing on outcomes and results as broadly high at 50%. These measures, clearly dominated by the downsizing theme, which has the biggest psychological impact and affects organizations in their operation, are nevertheless not equated with market type reforms: this is evidenced by the mere 9 % of responses on the question of "privatization" and, to a lesser degree, for "flexible employment", external partnership and "contracting out", respectively 22 %, 30% and 33%. To a significant extent, 56% of the senior executives also identify the progress of digital government (or e-government) as broadly important, but also the creation of autonomous agencies (in France, taking the form of a growth in public establishments), which 38% of them see as broadly important.

Figure 1: French Top Executives" assessments of reform trends in comparative perspective Generally speaking, the respondents" perceptions and responses help defining a fairly accurate map of actual reforms in France. To situate France internationally, we can see a link between austerity policy (downsizing) and drastic reorganizations through merger bringing both cooperation issues to the heart of the reform process and the aim at generatingeconomies All in all, the assessments are uniform and broadly consider (scale 1-3) that the reforms are top-down (79%), substantive (i.e. drastic and very visible, 39%), little concerned with negotiation (contested by the unions 72%) and very much about cost-cutting and savings (68% versus 9.5% who consider them to be driven by quality improvement) and "driven by the crisis" (48% compared with planned for only 14 %).The pushiness of the recent reforms is excessively intensive can be appreciated by the fact that 38% of respondents thought that there were too demanding, whereas only 9% thought there were not enough. The coexistence of mergers and downsizing may explain this perception: both are strongly demanding trends generating many side effects in public organisations(disorganised public policies, material issues related to mergers) and over public agents (trouble in identities, reshuffle of positions in the organisation, etc.).

Reforms by Instruments: the diffusion of managerial tools in the French context

Beyond the perception of the major reform trends, the assessment by senior civil servants of the instruments actually used in their parent organization is a good indicator of the changes underway in public administration and its intensity. In comparative perspective, the French top executives have declared that, in total, France has one of the weakest "equipment rate" in managerial tools in Europe, with the exception of Spain, and together with two other Continental countries, Germany or Austria. Like in all other countries,three instruments are perceived as very significant in the French context: staff performance interviews (88 %), management by objectives and results (69%) and business planning (59%).The stamp of performance management methods based on the previous reforms (LOLF) is here rather strong. In complement, the high score of staff appraisal, even above the COCOPS average, reflects the measures taken during the Sarkozy presidency, which extended the individual performance interview (about career development, performance, etc.) to the detriment of bureaucratic scoring mechanisms.

While performance pay is not at the top of list of instruments used in France, its adoption is relatively advanced compared to other countries. Indeed, top bureaucrats have been the leading beneficiaries of this system in France since 2006, not only to incentivize their conducts but also as indirect way to increase their salaries.

Figure 3: French Top Executives" assessments of the perceived implementation of managerial tools in comparative perspective Quite significantlyin order to characterizing France (see figure 3), three types of instruments coming out of the New Public Management toolkit are largely seen as not being widespread. The first type is cost accounting systems (58% see them as broadly absent) that do not seem to come as a complement of performance management by objective and indicators. This finding can be associated to another result emphasizing that only a small number of respondents perceive a clear reward (8%) or penalty (6%) for achieving objectives:

while systems of management by results are indeed in place, their impact is limited and they are not much used as instruments of discipline or related to incentives.A second remarkable difference between the French findings and those of other countries is the weak focus on customer service, illustrated by the low score of tools like "service points for customers" or "customer user surveys". A third specificity suggests that France nicely illustrates the type of unitary centralized stateswhere both the resilience ofinstitutional protection (a statute for civil servants)and the weight of centralised mechanisms strongly limitthe decentralization of financial decisions and of staffing decisions (respectively 50% and 66% not present). In the French context, the "let the managers manage" slogan doesn"t seem to be really implemented.

The results also confirm well-known components of the traditional nature of personnel management rules in the French civil service and the highly controlled rules of recruitment and promotion. Accordingly, responses to questions on the quality of coordination clearly show the force of vertical, compartmentalized operation and fragmentation between ministries. Indeed, 87% of respondents to question 13 state that in the event of conflict between organizations, the usual preferred solution is to refer the problem up the hierarchy.

This approach is by far the most dominant. Next comesthe decision to shift the problem to the political level (61%) and the establishment of an ad hoc project group (48% of respondents).

Many mixed perceptions ofthe effects of administrative reforms

Compared to other top executives in other European countries, French top public officials are more critical about changes in the public sector. The general assessment of the global performance of the French public administration for the last five years (question 16) is marked bya significant negative bias. If we take a scale of 3, the negative views are predominant: 29% broadly worse vs. 16% broadly better. Generally speaking, all the judgments about performance vary according to the respondent"s level of responsibility, becoming more critical the further down the hierarchy we go. On specific items, the most favourable assessments, indicating an improvement, are few and relate to costs (54% on scale 3) and innovation (49%). This suggests a fairly restricted view of the improvements, since the first item reflects the numerous initiatives in the RGPP designed to cut spending, and the second refers to technological changes (e-government, Internet). By contrast, a large number of areas are perceived as having clearly declined. Certain perceptions of decline relate to the "external" effects arising from administrative action: the most remarkable (and the most worrying?) results in this sphere are that the senior executives surveyed consider that social cohesion has deteriorated (59% vs. 10%) along with citizen trust in government (59% vs.

10%). To a lesser degree, 45% of the respondents (vs. 23%) consider that citizen participation is also falling. The other clear perceptions of deterioration relate to the "internal" negative perception of the public sector and of the morale of its staff: 56% of respondents (vs.

19%) thus believe that staff motivation has deteriorated and 52% (vs. 21%) that the attractiveness of the public sector (i.e. of the government) as an employer has diminished.

These results indicate a certain malaise amongst French senior executives and the sense of a government that is enfeebled and out of touch. It seems a long time since administrative reform measures place the emphasis on participation by civil servants and users (Rocard reform of 1989[START_REF] Jeannot | The "service project" experience in the French civil service[END_REF][START_REF] Bezes | Réinventer l'Etat. Les réformes de l'administration française[END_REF] and the globally severe perception of reforms suggests a risk of reform fatigue from top executives coupled with the idea that reforms do not benefit to citizens as well as with negative side-effects on the place and role of the civil service in the French society.

Another major issue of concern is the variations in reform" perceptions across the organizational layers of the French administration. One could talk about a French public administration with three distinct layers, differently affected by reforms. If we consider the total French sample of respondents (1193 responses), not used in this book, which includes the chief executives of the French ministerial regional units in addition to top bureaucrats from ministerial central administrations and agencies, we observe a major difference between agency directors and directors of regional ministerial units, representing central government ministries at regional and départemental levels. Agency directors declare to be the most exposed to market mechanisms (benchmarking, contracting out), cost accounting systems and user surveys while also seeingthemselves as highly autonomous compared to the two others and having the most positive perception of reform effects. By contrast, directors of regional and départementalministerial units see themselves as having little autonomy except in reorganizations and mergers" implementation, have a more negative perceptions of reform impacts (most of all at the départemental level) and have been specifically affected by mergers, downsizing and one stop shops. Besides, while agencies" chief executives perceive their organization as extending state provisions, heads of regional and départemental ministerial units perceive the opposite. These findings confirm that agencies, in France, have been at the leading edge of implementing PM tools compared to other government areas and also constitute the layer through which new public policies have been launched. By contrast, the regional ministerial state has been growingly subordinated through administrative reforms that reduce its autonomy because central administrations has made a strategic use of reforms to strengthen their steering over them. between agencies and territorial ministerial units, etc.). However, in a comparative perspective, these significant transformations can be nuanced when confronted to the COCOPS observations that that the French administration is far from having beenNPMized and belongs to the second group of European countries, together with other Continental (Germany) and Southern countries (Italy) where reforms have not been as intense and systematic as they were in Nordic, British or Dutch areas.

Conclusion

  Figure2 below looks now at senior executives" overall perceptions of the implementation of administrative reforms. These assessments clearly relate to the recent reforms introduced under the general public policy review.

Figure 2 :

 2 Figure 2: French Top Executives" assessments of the implementation of reforms in comparative perspective

  responses. 34% of respondents see them as largely driven by politics (compared with 22% as driven by the senior executives), which reflects the "politics of conviction manifested by the "hyper President" Sarkozy, to describe the way Nicolas Sarkozy has constructed his political authority. Besides, the audits and reform plans within the General Review of Public Policy were initially elaborated by small closed circles of top bureaucrats and consultants without cooperation and negotiation with ministries. Possibly related to the views that recent reforms were set up by the top, far away from the ordinary problems of top executives, the assessments of reform effects are cagey, with 22 % seeing them as unsuccessful, whereas 13% consider them a success. The perception of the reforms as

  After years of misleading discourses about France viewed as a laggard on the one hand and, on the other, more radical recent administrative reforms launched by President Sarkozy with strong rhetoric of conviction and voluntarism, one could wonder what the COCOPS survey would emphasize. From the French findings, we conclude that administrative change did occur and was perceived by top executives as a complete opposite picture of what were administrative reform policies in the 1980s and early 1990s. Reforms have been perceived as structural, top-down, comprehensive and without participation of public agents or trade unions. As for trends, reforms have emphasised mergers, downsizing and digital tools but performance management has also been developed in the French case. From this, have resulted perceived internal tensions within the French administration (demotivation, contradictory assessments of the impacts of reforms and of the performance of the French administration, strong differences between layers of government such as the opposition


The transformation of traditional management methods in public bureaucracies is one of the most significant aspects of the reforms influenced by New Public Management. These dynamics of change can be specifically well identified and analysed by paying attention to the ever-expanding diffusion of public management instruments in bureaucracies. From the most conventional accounting functions to the most sophisticated risk management or ISO quality standards, both business and public service management operates, within the framework of formal systems, through a large diversity of "management tools". Some are associated with computer software in order to settle global managerial architectures, others with new methods of government by targets and performance indicators while others, like staff appraisal, entail formal and structured procedures aimed at transforming human resources management. For decades, administrative reforms have continuously driven the development of management tools and spread their use throughout civil service structures. Instrumentation in public bureaucracies is then a major issue for research like in public policy [START_REF] Hood | The tools of government[END_REF][START_REF] Lascoumes | From the Nature of Instruments to the Sociology of Public Policy Instrumentation[END_REF] and using a public management instruments framework offers a very insightful approach to analyse administrative changes in a comparative perspective [START_REF] Bezes | The Hidden Politics of Administrative Reform : Cutting French Civil Service Wages With a Low-Profile Instrument[END_REF]Guillemot, Jeannot, 2013).

With this purpose, this chapter offers an initial but global picture emphasizing variations in the diffusion and perceived uses of public management tools in the 13 European countries covered by the Cocops Survey. The strong value of the Cocops survey is that it allows to understand changes in public management on the basis of a single input corresponding to a set of questions in which: top civil servants were asked to evaluate the use of the management tools employed in their national administrations. From this result the opportunity to measure the presence of a certain number of management tools in national civil services and policy sectors as well as the possibility to identify national and inter-sector variations.

In this chapter, we have also related, when relevant, this measurement to a few complementary items in order to better understand the varied uses of public management tools. They will be used to put in context the use of management tools. The first set offer a rough description of the global management within these administrations: to what extent and degree did top civil servants perceive their organisation to be focused on performance targets?

The second set dimension is a basic assessment of their perceptions of improvement in the "performance" of their administrations, with respect to items very closely linked with the organisational dimension: to what extent and degree did top civil servants assess reforms to have led to "less bureaucracy" and to a stronger staff motivation? Taken all together, the measure of management tools and these complementary items help to offer a broad comparative picture of how and to what extent NPM reforms have transformed public bureaucracies by diffusing new devices and tools.

1) Management tools in European administrations

Use of management tools

An approach centered on management tools offers an insightful perspective for describing changes in management practices: such view has been used in studies of innovation [START_REF] Walker | An empirical evaluation of innovation types and organizational and environmental characteristics: towards a configuration framework[END_REF], in economic approaches to business reorganisation and its impact on employees [START_REF] Greenan | Réorganisations, changementsdu travail etrenouvellement des compétences[END_REF] or, more generally, in research in public policy [START_REF] Lascoumes | From the Nature of Instruments to the Sociology of Public Policy Instrumentation[END_REF] and on how bureaucracies function [START_REF] Hood | The tools of government[END_REF][START_REF] Hood | The tools of government in the Digital Era[END_REF] oron the rise of performance-based management techniques [START_REF] Hood | The Blame Game. Spin, Bureaucracy and Self-Preservation in Government[END_REF]. These tools flow between the public and private sector (Guillemot, Jeannot, 2013) and thereby gain recognition and legitimacy, although their implementation and impact differ from one sector to another. Moreover, they have acquired greater importance through their use by international bodies (OECD, EUPAN, etc.) to promote new "good management practices" in civil services, with the result that these tools become known through transfers from one country to another.

Given the marked success of the instrument-based approach in enhancing our understanding of transformations in public policies [START_REF] Lascoumes | From the Nature of Instruments to the Sociology of Public Policy Instrumentation[END_REF], it would seem particularly advisable to analyse administrative reforms from the same perspective (see [START_REF] Bezes | The Hidden Politics of Administrative Reform : Cutting French Civil Service Wages With a Low-Profile Instrument[END_REF].

Some surveys conducted by international bodies (OECD, 1993;OECD, 2005) have occasionally used the prevalence of management tools to measure the level of management practices in the administrations of different countries. However, these approaches did not show variations in the spread of these tools within states. Moreover, the questionnaires were often completed by a limited number of informants close to the centres of reform, which can introduce bias. Management tools have also been used as analytical material in a few academic studies in the US (Poister, McGwan, 1984;[START_REF] Brudney | Reinventing government in the American States; Measuring and explaining administrative reform[END_REF]) and in Europe [START_REF] Laegreid | Modern management tools in Norvegian state agencies: regulation inside Government or Shopping basket ?[END_REF]Kuhlman et al., 2008;[START_REF] Torres | E-government and the transformation of public administration in EU countries:Beyond NPM or just a scond wave of reforms ?Documento de trabajo 2005-01 Faculdad de Ciencias economicas y empresariales[END_REF]Jeannot, Guillemot, 2013). However, in these cases, such detailed approaches are limited to a single country. The advantage of the Cocops survey is that, by using the same questionnaire in every country, it provides a quantitative measurement of the spread of management tools in central government administrations in Europe. The list proposed consists of formalised and identifiable management tools and the answers come from large numbers of senior civil servants in each country.

The questionnaire includes an evaluation ("To what extent are the following instruments used in your organization?") which combines the rate of spread and the rate of use [START_REF] Brudney | Reinventing government in the American States; Measuring and explaining administrative reform[END_REF], unlike other questionnaires that only ask whether or not the management tool exists (Laaegreid et al;2006;Jeannot, Guillemot, 2008). This option has the advantage of incorporating the notion of perceptions as to whether these tools are formal or actually implemented [START_REF] Brunsson | The organization of Hypocrizy, The decision and action in organizations[END_REF], but the disadvantage of introducing a greater degree of subjectivity. The part of the questionnaire about tools offered the option of responding "cannot assess", which avoided the need for respondents to give answers about tools unknown to them. This increases the robustness of the responses, but sharply reduces the number of responses used, in particular for the summary indicators. The method of analysis chosen is intentionally simple, based on the means of the answers on likert scales (1 to 7) for single questions. The tables included show all these means, though commentary is confined to the most marked differences, for which we have checked the statistical significance. The results of these significance tests are not given here.

The table below presents the mean figure for the different management tools for all the respondents in all the survey countries. The first general observation is the ascendancy of management by objectives, the most basic tools of whichstrategic planning (5.40) or management by objectives (5.30)attain a high score across the board. The fact that the former has a more bureaucratic connotation, the latter a more managerial, makes no real difference. On the other hand, it is noteworthy that cost accounting systems (4.34) are much less prevalent in European countries, implying that there is a disconnect between the practice of management by objectives and the priorities associated with reforms in financial procedures focusing on costs .1

The second observation is that the most widespread tool in European countries is performance appraisal, which is a flexible way of translating management by objectives into human resource management terms. It is also noteworthy that two human resource management tools are positioned at opposite ends of the table, with performance appraisal being the most widely used tool, and performance related pay the least.

Tools that make beneficiaries and clients the focus of administrative practicequality management systems (4.35) or customer/user surveys (4.28)are less prevalent than strategic management tools. This may be linked with the fact that these approaches are only relevant if the administrative structure provides services to the public.

The tools least widely used in European countries are internal steering by contract and performance related pay, closely followed by benchmarking. These instruments are based on market type mechanisms stimulated by criticisms of bureaucracies, in particular in works that draw on the Public Choice school and are promoted by the OECD amongst others. It is significant that the spread of these practices has been moderate in Europe. These findings confirm that it is far from the case that governments, in their reforms, have all tended to prioritise the propagation of market type mechanisms [START_REF] Pollitt | Public Management Reforms: an International Comparison[END_REF]Gingrich, 2011).

The varied forms of management by objectives and by performance

The COCOPS questionnaire also asked top civil servants to describe the contribution of management by objectives and performance to the operation of their departments, through a series of questions on the clarity of the goals set, the nature of the objectives and the uses of the systems: how widely they are communicated across the organisation but, above all, whether rewards or sanctions are associated with success or failure in achieving goals. The element of redundancy with tools in the questions reinforces also the robustness of the analysis. "To what extent do the following statements apply to your organization?" Mean of answers on a likert scale "strongly disagree" = 1 ; "strongly agree" = 7.

Overall, management by objectives seems to be a strong feature of administrative organisations, since the "goals clearly stated" item achieves the highest score (5.55) and the communication of these goals to staff also scores highly (5.3), a sign that the imperatives of management by performance are widely disseminated. By contrast, the uses of rewards or sanctions as incentives score significantly lower (3.02 and 3.03): this finding may reflect the fact that performance-related systems are loosely coupled with practices, or that the reformers are cautious about market type mechanisms based on individualised or financial incentives. "Thinking about your policy area over the last five years how would you rate the way public administration has performed on the following dimensions ?" Mean of a likert scale : "deteriorated significantly = 1 ; "improved significantly = 7".

Evaluations of the performance of organisations

The analysis is then rounded off with a few answers to questions on the evaluation of the performance of civil service departments over the last five years. Performance here should be understood as an assessment of the big priorities of departmental function. Here, we have focused on the issues most directly associated with the organisation itself: costs, quality of service, bureaucracy reduction and staff motivation. For the respondents to the Cocops overall, performance on costs and quality of service (what is delivered) receives a more positive assessment than internal operations (bureaucracy reduction and staff motivation). This would seem to put something of a dent in the idea of a "win-win" model of reforms, simultaneously favouring public servants and beneficiaries.

2) Variations between types of organisation

The COCOPS questionnaire obtained the views of senior civil servants situated at different hierarchical levels but also within different state structures: central ministries and agencies.

With this perspective, it is possible to assess differences not only between countries, as do the surveys conducted by the OECD or EUPAN, but also between types of organisation within a single country. This also elucidates a subject that has been extensively explored, the specificity of agencies, and another less well-studied topic, the variations between policy sectors. Consistent with the idea that the very existence of agencies reflects a neo-managerial objective, agencies are equipped with more management tools than central ministries, regardless of what tools are considered. Agencies would thus seem to be a vehicle of managerial modernisation, easily measured by the higher prevalence of the different categories of management tool. The most marked difference (one point) is in the use of customer orientated tools. This indicates the importance of agencies in service delivery. The replies to the questions on the use of performance objectives also reflects greater prevalence in their use in agencies, in particular as a basis for reward or sanction.

The specificity of agencies

The differences between public policy sectors

While agencies have been a core field of research in numerous works on public administration, the variations in the intensity and impact of reforms between ministries and their public policy sectors have received less scholarly attention. There have been frequent sector-based case studies, but very few intersectorial comparisons. Yet it is apparent that there are significant differences in certain sectors, corresponding to specific government interventions and public policies. The finding for the public finance sector is the most predictable, but not the most striking result. Given that respondents could tick several sectors of involvement, their answers relate not only to the ministry of finance but also to cross-cutting financial management functions in all departments. Finance is one of the policy sectors characterised by the most management tools and most exposed to mechanisms of management by performance. It leads the ranking for "goals clearly stated", for the role of measurement by indicators ("mainly measure outputs and outcomes") and on the existence of sanctions for failing to achieve goals. This reflects stronger oversight of administrative activities relating specifically to the finance sector and associated with government priorities. Tighter monitoring of finances is a factor frequently highlighted in studies on public administration [START_REF] Rainey | Comparing public and private organizations: empirical research and the power of a priori[END_REF].

More surprisingly, however, two other sectors are characterised by a higher prevalence of management tools than all the other sectors, and by greater exposure to management by objectives, whichever indicators are used: these are the Employment and Welfare sectors. The Employment sector, for example, tops the table for the presence of instruments of all types (customer orientated, human resources, market type or performance). It also leads the pack for the measurement of results ("measure outputs and outcomes") and for rewarding staff who meet their targets. In this sector, the strong (but relative) exposure to managerial systems can be explained by the fact that the departments are mostly organised into agencies, by the crucial and highly "watched" nature of employment as an issue, but also by the striking spread of good practices in this domain, driven by the OECD and disseminated by the World Association of Public Employment Services [START_REF] Weishaupt | A Silent Revolution? New Public Management Ideas and the Reinvention of European Public Employment Services[END_REF]. As regards welfare departments, the findings of the survey are consistent with the very many studies that show that the professional bureaucracies present in this sector [START_REF] Mintzberg | The Structuring of Organizations: A Synthesis of the Research[END_REF] have been a particular target of neo-managerial reforms: either under explicit strategies to reduce their autonomy or because the reforms have favoured the reinforcement and professionalisation of the control and management functions in welfare states, thereby de facto transforming the interactions between managers and professionals (e.g., Exworthy, Halford, 1999;[START_REF] Farrell | The "Neo-Bureaucratic" State: Professionals, Managers and Professional Managers in Schools, General Practices and Social Work[END_REF][START_REF] Bezes | Introduction to the Special Issue.New Public Management and Professionals in the Public Sector. What New Patterns Beyond Opposition?[END_REF]. If the two areas are compared with the other policy sectors, we also find that the greater prominence of management tools is particularly significant in the relatively large part played by tools associated with customer relations. This may reflect strategies to automate and rationalise relations with the disadvantaged populations targeted by welfare policies [START_REF] Macmillan Soss | The Organization of Discipline: From Performance Management to Perversity and Punishment[END_REF]. 3) Variations between countries.

Comparisons between countries need to be treated with caution. Because of the large institutional and cultural differences and the rarity of movement of senior civil servants between countries, the meanings ascribed to the questions, the frames of reference and the representations are likely to be different. Moreover, the references may not be comparable because of different trajectories and rates of reform. The variations in one country"s relative positioning compared with others are therefore just as interesting as the absolute response rates. Here, we will comment only on the most marked trends (see Table 6 below), giving separate treatment to the countries emerging from post-communist transition (Estonia, Serbia, Hungary, Lithuania). Countries engaged in long-term reforms (Great Britain, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Ireland): varieties of NPMization

Studies on the implementation of New Public Management have clearly shown that Great

Britain, on the one hand, and the Northern European countries (Netherlands and Scandinavia), on the other, were the countries most affected by neo-managerial reforms (Hood et al. 2004;[START_REF] Pollitt | Public Management Reforms: an International Comparison[END_REF]Goldfinch, Wallis, 2009). It therefore comes as no surprise to find these countries topping the table on the different items that describe the operation of administrative departments. Measured in terms of equipment with management instruments, Sweden, Great Britain and the Netherlands would seem to be the countries most committed to NPM reforms. Finland and Denmark come next, whereas Ireland and Norway are slightly behind, in an intermediate position. Norway"s position reflects the description generally given of its implementation of NPM [START_REF] Christensen | Transcending new public management, the transformation of public sector reforms[END_REF], often standing halfway between Sweden and Great Britain, on the one hand, and France and Germany, on the other.

However, beyond the level of equipment in management instruments, the survey fills in the gaps regarding the varieties of NPMisation. This is because the relative positions of the different countries vary significantly from one domain to another. Great Britain would seem to be involved in all the areas covered in this chapter, but it achieves the highest score on the existence of clear objectives, measurement of outputs and outcomes and sanctions for failing to achieve goals. On the other hand, it is striking the UK is outshone by several countries (Finland, Denmark, Netherlands) as regards the prevalence of market type instruments and in the use of performance instruments as incentives, measured by the question "we are rewarded for achieving goals" (Denmark, Italy). While Britain was initially held up as the model for the implementation of organisational economics (public choice, agency theory, [START_REF] Self | Governement by the Market?The Politics of Public Choice[END_REF], this may have become attenuated over time with opposing directions of reform (for an overview of these pendulum switches, Wegrich, 2011) and, conversely, Scandinavian countries (Sweden, Denmark, Norway) may perhaps have been more engaged in approaches based on internal incentives than initially thought (Hansen, 2011, 127).

Sweden"s position, in particular, is characterised by a stronger engagement in the human resources aspect: it is equipped with more HR tools than the other countries and is characterised by a positive assessment of trends in staff motivation. This observation is perhaps explained by the recurring emphasis on processes of decentralisation in human resource management, beginning in the first half of the 1980s [START_REF] Ibsen | ChallengingScandinavianEmployment Relations: the Effects of New Public Management Reforms[END_REF](Ibsen et al., , 2304)), which give agencies a high degree of autonomy. In addition, while "clarity of objectives" scores lower than in Great Britain, the extent to which these are communicated to staff and the measurement of outputs and outcomes are the same. Denmark is close to Sweden on questions of human resources. However, that country is characterised above all by a particularly marked commitment to market type mechanisms and by the use of rewards and sanctions associated with the attainment of results. This latter feature may perhaps be explained by the influence of contracts between ministries and agencies, an approach instituted in the early 1990s [START_REF] Binderkrantz | Delegation without agency loss ?The use of performance contracts in Danish central government[END_REF]. For its part, Finland is characterised by the strong presence of market type instruments, as well as management by performance. The Netherlands stands out for the prevalence of customer-orientated and market type instruments (in particular internal contracts), but also for a very high incidence of performance tools. The Netherlands also scores high on clarity of objectives and their dissemination to all staff. Here, we see priorities contained in the first pro-market reforms of 1982: the development of "contract management", the strong promotion of agencies in the first reform in the 1990s and the introduction in 2001 of the "outcome based" budget system, christened VBTB ("from policy budgeting to policy accounting") [START_REF] Yesilkagit | Reform Styles of Political and Administrative Elites in Majoritarian and Consensus Democracies: Public Management Reforms in New Zealand and the Netherlands[END_REF]Noordegraaf, 2009, 265-266).

As regards their assessment of trends in organisational function (scale of bureaucracy, staff motivation), the British respondents are less optimistic overall than their counterparts in the Scandinavian countries, in particular the Danish and Norwegians. For their part, senior civil servants in Sweden are more sceptical about bureaucracy reduction than staff motivation. Amongst the Norwegian respondents, optimism about these two factors contrasts with their qualified assessment of the use of management tools. In Finland, there seem to be sharp contrasts in the impact assessments: while their perception of staff motivation is the most positive of the European countries, along with Norway, they are the most sceptical of all the European countries about reductions in bureaucracy.

Modest differences among continental countries, France, Germany, Austria

France and Germany seem very broadly similar from a European perspective. These two countries are close together, at the bottom of the table, for most items. The small differences observed are not significant, especially as the sampling decisions, which excluded regional state services in France (very well equipped with management tools) and in Germany included the equally well equipped employment agency, create an imbalance to France"s detriment. France and Germany are among the countries with the lowest prevalence of management tools. They also appear to score relatively poorly in the clarity and communication of objectives, as well as in the measurement of outputs and outcomes. On the other hand, both countries are placed nearer the middle in Europe with regard to the existence of reward mechanisms when targets are met (especially France) and, to a lesser degree, the imposition of sanctions associated with the failure to achieve goals. In addition, senior German civil servants are less pessimistic about staff motivation than their French counterparts, who are particularly gloomy in their assessment of this factor. However, senior civil servants in both countries are the least inclined in Europe to see bureaucracy as having diminished.

Austria"s position is not very different from those two countries, and corresponds to a picture of cautious commitment to reforms that are compatible with the old bureaucratic system [START_REF] Hammerschmid | New public management in Austria: local variations on a global theme?[END_REF].

While comparing the orders of the countries has the virtue of highlighting differences, we must be careful not to ignore the scale of those differences. If we compare the three continental countries with the four countries most committed to reform (Great Britain, Sweden, Netherlands, Denmark), the difference in the responses is in the region of one point on an evaluation scale running from 1 to 7 (one point on the mean for management tools; 1.2 on HR tools and the assessment of quality improvements, and less than one point on the other items). This differential is less than the gap between different types of tools across Europe (up to two points), which puts into perspective the weakness of the involvement in reform in these countries.

Hesitations in the Southern countries

In typologies relating to the development of NPM, the Southern countries are often associated with the idea of failure (Kickert, 2010). However, there seem to be contrasts between the findings for Spain, on the one hand, which is one of the countries least engaged in reforms, and Italy and Portugal, whose top executives display a more marked and resolute commitment and which, in certain areas, can resemble the northern European countries.

Spain thus scores very low on all the tools, and on the existence of rewards and sanctions associated with attainment or non-attainment of results. The only counter example is the presence of customer orientated tools, where Spain stands somewhere in the middle and is associated with a high proportion of responses relating to one-stop shops. The size of the gap between Spain and the most committed countries is very marked, in some cases as much as two points.

Italy ranks high on the use of market type tools, but also on the existence of rewards and sanctions associated with results. The presence of incentive mechanisms in the use of performance management systems is interesting, given that tools for management by objectives appear less developed in Italy than in the European countries most committed to these reforms, though nonetheless greater than in Spain, France or Germany. Academic work confirms the importance of the performance reforms in Italy, especially since 2007 with a reform in the budgetary procedure and the introduction of targets and performance indicators [START_REF] Ongaro | Public Management Reform and Modernization, Trajectories of Administrative Change in Italy, France, Greece, Portugal and Spain[END_REF][START_REF] Ongaro | The role of politics and institutions in the Italian administrative reform trajectory[END_REF]. A possible explanation of the higher score for the Italian replies on the use of incentives (rewards/sanctions) in performance instruments may be the strong rhetoric prevalent in Italy on manager accountability, but also the power and the scale of spoils system practices, particularly since the 2000s. For its part, Portugal is very well equipped in customer-orientated tools and perceptions of the reduction in bureaucracy in the Portuguese administration are positive. This may be linked with the importance of what certain authors (Magone, 2011, 770-771) call the "New Governance Agenda" implemented by different governments over two decades and reinforced in the 2000s: it is characterised by the introduction of numerous instruments focusing on quality management and citizen responsiveness (one-stop shops, citizens" rights charters, complaints book), and by Portugal"s objective of building a citizen-friendly public administration (Magone, 2011, 771).

However, unlike the countries that regularly top the table on all items, Italy and Portugal are associated with relatively low rankings on other subjects such as human resources tools (for Portugal) and especially the assessment of (for both countries).

The transition countries: Lithuania, Estonia, Hungary, Serbia For the countries that have been going through processes of democratic transition since the 1990s, administrative reform has been part of a more recent history whose development differs markedly from the other countries. External influences (role of the IMF, impact of conditions associated with EU entry) here are much stronger and more direct; certain changes have been more radical. For this reason, direct comparisons with the previous countries seem of little relevance, and it is preferable to present the findings separately.

Lithuania shows extremely strong commitment to all components of the reformthe highest rate of equipment in management tools and focus on objectiveswhereas the use of organisational indicators to reward or sanction is relatively weaker. Moreover, while this country"s top civil servants have a less optimistic view than those of other countries on cost improvements or bureaucracy reduction, they are also the ones who rate staff motivation most highly. Estonia displays comparable characteristics, though slightly less marked, with two specific features: marked use of management tools to reward or sanction and the lowest rating of staff motivation. Serbia"s response profile is very different: fewer management tools than Estonia or Lithuania (specifically customer focused or HRM tools), together with less commitment to objectives than in those two countries (goals clearly stated and communicated to staff), but a slightly greater use of indicators to reward or sanction.). For its part, Hungary clearly emerges as one of the countries least committed to reform. It stand out on two items: the existence of sanctions when results are not achieved and a.

Conclusion

This analysis of the data on the basis of mean figures alone constitutes an initial step, which will of course have to be taken further with more sophisticated analyses. However, certain striking findings already emerge.

The first finding of the Cocops survey is that the spread of market type mechanisms, inspired by Public Choice, has been limited in Europe. The argument is fairly robust for two reasons. First, it can be confirmed through two questions formulated in different terms: the question on tools and that on the existence of individualised practices (rewards/sanctions) linked with performance instruments. If we apply the classic distinction made by Christopher [START_REF] Hood | A public management for all seasons[END_REF] and Peter [START_REF] Aucoin | Administrative Reform in Public Management: Paradigms, Principles, Paradoxes and Pendulums[END_REF] between tools originating in managerialism and both originating in Public Choice, we can see that the former (strategic planning, management by objectives) are much more widespread than the latter (benchmarking, performance related pay, steering by contract). In addition, individualised uses of performance tools (rewards/sanctions) are not the most widespread and do not necessarily lead the rankings in the most NPMised countries, a sign that the use of negative and positive incentives can be linked with very different types of reasoning, and does not not necessarily reflect a hearts and minds conversion to market ideology. In addition, the variations between categories of tools within a single country (which can be as high as two points) are often greater than the variations observed for a single tool between two countries (of the order of one point). This difference no longer endorses the old contrast between Great Britain, seen as the model for NPMisation countries, and the other European countries, because Great Britain is surpassed on two of these items by Denmark and Italy. The reality is therefore more mixed. Moreover, the most widely implemented tools, such as strategic planning or management by objectives, are those that can be just as meaningful in a bureaucratic tradition as in a NPM perspective, which therefore argues for a degree of continuity.

The second finding, on variations between countries, confirms the classic contrast between northern and southern countries, but significantly alters the position within these groupings.

The most surprising result is the split in the southern countries group between Spain which, in terms of equipment in management tools, seems one of the countries least engaged in the reforms, and Italy and Portugal, which show marked commitment in certain areas. The survey also provides some initial information on the transition countries, which merits further exploration in order to elucidate the particular circumstances of these countries. If we compare the main specificities of the countries, as suggested by the data and in academic monographs that analyse the reforms underway, we find that it is far from the case that these specificities coincide with the most recent periods of reform, and that they may reflect the long-term impact of earlier or repeated reforms, or even of national traditions that predate NPM.

The third finding is the existence of significant internal variations within countries, linked both with organisational types but also with policy sectors. While this in part reflects the specific impact of agencies, for which the findings differ significantly from those of central departments, what is newer is the largely equivalent effect we find associated with the policy sectors of organisations. This is true of finance departments, where monitoring is tighter because of the associated economic factors, but also of the employment and welfare sectors, where we see the strong impact of management rationalisation policies affecting, in particular, the relations with the beneficiaries of those policiesjobseekers or welfare recipients.

is a pre-print version longer the published paper)

  Mapping the use of public management tools in European public administration Gilles Jeannot, Philippe Bezes Jeannot Gilles, Bezes Philippe (2016) "Mapping the use of public management tools in European public administration", in Hammerschmid Gerhard, Van de Walle Steve, Andrews Rhys, Bezes Philippe, Public administration reforms in Europe, the view from the top, Edward Elgar, p. 219-230.)

(This

Table 1

 1

	: the use of management tools
	Management tools	N	Mean	std dev
	Performance appraisal	6183	5.54	1.75
	Business/strategic planning	6281	5.40	1.60
	MbO	6267	5.30	1.71
	Codes of conduct	6249	4.87	1.78
	Risk management	5933	4.43	1.93
	Quality management systems	6039	4.35	1.90
	Cost accounting systems	5549	4.34	2.03
	Customer/user surveys	6215	4.28	1.94
	Benchmarking	6008	4.14	1.86
	Internal steering by contract	5608	4.11	2.10
	Service points for customers	5826	3.90	2.08
	Performance related pay	6260	3.16	2.06
	"To what extent are the following instruments used in your organization?" Mean of a likert scale ²"not at all =1 .
	to a large extent =7.

Table 2

 2

	: Goal focus
	Organisation	N	Mean	std dev
	Our Goals are clearly stated	6638	5.55	1.41
	Our goals are communicated to all staff	6591	5.38	1.54
	We mainly measure outputs and	6486	4.61	1.63
	outcomes
	We are rewarded for achieving our	6509	3.02	1.71
	goals
	We face clear sanctions for not	6528	3.03	1.66
	achieving our goals

Table 3

 3

	: assessments of organisational performance
	Performance evaluation	N	Mean	std dev
	Cost and efficiency	5977	4.68	1.35
	Service quality	5967	4.76	1.32
	Internal bureaucracy reduction	5902	3.90	1.45
	Staff motivation and attitudes towards work	5919	3.97	1.45

Table 4 :

 4 Table 4 below compares the answers by respondents to the Cocops survey who work in central ministries with rose by respondents from agencies. The results show significant differences and confirm the specificity of agencies within states. Variations between types of organisation

		N	Central	Stdde	N Agency Stdde
			govt	v	v
			ministry
	management tools
	Tools mean	1449	4.05 1.20 2185	4.85 1.10
	Tools client	2076	3.64 1.55 2963	4.58 1.49
	Tools HRM	2325	4.09 1.49 3213	4.68 1.56
	Tools market	2049	3.75 1.66 2921	4.42 1.57
	Tools performance	2357	5.09 1.52 3232	5.64 1.28
	Organization
	Our Goals are clearly stated	2604	5.26 1.50 3565	5.82 1.27
	Our goals are communicated to all	2578	5.06 1.64 3544	5.72 1.36
	staff
	We mainly measure outputs and	2514	4.29 1.66 3517	4.91 1.52
	outcomes
	We are rewarded for achieving our	2544	2.87 1.63 3506	3.21 1.75
	goals
	We face clear sanctions for not	2549	2.91 1.62 3522	3.20 1.66
	achieving our goals

Summary indicators were produced, by establishing the mean of the means to the following groups of items. Tools mean : all tools .Tools customer: customer/user surveys; service points for customers; quality management systems. Tools human resources management (HRM) tools: performance related pay; staff appraisal interviews. Tools market: internal steering by contracts; benchmarking. .Tools performance: business/strategic planning; management by objectives

Table 5 :

 5 Variations between sectorsFor all figures: mean of the answers on a likert scale 1 to 7. Tools mean : all tools .Tools customer: customer/user surveys; service points for customers; quality management systems. Tools human resources management (HRM) tools: performance related pay; staff appraisal interviews. Tools market: internal steering by contracts; benchmarking. .Tools performance: business/strategic planning; management by objectives

Table 6 :

 6 Means per country and groups of countries, descending order of countries for the different questions

	For all figures : mean of the answers on a likert scale 1 to 7. Tools mean : all tools .Tools customer:
	customer/user surveys; service points for customers; quality management systems. Tools human resources
	management (HRM) tools: performance related pay; staff appraisal interviews. Tools market: internal steering
	by contracts; benchmarking. .Tools performance: business/strategic planning; management by objectives

tools tools client tools HRM tools market tools per- formance Our goals are clearly stated Our goals are communica- ted to all staff We mainly measure outputs and outcomes We are rewarded for achieving goals

											We face	perform-	perform-
											clear	ance: less	ance: staff
											sanctions	bureau-	moti-vation
											for not	cracy
											achieving
											our goals
	UK	5.19	4.73	5.13	4.32	6.04	6.14	5.95	4.98	3.39	3.61	4.05	3.59
	Germany	4.09	3.66	4.45	3.81	4.95	4.99	4.69	3.87	2.73	2.43	3.84	3.99
	France	3.96	3.56	4.75	3.78	4.89	4.90	4.66	3.92	3.01	2.70	3.76	3.30
	Spain	3.28	4.15	2.38	2.98	4.15	5.28	4.62	3.96	2.15	1.86	3.88	3.47
	Italy	4.48	3.96	4.39	4.72	5.35	4.99	4.79	4.47	4.35	3.49	4.06	3.41
	Norway	4.70	4.52	4.28	3.66	5.69	5.46	5.47	4.51	2.77	2.71	4.25	4.66
	NL	5.01	4.85	4.92	4.69	5.65	5.86	5.72	4.27	3.17	3.02	4.16	4.38
	Austria	3.96	3.65	3.50	3.68	5.22	5.43	5.24	4.54	2.61	2.35	3.94	3.78
	Portugal	4.33	4.46	3.52	4.25	5.46	5.58	5.51	4.78	2.50	3.20	4.44	3.23
	Ireland	4.37	4.13	3.57	3.52	5.73	5.82	5.41	4.34	2.19	2.64	4.12	3.38
	Sweden	5.28	4.40	6.34	4.22	5.94	5.78	5.99	4.92	3.26	2.91	3.91	4.42
	Denmark	4.82	3.92	5.80	4.71	5.80	5.76	5.48	4.76	4.38	3.37	4.58	4.41
	Finland	4.97	4.27	4.96	4.95	5.94	5.69	5.70	4.61	3.06	2.33	3.50	4.61
	tools	tools client tools HRM tools market tools per-	goals clear	goals to	output	rewarded	sanction less bureau-	staff moti-
	Country Order					formance		staff				cracy	vation
	Sweden	NL		Sweden	Finland	UK	UK	Sweden	UK	Denmark	UK	Denmark	Norway
	UK	UK Finland	Portugal
	UK,N,NL,S,Fi,Dk	4.99	4.45	5.24	4.42	5.85	5.78	5.72	4.67	3.34	2.99	4.08	4.34
	F D Au	4.00	3.62	4.23	3.76	5.02	5.11	4.86	4.11	2.78	2.49	3.85	3.69
	I,P,E	4.03	4.19	3.43	3.98	4.99	5.28	4.97	4.40	3.00	2.85	4.13	3.37

Table 7 :

 7 mean per country

	tools		tools client tools HRM	tools	tools per-	Our goals	Our goals	We mainly	We are	We face	perform-	perform-
					market	formance	are clearly	are	measure	rewarded	clear	ance: less	ance: staff
							stated	communica-	outputs	for	sanctions	bureau-	moti-vation
								ted to all	and	achieving	for not	cracy
								staff	outcomes	goals	achieving
											our goals
	Estonia	4.53	4.35	4.52	3.87	4.92	5.70	5.49	4.94	4.05	3.13	3.94	3.72
	Serbia	3.91	3.70	3.37	3.98	4.95	5.61	5.36	5.34	3.23	4.19	3.69	4.08
	Hungary	3.49	3.95	3.46	3.72	4.07	5.44	5.29	4.18	2.85	4.31	4.05	4.14
	Lithuania	4.94	5.05	4.42	4.58	5.81	6.20	6.08	5.31	2.99	3.93	3.77	4.28
	See upwards

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