ABSTRACT
The current author’s most important work in relation to the theme of this volume is a comparison of public management reforms in the 1980s and 1990s in Finland, the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, and in the Netherlands (Hyyryläinen 1999). The basis of the study, the author’s doctoral dissertation, was the assumption that public management reforms are to some extent an indication that different countries are trying to learn from the experience of others. Whether or not countries converge or diverge through the reforms they conduct was also a key area of interest in the research. In fact, significant similarities between how different countries reform their public management were found. Further, it became obvious that reforms that at first appeared to be similar were in fact different due to different political, social and cultural contexts. Therefore the question about convergence or divergence remained for the most part unanswered.
