Politicians have spent at least the past 30 years trying to make the public sector more efficient by importing management ideas from the private sector.

However, they have simply created a professional workforce that is overworked, overmanaged and seriously undermotivated. This low morale is in turn reducing the quality of services that it provides, according to research by two academics.

Professor Les Worrall, Professor of Strategic Analysis at Coventry University, and Dr Kim Mather, of the University of Wolverhampton Business School, argue that the growth of managerialism – the creation of a new class of managers to oversee the work of professionals such as nurses, police officers and academics – has damaged relationships between managers and professionals.

In a paper, yet to be published, they say that modernisation, with its themes of cost-cutting, closely monitored targets and customer focus, does not sit well with the public sector’s existing culture, in which staff often have stronger allegiances to professional codes of conduct than to their employers.

“The importation of private sector forms of management into the public sector has lead to a system of practices . . . that we feel is inappropriate,” they write. Despite emphasising efficiency, they see little evidence that this new approach has actually improved services.

Some public sector organisations have paid lip service to the new agenda – introducing superficial initiatives – but have failed to make deep-rooted or significant changes Professor Worrall said: “People think you can run the whole NHS by setting up a performance indicator system with 100 targets . . . and local authorities by giving them 100 targets.

“It is a very naïve way of thinking, but it is attractive to politicians because it gives them numbers and they can say ‘We have increased that and we have improved the other’.”

However, increased focus on targets reduces professionals’ ability to use their experience and judgment in making decisions, lowering the professionals’ morale and motivation, the authors believe.

Part of the problem has been the way in which the changes were handled. “[Modernisation] has generally been implemented in a top-down way,” the authors say. “It has often been coercively imposed and linked to cuts in resources where organisations do not comply.”

Public sector workers do want to improve services, but they do not see it happening in the way that is currently being required of them. “These systems distort people’s behaviour, but they do not generate the results that they are expected to achieve,” Professor Worrall said.

He does not want performance management abolished, believing some degree of control to be necessary. Instead, he would like to see professionals involved in shaping the sector’s approach to improvement, rather than having it decided by politicians and enforced by managers.

“There has to be more trust and more discussion between managers and professionals about making the system work better,” he said.

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