The Rise and Fall of the CSD

Abstract

The Civil Service Department (CSD), the central department of personnel management in the British civil service, was created in 1968 and disbanded in 1981. This article provides an account of the long pre-history of the CSD from the nineteenth century, through the hectic period in this century when so many official committees made recommendations relevant to this aspect of central management of the civil service, to the eventual creation of the Department as a result of a major recommendation of the Fulton Committee on the Civil Service (1966–68). It also highlights the achievements and disappointments of the Department in its thirteen years of existence. The article concludes with an analysis of the most important influences on the creation, life, and abolition of the CSD. It provides an account of a significant aspect of institutional change in contemporary British government, together with insights into the factors which determine the way public administration actually works, and their interrelationships in the British system of government.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 5 citations exist upstream.