Beyond new public management: Empowering community-based organisations

To describe how new public management practices, a global public service management trend, and a provincial community of practice, a group of people who learn from each other by interacting on an ongoing basis, affected a group of 240 community-based organisations.

We conducted a holistic single case study of 240 grassroots, community-based organisations called Family Resource Centres in the province of Québec, Canada. Data was collected from 36 research interviews, 6 years of participant observation, institutional documents and a research journal, and analysed qualitatively.

New public management practices foster social injustice and endanger the integrity of the community-based organisations, whereas the provincial community of practice empowered them to fight back deleterious new public management practices and reclaim their identity.

A provincial community of practice allowed 240 independent community-based organisations in Québec, Canada to become empowered on a macro level while remaining faithful to their small scale community orientation. We hope this model can serve as an example of alternatives to current (new public) management practices.