What's New about the New Public Management? Administrative Change in the Human Services

Interpretations of the emergence of the New Public Management are split. The champions of the movement present it as a new administrative paradigm that departs sharply from past thinking and practice, whereas skeptics argue it has evolved incrementally from past administrative traditions. To assess these views, this article examines recent administrative innovations in the human services that broadly reflect the New Public Management. The findings suggest that these innovations have built incrementally on past reforms in the human services field, supporting the skeptics' claim that the New Public Management represents an evolution and renewal of historical trends in public administration.     

The New Public Service: Serving Rather than Steering

The New Public Management has championed a vision of public managers as the entrepreneurs of a new, leaner, and increasingly privatized government, emulating not only the practices but also the values of business. Proponents of the New Public Management have developed their arguments largely through contrasts with the old public administration. In this comparison, the New Public Management will, of course, always win. We argue here that the better contrast is with what we call the "New Public Service," a movement built on work in democratic citizenship, community and civil society, and organizational humanism and discourse theory. We suggest seven principles of the New Public Service, most notably that the primary role of the public servant is to help citizens articulate and meet their shared interests rather than to attempt to control or steer society.     

The New Public Service Revisited

The New Public Service describes a set of norms and practices that emphasize democracy and citizenship as the basis for public administration theory and practice. This article revisits some of the core arguments of the New Public Service and examines how they have been practiced and studied over the past 15 years. The authors conclude that neither the principles of the New Public Service nor those of the New Public Management have become a dominant paradigm, but the New Public Service, and ideas and practices consistent with its ideals, have become increasingly evident in public administration scholarship and practice.     

Evaluating Administrative Modernization in German Local Governments: Success or Failure of the “New Steering Model”?

This article evaluates the results and impacts of administrative modernization in Germany after more than 10 years of New Public Management experience, concentrating on the most advanced level of public sector reform: local authorities. Drawing on a broad empirical basis, the authors pursue the following questions: Do “Weber‐ ian” administrative structures and processes continue to characterize the German public sector, or have the reforms left behind lasting traces of a managerial administration? Are local authorities performing better today, and if so, can this be attributed to the New Public Management modernization? The presented results show that no paradigm shift from the “Weberian” bureaucracy to New Public Management has occurred so far. Performance improvements notwithstanding, the new mix of steering instruments causes numerous unintended consequences, causing “Weberian” administration to reemerge.     

当代西方公共管理前沿理论述评

公共管理作为一门综合性的学科,其前沿理论五花八门,但其中比较宏观和有持续影响力的当属20世纪年70代末和80年代初兴起、到现在还在继续的长达二十多年的政府改革思潮.这一思潮的主要理论基础是20世纪60年代出现的公共选择学派.新公共管理、新公共行政/服务以及治理等前沿理论都与公共选择理论有着密切的关系,是公共选择理论的发展或是在批判公共选择学派的过程中形成的理论.这几个理论相关又不尽相同,与西方思想界都有着十分深厚的渊源,反映着不同思想阵营和不同理论之间的博弈,并没有达到能够相互替代的程度.它们的风行在中国的公共管理学界也引起了层层涟漪和概念上的混淆.从西方公共管理改革实践的历史背景出发,重点就这四大理论的特点、渊源和理论效度进行综述和评论,并讨论了它们对中国公共管理发展的启示.     

Measuring New Public Management and Governance in Political Debate

New Public Management (NPM) recently has been compared and contrasted with public governance (PG) to illustrate shifts in conceptions of public administrations and in reform agendas. The authors develop measures to capture the relevance of NPM and PG in textual discourse and investigate the extent to which they have entered the political debate. Content analysis of electoral programs for the 2005 Italian regional elections reveals that even in this legalistic country, considerable attention was paid to both NPM and PG issues. An important explanatory variable in preference for NPM or PG is party ideology, highlighting often‐ignored within‐country dynamics. Furthermore, the authors show how a methodological approach adapted from mainly political science and business research can be exploited in the field of public administration.     

Recovering the Craft of Public Administration

Public sector reform has rarely dropped off the political agenda of Western governments, yet the old craft skills of traditional public administration remain of paramount importance. The pendulum has swung too far toward the new and the fashionable reforms associated with New Public Management and the New Public Governance. It needs to swing back toward bureaucracy and the traditional skills of bureaucrats as part of the repertoire of governing. This article discusses the skills of counseling, stewardship, practical wisdom, probity, judgment, diplomacy, and political nous. Although these skills are of wide relevance, the article focuses on their relevance in Australia, Britain, Canada, and New Zealand. It concludes that the next bout of reforms needs to recover the traditional craft skills. It is not a question of traditional skills versus the new skills of New Public Management or New Public Governance; it is a question of what works, of what skills fit in a particular context.     

New Public Management à la Française: The Case of Regional Hospital Agencies

In 1996, French authorities—committed to developing an innovative, decentralized style of public intervention in a country with a reputation for administrative conservatism and a historical bias toward centralization—created the Regional Hospital Agencies. The author asks whether these agencies exemplify the modernization of French public administration. A survey of all 26 such agencies indicates that they did introduce novel management practices and do, in fact, illustrate New Public Management " à la française."     

Missing pieces in each other's puzzles: Integrating the new public management and the new political economy

Although New Political Economy ideas have sometimes accompanied New Public Management ideas in programs of bureaucratic reform (especially outside the United States), the two schools of thought have remained separate. I argue that the problems of bureaucracy are largely political problems. Therefore, bureaucratic reform must be viewed in tandem with political reform. New Public Management can learn from New Political Economy's emphasis on the incentives of self-interested politicians, and New Political Economy can learn from New Public Management's normative approach and focus on citizens. I use an “exit and voice” framework to discuss and evaluate alternative approaches to reform.     

Who Are the Keepers of the Code? Articulating and Upholding Ethical Standards in the Field of Public Administration

Establishing a code of ethics has been a challenge in public administration. Ethics is central to the practice of administration, but the broad field of public administration has had difficulty articulating clear and meaningful standards of behavior and developing a means of upholding a code of ethics. Although a number of specialized professional associations in public service adopted codes, starting with the International City/County Management Association in 1924 and others after 1960, the full range of public administrators did not have an association to represent them until the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) was founded in 1939. Despite early calls for a code of ethics in ASPA, the first code was adopted in 1984, with revisions in 1994, but neither code had a process for enforcement. A new code approved in 2013 builds on the earlier codes and increases the prospects for ASPA to work with other professional associations to broaden awareness of the ethical responsibilities to society of all public administrators.     

Public Value Governance: Moving Beyond Traditional Public Administration and the New Public Management

A new public administration movement is emerging to move beyond traditional public administration and New Public Management. The new movement is a response to the challenges of a networked, multisector, no‐one‐wholly‐in‐charge world and to the shortcomings of previous public administration approaches. In the new approach, values beyond efficiency and effectiveness—and especially democratic values—are prominent. Government has a special role to play as a guarantor of public values, but citizens as well as businesses and nonprofit organizations are also important as active public problem solvers. The article highlights value‐related issues in the new approach and presents an agenda for research and action to be pursued if the new approach is to fulfill its promise.     

Reforming Social Services in Hong Kong: The Role of Contracting and Performance Management in the Non‐Profit Sector

Contracts and performance management, along with the concept of consumerism, have become the fundamental metaphors for New Public Management (NPM) and key changes in the public service. ‘Doing well while doing good’ and finding generally acceptable accountability measures for social services have become the perennial aspirations of planners, service providers and funders. This article examines the contingent factors and rationales behind the quality movement and recontracting exercise in reforming the delivery of personal social service programs in Hong Kong within the framework of New Public Management (NPM). It explains the use of long‐term relational contracts rather than the standard business contracts between the government as funder and non‐profit organisations as service providers. It also deals with the complex relationships among quality issues, quality standards, consumerism, accountability, performance indicators, and performance management.     

EXPLAINING HYBRIDITY IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION: AN EMPIRICAL CASE OF BHUTAN'S CIVIL SERVICE

Public administrations are mostly hybrid in nature with a combination of characteristics of different paradigms and models. In the first part of the paper, I use the notion of paradigms to explain a form of hybridity in public administration. The concept of paradigms in public administration is helpful in identifying a typology of the ideal types and their characteristics based on the main paradigms and models of public administration: the patronage system, the traditional public administration, the new public administration, and other emerging models such as public value management, responsive governance, and new public service. In the second part of the paper, through the trajectory of Bhutan's public administration history, we observe that its public administration exhibits characteristics that sit across the various paradigms and models of public administration. Thus, in doing so, the paper makes a significant contribution in applying the ideal type typology to explain how hybridity in public administration occurs in practice. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The New Public Management: a bibliographical essay for Latin American (and other) scholars

The New Public Management is a field of professional and policy discussion—conducted internationally—about public management policy, executive leadership, design of programmatic organizations, and government operations. Scholars specializing in public administration/political science have contributed to this discussion for a decade; however, their contribution has yet to be examined as a whole. The paper—a bibliographical essay, rather than a literature review—attempts to fill this gap. Studies published in the 1990–96 period are examined in detail, while subsequent works are briefly discussed. The paper aims to help scholars situated outside the original English-speaking precincts of the NPM discussion to benefit from and contribute to this maturing literature. This aim is pursued here in three main ways: first, by reviewing each study’s distinctive methodological and theoretical approach; second, by contrasting each item with a common benchmark; and, third, by including two studies about Latin America within the review. The bibliographical essay can be used for envisioning the public administration/political science contribution to the NPM discussion in its second decade, as well.     

The new public management and its critics

It is possible to view the New Public Management as nothing more than the public management equivalent of a cake recipe, a set of practices that can be readily transferred from one culture and one political system to another. If such is the case, then discussions of principles and paradigms are academic; it is necessary only to identify best practices. It will then be up to politicians to realize that they have only to open the book, follow the instructions, and reap the rewards. However, even within the Oecd countries such a possibility is not plausible. Within Europe, there are substantial differences in the political and cultural traditions of Oecd countries. And diversity within the Oecd goes beyond to include Mexico, Japan and Korea but also the former communist countries of Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland. Since the applicability and effectiveness of New Public Management concepts will vary considerably from one country to another, we are left with a considerable challenge: How might we apply these concepts to new settings?     

Trajectories in public administration reforms in European Continental countries

The aim of this article is to study key New Public Management (NPM) transformations undertaken at central level in the European Union public administrations of Germanic, Nordic and Southern European countries. Our study shows that there is no global tendency towards the same NPM model, although, within public administration models, there are strong similarities. Although some NPM initiatives have been taken as steps towards implementing these reforms, in other contexts they could have been adopted in order to ward off deeper reforms.     

新公共管理：反思、批判与超越——兼评新公共服务理论

通过采用企业化政府的理念,新公共管理提高了效率,但也导致了公共性、公平、责任、价值诉求等公共管理价值的缺失.通过对新公共管理的反思和批判以及对新公共服务的理论基础、原则和内容的介绍,说明新公共服务在理论基础、价值选择、政府责任、公民精神方面不仅可以弥补和纠正新公共管理的偏颇,并可以替代新公共管理成为公共管理的发展趋势.     

Emergency Management Research and Practice in Public Administration: Emergence,Evolution, Expansion,and Future Directions

In 1984, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration (NASPAA) collaborated to foster a community of scholars focused on research and professional practice in emergency management. The intent was to build a community of researchers and professional practitioners who would support improved performance for an increasingly challenging set of problems confronting emergency managers at all levels of jurisdiction. The financial investment was small, but the NASPAA/FEMA initiative led to the evolution of a community of scholars engaged in emergency management research and professional practice. The authors review changes in FEMA since the 1984 workshop and the impact of the NASPAA/FEMA fellows on research and practice in emergency management, placing this initiative in the wider context of public administration.     

Managing for Results in State Government: Evaluating a Decade of Reform

State governments in the United States have enthusiastically embraced the idea of managing for results. This appears to represent a victory for New Public Management policy ideas transferred from New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and Australia. The managing for results doctrine that emerged from these countries called for an increased focus on results but also increased managerial authority to achieve results. In return, it was claimed, governments would enjoy dramatic performance improvement and results-based accountability. This article assesses the implementation of public management reform in the United States and argues that the managing for results doctrine has been only partially adopted. State governments selected some of the New Public Management ideas but largely ignored others. In short, state governments emphasized strategic planning and performance measurement but were less successful in implementing reforms that would enhance managerial authority, undermining the logic that promised high performance improvements.     

Who Said Production Was Simple?: Delineating the ‘Public Production Process’

This is a response to Robert Gregory's discussion of the author's article 'Towards a New Public Management Model', AJPA 52(2). It argues that Gregory has misunderstood the rationale of the author's 'public production process' model. He misrepresents the model as simplistic and as understating the complexities of politics in public administration. As a result, the potential promise of Gregory's alternative conception is inadequately realised.