A new administrative cultureOrganizational culture is a critical, albeit diffuse, ingredient in the good performance of public administrations. Organizational culture is often defined as the aggregate of myths, values and ideology of an institution. This explanation is not very clarifying either. In any case, it is empirical evidence that all organizations have their own cultural traits that are more or less solid, more or less functional or dysfunctional in terms of good organizational performance. Public administrations bring together an enormous spectrum of organizational cultures: in some areas the bureaucratic culture predominates (internal areas of the Administration and strictly administrative management in relations with citizens), in others the managerial culture dominates (in areas of service provision in which instrumental logic predominates), in others a culture of social governance prevails (units of citizen participation or social services and community interaction), in others certain professional cultures prevail (lawyers, IT specialists, health professionals, educators, etc.). It is obvious that in practice there is a mixture of cultures: for example, lawyers have their own professional culture that is often linked to a bureaucratic culture. The administrative culture is enormously complex and a major source of organizational distortions. We are going to make some reflections and proposals on this tempestuous organizational dimension:
- It is essential that public administrations promote an administrative culture specific to the public sphere through their selection processes, entry-level training, ongoing training and also through the narratives promoted by their leaders. Working in the Administration is not the same as working in a private organization. It is necessary to socialize public service professionals in the specificities of public service and of contributing social value: defending the common good and the general interest, being at the service of citizens, protecting the most vulnerable citizens, etc. The culture of public service has ingredients of culture and missionary vocation linked to the social function of public administrations. People who are not committed to these values will not be good public servants.
- Each administration should promote its own values in the context of the previous values of a more general nature. Public administrations are different because they have different objectives and orientations. A state administration is not the same as a regional or local one. A public educational center is very different from a public health center. Each administration requires its own cultural identity.
- The two previous ingredients are based on the principle that the employees of a public administration must share a minimum of common values that make their intersectoral and interprofessional interactions possible. Organizational culture is like a language: a collective communication mechanism and a source of common identity. Each unit or professional group usually has its own culture and its own professional dialect and, therefore, it is essential to work on achieving shared cultural standards so that the different subcultures can dialogue with each other fluently. In this sense, it is necessary to build a transversal Esperanto both at the level of the culture of the public sector and the institutional culture of each administration.
- The predominant culture in the Administration tends to be conservative, controlling and averse to uncertainty. It is a culture associated with stability. This culture must be transformed to incorporate the ingredient of change, of a culture open to dynamic resilience. Public administrations have been moving in this direction for some time by introducing the culture of innovation. The new culture to be fostered must be linked to constant learning, a forward-looking vision, information management as a mechanism for better knowledge, and a culture of collaboration. With these ingredients, a culture open to change and continuous transformation is enhanced.
- In addition to the previous point, it is necessary to stimulate an administrative culture oriented towards institutional intelligence in which a more scientific type of management is stimulated and to move from the culture of intuition to the culture of knowledge. Information management should be the predominant element in this new culture in order to maximize the new bifronte orientation: stability and change and, therefore, the ambidextrous management model. A culture in which foresight analysis is relevant to define strategies that foster constant change. Strategies as a catalyst for an articulated culture of innovation.
- Finally, we must encourage a culture of collaborative work in which work is done on a project basis and with multidisciplinary teams. The collaborative culture is increasingly present in our public administrations and represents a powerful catalyst for the renewal of the administrative culture.
- Three types of deep and transversal organizational cultures coexist in today’s public administrations: the bureaucratic culture, the managerial culture and, in a more residual way, the culture of governance (present in citizen participation units and in policies and services with community logics). For the future, the culture of governance should be strengthened and the culture of institutional intelligence and transformation (innovation) should be incorporated. Over time and thanks to artificial intelligence, bureaucratic culture will disappear as bureaucracy will be underpinned by technology: bureaucracy without bureaucrats (Ramió, 2019). The managerial culture will continue to be present, but with a better balance between efficiency dynamics and the ingredients of greater social sensitivity. The new transversal culture should be that of robust governance associated with smart social governance (Ramió and Salvador, 2019).