Implications of new public management and modernization policies within the national probation service : an interpretative approach

This thesis focuses on the implications of New Public Management and Modernization reform policies in the National Probation Service. In an attempt to understand how National Probation Service employees .make sense of those reforms, actors' organizational context, their organizational identity and roles have been explored. The study takes interpretivist, qualitative approach. It is based on ethnographic data, collected over a one-year period in an English regional probation service (RPA). In the course of the fieldwork, forty. five employees were interviewed. Data were also collected through participant observation, and analysis of formal documents. Empiric,al and theoretical contributions emerge from this thesis. The former relate to control, organizational identity, and role issues in the probation service, while the latter relate to resistance.