New Public Management and Management Education: Foundations of Successful Management Reform

International experience shows that the main objective of New Public Management (NPM) reform has predominantly been to overcome the current crisis in funding and public service delivery. The achieving this objective has involved adopting a philosophy of 'more for less' or, in other words, by enhancing 'value for money' in public service delivery. To this end,NPM reforms have generally aimed at replacing the inherited or traditional bureaucratic structure of management with a market – or at least a competition-based – contract arrangement. As is the case in any contested market setting, the main concern of state and public administration is no longer merely to ensure a legally correct application of laws, but also to use scarce resources as 'efficiently' as possible in the pursuit of the desired ends of increased productivity and 'more for less'.     

Reshaping the State: Administrative Reform and New Public Management in France

This essay examines the administrative reform process in France since the late 1980s. The key reforms undertaken during this period have sought to delegate greater managerial autonomy to the ministerial field-service level. We undertook semistructured interviews with officials in the field services of three French ministries (Education, Agriculture, and Infrastructure) in the Champagne-Ardennes region, as well as with members of the wider policy communities. The capacity of the field services to adopt a proactive approach to management reform depended on five key variables: internal organizational dynamics; the attitude of the central services to mesolevel autonomy; the degree of institutional receptivity to change; the type of service delivery, and the extent of penetration in local networks. The Infrastructure Ministry was more receptive to management change than either Education or (especially) Agriculture, a receptivity that reflects the institutional diversity of the French administrative system, and that supports new institutionalist arguments. The essay rejects straightforward convergence to the New Policy Management norm. Changes in public management norms require either endogenous discursive shifts or else need to be interpreted in terms of domestic registers that are acceptable or understandable to those charged with implementing reform.     

新公共管理及其对我国行政改革的启示

新公共管理试图取代传统行政模式的一些核心特点和原则,在一定程度上反映了公共行政发展的规律和趋势。对同样面临变革的中国而言,显然可以给我们提供一定的启示。     

Competency, Bureaucracy, and Public Management Reform: A Comparative Analysis

Competency can be considered a central theme in contemporary public service reforms. This article analyzes the development of competency frameworks for senior public servants at the national–government level in three countries (the U.S., the U.K., and Germany). By tracing the development of competency as an idea, it is shown that competency reforms drew selectively on management ideas, and by tracing the nature and time-patterns of competency reform developments in the three countries, it is shown that competency came onto the reform agenda at different times and by various routes rather than by a simple pattern of international policy transfer or business-to-government transfer. It is argued that the adoption of competency frameworks took place at critical junctures for preexisting public service bargains or agreements in each case and that they were shaped by the particularities of institutional context. However, although competency is arguably central to public service reform, it is far from clear that the competency frameworks in these three cases contributed to the declared aims of many contemporary public service reformers.     

多维文化视角下的新公共管理改革——“国际公共管理网络”十周年会议论文分析

国际公共管理网络组织(IPMN)十周年成立大会上的学术论文,对新公共管理运动自身的文化特征、文化特征对公共管理改革的影响、公共管理文化的国际比较研究三个方面进行了探讨,典型的观点是:文化的差异导致了不同国家和地区的公共管理改革的不同,也引发了各国公共组织、公务人员的运转模式和行为方式的不同。这次会议研讨的议题对未来的国际公共管理研究指明了方向,文化作为公共组织及公共管理改革的一个重要构面和分析单元,在未来将受到更多的关注和重视。我国在研究公共管理文化方面也需要形成系统的理论框架;需要关注政府绩效和治理;需要对研究方法给予进一步高度关注。     

Performance Management and Public Sector Reform: The Norwegian Hospital Reform

This article addresses the development of new performance management systems related to public sector reforms. One such system is Management by Objectives and Results (MBOR), based on an official OECD model. Such a system tries to establish unambiguous goals, objectivity, and incentive elements into often traditionally trust-based systems embedded in a complex political-administrative context. To analyze such performance management systems and how they work in practice, we focus on a recent reform of the hospital structure in Norway. Using a broad institutional perspective, we argue that the MBOR-system in Norway is a mixed and complex system encompassing different kinds of logic. These include instrumental elements from the new performance management systems combined with ad hoc preventive efforts by the political leadership, the influence of cultural constraints, elements of rather inappropriate self-interested action, and pressure from the environment. The study reveals that the hospital reform in Norway in practice can be seen as an integrated model, combining informal trust-based approaches and formal performance management measures. It also shows that negative side effects and dysfunctions might occur.     

Public Management Reform: a Global Perspective

This article summarises the results of a 'broad brush' global survey of 'new forms' of public management. The survey supports the view that the spread of the new forms cannot be seen as a global 'paradigm shift' in public management. However the new forms are increasingly found beyond the core set of OECD countries usually given as examples of reforming countries. The survey suggests that globalisation processes are increasing the amount of 'lesson drawing' between countries and contributing to the spread of new forms.     

Judicious Incentives: International Public Policy Responses to the Globalization of Environmental Management

Public policymakers and regulators worldwide are grappling with the desire to improve environmental quality through appropriate regulation of business, while also streamlining government. Concurrently, environmentally conscience consumers are calling for improved environmental performance by industry. As a result of these pressures, regulators and lawmakers worldwide are attempting to craft effective policies that create adequate incentives for environmental protection on the part of firms, in the face of decreasing budgets and an increased demand for the use of market‐based incentives. To aid decision makers as they struggle with these concerns, this study provides a detailed case examination of the dilemmas and responses of national‐level regulators as they try to develop appropriate responses to the rise of international and “voluntary” management regimes. To accomplish these goals, this article compares the public policy responses of governments around the world to one such voluntary international environmental regime: ISO 14001. ISO 14001 is a form of industry self‐regulation in response to market forces calling for harmonization in environmental management and as a result of consumer and trade‐partner demands. This study examines the relationships between regulators and the regulated in order to understand if ISO 14001 certified firms are receiving regulatory relief or other forms of public policy/regulatory benefits as a result of their certification. It will also examine the impact that government incentives (or their absence) are having on the certification decisions of firms around the world. This information helps us to begin to understand how the trends toward smaller government and voluntary environmental regimes are affecting one another.     

Justice,Efficiency, and the New Public Management

In this article I aim to explore the link between two normative values, namely justice and efficiency, and the New Public Management approach. In pursuing this task I offer several critical arguments against some of the recent justice‐based objections levied against New Public Management by David Arellano‐Gault. I claim that Arellano‐Gault's account of the relation between justice and the New Public Management is seriously undermined by two conceptual flaws: (1) a conflation of right‐libertarianism, utilitarianism, and desert theories of justice and (2) a conflation of the technical/productive sense of efficiency with the social/distributive sense. Furthermore, I maintain that even when the different theories of justice and the different senses of efficiency are properly delineated, the case for necessarily linking NPM to a particular theory of justice is markedly unconvincing.     

New Millennium,New Public Management and the New Zealand Model

Recently the much‐discussed ‘New Zealand model’ of new public management (NPM) has become significantly revised. It now lacks the theoretical coherence and the market‐led focus that it relied on between 1987 and 1996. Labour‐led governments since 1999 have undertaken gradual and pragmatic – yet significant – changes in public management structures and principles, refining and sometimes reversing the model implemented in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This article does a ‘stock‐take’ of public management developments in New Zealand from 1999 to 2008, and argues that New Zealand can no longer be viewed as a leading exponent of market‐led NPM. Some NPM principles have been refined, but others have been quietly abandoned. The new National‐led government appears unwilling to undertake radical reforms, and, while it may seek a greater role for the private sector, looks set to continue with the ‘gradual and pragmatic’ approach adopted since 1999.     

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.     

Strategy and Accountability: Structural Reform Litigation and Public Management

Structural reform litigation involves legal action against public bureaucracies alleging that an official has violated the legal rights of an agency's client. A pattern of rights infringements raises the specter of systemic dysfunction. If the court finds for the plaintiffs, or if the defendant agency agrees to settle, the remedy reconstitutes agency operations. What are the incentives faced by public managers whose agencies are involved in structural reform litigation? How might public managers retain public accountability while strategically using the institutional arrangements present in such cases? This article examines these questions through a spatial bargaining model and discusses its analytical implications in the context of a comprehensive suit against the child welfare agency in Kansas City, Missouri.     

Public Sector Management Reform: Convergence or Divergence?

This collection of articles is yet further evidence of an emerging consensus around the world of the need to improve the performance of the public sector. This is happening across countries at different stages of development, with widely divergent cultures and different forms of economic organization. Gu Jiaqi, in discussing reform in China, refers to the public demanding that governments act with fewer inputs and with best outcomes. The recently published book, Reinventing Government, which appears to have captured the attention of both law–makers and the bureaucracy in the US (with some good reason), notes that Americans are demanding "more performance for less money" (1992, 2). In Australia, administrative reform was launched under the umbrella of a Financial Management Improvement Program which sought to change attitudes in the public sector to be much more concerned with outcomes and constantly relate these outcomes to the resources being applied to achieving them.
There seems to be little doubt that there is a common language in the area of results. While this is of considerable interest, of greater interest is the variety of means that are being pursued to achieve these ends. This note raises some questions about the compatibility of some of the means and the ends. It suggests that some of the means identified in these articles may be counter–productive.     

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.     

整体型政府:西方公共管理改革的新目标

为改变新公共管理运动带来的愈来愈严重的政府管理碎片化状态,英国等新公共管理改革先锋国家采取了协作和整合的战略,提出建设整体型政府.整体型政府是超越政府层级、部门功能分工的鸿沟,以解决人民的问题、为人民提供整合性服务为核心的政府,是关照全体、预防性、整合性、改变文化、结果取向的政府.     

新公共管理范式下的地方政府改革--论"政务超市"的兴起与发展

"政务超市"在政府活动中引入了商业的模式,是政府原有体制设计和制度实施在社会转轨时期具体操作中遇到了多重困境而探讨出的一套理性制度模式,是以市场化为导向、以顾客(公民)服务为核心理念的新公共管理范式下重塑地方政府的一个典范.它无论在价值取向上,还是在制度设计上都有自己独特的特点.对政务超市的组织结构和运行模式进行分析,可以看出政务超市是重塑公共组织的一个范例,是改变传统官僚制的DNA.然而,在缺乏系统性制度变革的背景下,政务超市同样面临困境,这就需要在推广政务超市的过程中必须注意其实现限度和所需要的配套措施.     

New Public Management and Substantive Democracy

The authors are concerned that a remaining refuge of substantive democracy in America, the public sector, is in danger of abandoning it in favor of the market model of management. They argue that contemporary American democracy is confined to a shrunken procedural remnant of its earlier substantive form. The classical republican model of citizen involvement faded with the rise of liberal capitalist society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Capitalism and democracy coexist in a society emphasizing procedural protection of individual liberties rather than substantive questions of individual development. Today's market model of government in the form of New Public Management goes beyond earlier "reforms," threatening to eliminate democracy as a guiding principle in public-sector management. The authors discuss the usefulness of a collaborative model of administrative practice in preserving the value of democracy in public administration.