Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/29378
Title: Reform and Innovation as Rhetoric and Method
Contributor(s): Palumbo, Antonino (author); Scott, Alan  (author)orcid 
Publication Date: 2018-12
Handle Link: https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/29378
Abstract: This paper examines reform both as a rhetoric for legitimising and as a method for facilitating constant and recursive organisational change. The legitimisation of reform is primarily addressed to elite-level decision makers themselves, and is a form of self- and peer-justification. Reform rhetoric coopts the rhetoric of progressive political reform for its own ends. It is, however, less necessary to persuade the second audience - those upon whom change is foisted - of its legitimacy because change is introduced by stealth and supported by 'desperate predicament' arguments that foreclose debate and by strategies of 'collibration' that pre-empt potential collective resistance. We thus move to a second level: the analysis of organisational change as a methodology deploying the instruments of New Public Management (NPM). The exposure to recursive reform induces both cynicism and strategies of individual exit or accommodation. The paper concludes by identifying the most common of these individualised strategies.
Publication Type: Journal Article
Source of Publication: Social Alternatives, 37(4), p. 25-31
Publisher: Social Alternatives
Place of Publication: Australia
ISSN: 1836-6600
0155-0306
Fields of Research (FoR) 2008: 160805 Social Change
Fields of Research (FoR) 2020: 441004 Social change
Socio-Economic Objective (SEO) 2008: 970116 Expanding Knowledge through Studies of Human Society
Socio-Economic Objective (SEO) 2020: 280123 Expanding knowledge in human society
280114 Expanding knowledge in Indigenous studies
Peer Reviewed: Yes
HERDC Category Description: C1 Refereed Article in a Scholarly Journal
Publisher/associated links: http://socialalternatives.com/issues/old-order-dying-new-one-cannot-be-born-exploring-new-social-and-political-terrains-trying-tim
Appears in Collections:Journal Article
School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences

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