ABSTRACT
Public service reform has been on the political agenda since the late 1970s and has included such
approaches as the 3Es (economy, efficiency, and effectiveness) through to best value and new public
management (NPM) (Rashman and Radnor, 2005). More recently, ‘‘lean thinking’’ has become a
prominent and popular approach to public service reform. In the current era of constrained and
reduced public spending, it has promised to maintain service productivity, improve resource
utilization, and maintain service quality. In short, it has been promoted as enabling public service
providers to ‘‘do more, with less’’ (Radnor et al., 2012). This chapter will review the application
of lean in public services, illustrating that to date there has been an over-focus on technical tools
without an understanding of the principles and assumptions of lean, or the context in which it is
being implemented. The chapter will conclude that to develop further there needs to be greater
consideration of the underlying logic and theories of service management.
