Green, Jane; (2007) Beyond managerial rhetoric : reclaiming what is practical, personal and implicit in the idea of educational accountability. Doctoral thesis , Institute of Education, University of London.

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Abstract

The starting-point of this thesis is a wide spectrum of concerns relating to the detrimental effects which 'new public management' (NPM) and the managerialism it creates have had on education, its organization, its conduct and its content. Pursuing these concerns, Part I of the thesis aims: (i) to establish the ideological and coercive nature of managerialism. Drawing on neo-liberalism in order to articulate its own rhetoric, managerialism has emerged as an ideology in its own right, requiring all who work in the public sector to conform to its own 'managerial' ends; (ii) to demonstrate the philosophical unpersuasiveness of the idea that explicitness-transmitted through a rhetoric of 'transparency'-is the sine qua non for public accountability. Part II explores why the ideology of managerialism is inimical to moral agency. A neo-Aristotelian model of practical rationality is introduced to show how an agent's decision-making, if it is to aim at virtuous ends in the public interest, depends on (i) a structure of reasoning analogous to that which phronesis suggests and on (ii) the practical, personal and implicit knowledge drawn from the agent's 'formation' (ethismos, Bildung). The Aristotelian perspective provides insights for policy-makers concerned with educational accountability: a public rationality that offers a more robust concept of professional and civic responsibility-responsibLeness-than any that managerialism promotes. Part III attends to the objection that no intrinsic value attaches to the idea of implicit ('tacit') knowledge: far better to codify it. An argument, resonating with this idea, to show that practical knowledge-'know-how’ can be reduced without residue to explicit propositional knowledge is rejected. The thesis draws to its conclusion by arguing that managerialism, with its emphasis on explicit, pre-specified objectives designed to gauge agent accountability, undermines (paradoxically) the pre-conditions under which trustworthiness and public spirit may play their part in organizational life.

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