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This paper analyses the impact of the everyday forms of resistance performed by individual public
servants following the implementation of New Public Management (NPM) reforms in Sri Lanka.
Many elements of the NPM reforms, such as productivity improvement and performance targets
affect individual public servants in a highly personalised nature. For this reason they are unable to
garner the widespread support required to prompt collective action as form of resistance. This
paper argues that this highly personalised nature of reforms pushes individual public servants to
adopt everyday forms of resistance, which eventually make a cumulative impact on the reforms.
The conceptual framework developed by James C. Scott to analyse the everyday forms of peasant
resistance is used in this paper to infer a model of the public servants’ everyday forms of
resistance. Analysing stories of individual public servants who were accused of being resisters,
this paper reveals the nature and limitations of the everyday forms of resistance that public
servants have adopted as well as their impact on the NPM reforms.
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oai:openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au:10440/1133
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Identifier
oai:openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au:10440/1133
Identifiers
Hettiarachchi, T.N. (2009). The isolated warrior: the impact of everyday forms of individual public servants’ resistance on new public management reforms in Sri Lanka. Policy and Governance Discussion Paper 09-02. Canberra, ACT: Crawford School of Economics and Government, The Australian National University.
http://hdl.handle.net/10440/1133
https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/bitstream/10440/1133/3/Hettiarachchi_Isolated2009.pdf.jpg
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The isolated warrior: the impact of everyday forms of individual public servants’ resistance on new public management reforms in Sri Lanka