Lessons for public management reform from the insourcing of the probation service of England and Wales

This article responds to calls for fine-grained studies of public management reform, presenting findings from a major longitudinal research project examining the renationalization of probation services in England and Wales: a case study of the rare phenomenon of whole service insourcing. The authors provide three central insights: First, they demonstrate the enduring imprint of prior outsourcing on how further change programmes are experienced. Second, they demonstrate how change is experienced at different ‘speeds’ and ‘trajectories’. Third, structural reforms do not in themselves resolve complex challenges for the (re-)legitimation of an insourced organization in its wider field. The authors encourage further cross-fertilization between public management insights and emergent arguments towards ‘mission’ oriented government; arguing that both perspectives must operate in service to the grounded practice, the public sector craft, that an organisation is seeking to achieve.