GREGORY, Robert <br/><br/>
Getting better but feeling worse? Public sector reform in New Zealand 

 -  2000 
<br/><br/> In the author's view, a price has been paid for the overly narrow theoretical framework used to design the state sector reforms in New Zealand. According to Gregory, the way ahead must be informed both by more eclectic theoretical input, and also by closer dialogue between theory and practice. He argues elsewhere that the state sector reforms in New Zealand, especially in their application to the public service, have been too `mechanistic', and too blind to the important `organic' dimensions of public organizations. They have focused too much on physical restructurin, attempting to reduce the complex, vital, and dyanamic reality of governmental processes to essentially artificial dualities, such as `outputs' and `outcomes', `owner' and `purchaser', `funder' and `provider'. They have tended to ignore the less quantifiable and more holistic elements that in New Zealand underpinned astrong culture of public service trustreeship. He concludes that it is difficult to be persuade that reform has all been for the good