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WILENSKI CONTENDS THAT ADMINISTRATIVE REFORM CAN WORK IN FAVOR OF EFFICIENCY AND OTHER SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT VALUES OR EQUALITY AND OTHER EQUITY VALUES BUT THE IDEA THAT IT SHOULD PROMOTE SOCIAL EQUITY AMONG EMPLOYEES OR CLIENTS IS SO NEW IT IS MISSING FROM MUCH LITERATURE ON ADMINISTRATION AND MANAGEMENT.

Failure to understand the political nature of administrative reform and to develop a political strategy to overcome resistance lies behind the failure of many reform attempts. The prerequisites of reform include political will, time, resources, an ongoing institution promoting change, and a strategy which concentrates on the implementation stage when resistance is strongest. Such a strategy must use the principal levers of change, including legislation, which directly affect administrative behaviour. In Australia in the 1970s administrative reform proceeded only slowly with the exception of changes in some States and the introduction of a new body of Federal administrative law. A better reform strategy in the past two years has resulted in extensive legislative change at the Federal level including greater ministerial control over certain senior appointments, open public competition for the top one per cent of civil service jobs, affirmative action and industrial democracy. There has thus been a further shift towards a unique Australian model of public administration.

Initiatives of the 1970s; principal public service changes enacted in 1984.

Efficiency remains the dominant value in administration, through the stubborn survival of the policy-administration dichotomy & the prevailing view of administration as an instrumental activity, with its goals set elsewhere. Until recently, improvements in efficiency have been almost the sole aim of administrative reform. However, recognition of the changing & more demanding role of civil servants, a concern with outcome rather than process in determining the distribution of government-provided benefits, & demand for equal opportunity in public employment have led to a new stress on equity by administrative reformers. Equity & efficiency may sometimes (as in equal employment opportunity) point in the same direction, but the two values are often in conflict -- or else the costs of equity reforms are immediate & measurable, while their benefits are long-term & nonquantifiable. While everyone can support efficiency reforms, which promise the same results at less cost, equity reforms often clearly produce losers as well as winners. The equity-efficiency debate is an unequal contest, & equity reformers can be effective only through the political process & by changing the norms, language, & culture of administration. Modified AA.

This paper focusses on two issues: the problem of reforming administration so that the bureaucracy in its political decision‐making is more firmly responsible to the elected representatives of the people and more responsive to community needs and values, and the interlocking problem of the politics of the reform process itself. Where a government announces its intention to undertake a reform program, its purposes are usually explained in terms of the need for greater efficiency. The process of reform, apart from the stress on efficiency, is usually described in value‐neutral terms. The program or the enquiry, it is claimed, will result in the job being done better or more quickly or more cheaply. However, if one looks more closely at the reasons for the establishment of such programs and enquiries, it is clear that underlying the urge to change the administration, there is a dissatisfaction not so much with the way in which decisions are carried out, as with the decisions themselves. The "hidden agenda" of most reforms is to ensure that different decisions are taken and different outcomes in the community result.