The New Public Management Reform and Governance in Asian NICs: A Comparison of Hong Kong and Singapore1

This article compares the New Public Management (NPM) reform in Hong Kong and Singapore. First of all, it highlights how the macroeconomic environment, the political system, and state traditions, factors that are commonly identified as affecting the pattern of NPM reform in western liberal democracies, assume different contexts and significance in affecting reform in Asian states. With these general factors, we further compare the NPM reform of these two Asian newly industrialized countries in the areas of economic, administrative, and social governance, and identify the similarities and differences in the objectives of reform, the levels of reform, and the factors affecting such reform in these two cases.     

高官问责制：香港行政体制的重大改革

酝酿了两年之久的香港高官问责制方案于2002年4月公布,并于7月1日正式实施。香港的行政体制由此将揭开新的一页。     

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.     

Transforming the Administrative State: Reform in Hong Kong and the Future of the Developmental State

Hong Kong has been depicted as an administrative state where the civil service is insulated from political and societal forces and enjoys a stable pattern of growth in rewards and status. In these respects, it is similar to other Asian developmental states. In Asia, as in the West, traditions underlying the administrative state are being challenged. The Hong Kong civil service has recently come under serious criticism as a result of a major fiscal crisis and a series of administrative failures, while the unelected status of the chief executive is a focus of growing protest. What is the reform capacity of the Hong Kong bureaucracy in these circumstances? What is the likely trajectory of administrative reform, and can we expect Western models of the neo‐administrative state to be relevant and appropriate to Hong Kong and, by extension, to the rest of Asia?     

新公共管理视野下的行政价值观

本文在概述公共管理所经历的统治行政和管理行政两个阶段或模式的基础上,介绍了全球性新公共管理运动的主要理论和内容,探索新公共管理中所蕴含的新的时代精神和文化,并提出了适应这一全新公共行政模式的方向,当代公共行政者必须具备的行政价值观。     

公众信心与反腐败机构改革:基于香港案例的分析

重视公众信心的获取与维持,是香港廉政公署成立的主要原因,也是香港反腐败机构改革的基本价值。公众对于反腐败机构历次信心危机,是香港反腐败机构改革的动因与契机。对反腐败机构的公众信心主要涵括其公正履职、反腐效能、反腐特权不被滥用三个方面,并由此决定了反腐败机构改革的基本逻辑,即确保反腐效能前提下力求独立公正以及权责平衡。对于反腐败机构的公众信心是反腐败制度得以存在并维持的基石。香港地区反腐败机构的基本价值与改革逻辑,可以为当前中国反腐败机构的改革提供有益的借鉴与启示。     

Globalization and Reunification: Administrative Reforms and the China–Hong Kong Convergence Challenge

When Hong Kong reintegrated with China in 1997, one critical issue was whether the flourishing center of economic activity with an efficient administrative framework would lose its advantages and become just another city of the People's Republic of China. This article examines the process of managing transition as socialist China tries to accommodate capitalist Hong Kong. With strong forces of globalization at play, both units have had to embark on administrative reforms to make their systems compatible with the demands of the new circumstances. An overview of the reforms they have undertaken reveals that convergence is possible despite markedly different points of departure. However, while the forces of globalization press for increased convergence, the forces of institutional arrangements and history present a major challenge. The balance of the push and pull of convergent and divergent forces will determine the direction and outcome of administrative reforms in China and Hong Kong.     

Industrial Relations and Public Sector Reform: The Victorian Case

Few anticipated the radical program of public sector reform introduced by the Kennett government. A commitment to downsizing, markets and privatisation has transformed employment relations in the Victorian public sector. Familiar institutions have disappeared, major employment areas have been restructured, and jurisdiction for much public sector industrial relations has been transferred to the Commonwealth. Despite some industrial unrest, and occasional successes, public sector unions have been unable to fend off this ideological assault on traditional patterns of public sector employment.     

The Queensland Public Sector: Recent Developments in Employment Relations

With the incumbent Labor government embracing a recentralisation of industrial relations, public sector agencies in Queensland are experiencing a dramatic shift in the framework of employment relations. This paper discusses the approach of the previous Coalition government to managing the public sector workforce and the emerging approach of the Labor government. The comparison of contrasting governmental approaches to public sector employment relations throughout the 1990s suggests that successive governments have balanced very differently the three main pressures they have faced: political, managerialist and industrial relations.     

Administrative reform in a changing political environment: The case of Hong Kong

Since 1989, the Hong Kong government has implemented a programme of public sector reform that is based on the principles of ‘new public management’. The reforms initially focused mainly on financial management reform, including delegating responsibilities for resource allocation; re-defining the roles of the central resource branches; setting up trading funds in departments that provide services directly to the public; and instilling a new corporate culture of service throughout the government. Some progress has been made in implementing the reforms. In 1993, the government realized that further civil service reform was necessary to support the reforms. The government proposed to delegate more authority to department heads on personnel matters; give managers more freedom to manage personnel; and simplify personnel regulations and procedures. These ‘new public management’-type reforms are usually associated with stable, relatively unchanging environments. In Hong Kong, however, the reforms have been proposed and carried out in an environment of considerable political turbulence which has both facilitated and hindered their implementation. Because of the declining legitimacy of the colonial government, British authorities may not have the political capacity to implement the reforms. Opposition from both department heads and civil service unions to aspects of the reforms has already emerged.     

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.     

The Australian Public Sector and New Governance

The AJPA resumed publishing the Administrative Chronicle in 1996. Each year the editors invite a distinguished writer to contribute an administrative essay reviewing developments in the previous year. They are asked to examine trends and topics of major importance rather than simply providing a chronology of events. In inviting contributors the editors have attempted to incorporate different views across Australia. Previous chronicles have included J Stewart (55)1; S Prasser (56)1 and J Homeshaw (57)3.     

Public Service Neutrality in Hong Kong: Problems and Prospects

Before 2002, Hong Kong's higher civil servants were required to play the dual role of quasi-ministers and civil servants. In such a context, can we make sense of the claim that Hong Kong's civil service has all along been politically neutral? What role has neutrality played in the governance of Hong Kong? Informed by Kernaghan's model of political neutrality and Oakeshott's idea of civil association, this article argues that the public service should not be regarded solely as an effective instrument of the government in power. In conclusion, this article proposes some institutional measures to strengthen the neutrality of the public service in Hong Kong and argues that properly understanding this will help prevent excessive or illegitimate partisan political power.     

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。     

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.     

Traditions and Public Sector Reform: Comparing Britain and Denmark

A governmental tradition is a set of beliefs about the institutions and history of government. In this article I argue the Anglo-Saxon governmental tradition interprets public sector reform differently to the Rechtsstaat , participation tradition of Denmark, leading to different aims, measures and outcomes. In the Introduction, I define NPM arguing that is has become everything and is, therefore a meaningless term. I identify six dimensions to public sector reform: privatization, marketization, corporate management, regulation, decentralization and political control. In section 2, I describe the six dimensions of public sector reform in Britain and Denmark. In section 3, I explain the idea of a governmental tradition and argue the idea is essential to understanding the differences between Britain and Denmark. In section 4, I compare British and Danish governmental traditions, arguing the key differences lie in beliefs about the constitution, bureaucracy and state-civil society relations. Finally, I provide a summary explanation of the differences and argue that traditions not only shape the aims, measures and outcomes of public sector reform but also lead to different interpretations of reform and its dilemmas. In Britain, the key dilemma concerns central steering capacity. In Denmark, the main dilemma is democratic accountability.     

The Attitudes of Senior Public Servants in Australia and New Zealand: Administrative Reform and Technocratic Consequence?

This article is in the tradition of comparative international research conducted over recent years into changing political-bureaucratic role relations. Its focus is the attitudinal orientation held toward various dimensions of their work by senior public servants in Canberra and Wellington. In particular, it is concerned to gauge officials' tolerance for pluralistic politics, their programmatic commitment, democratic sensibilities, and identification with conventions of ministerial responsibility. The study draws on and develops into four the two categories of public servants identified by Robert D. Putnam during the early 1970s in Western Europe. The information generated may be used as a baseline for future surveys of a similar type, which could identify changing patterns of distribution among the four basic categories: Political Bureaucrats, Classical Bureaucrats, Traditional Bureaucrats, and Technocrats. The present survey shows some significant differences between senior public servants in the two cities. In particular, those in Canberra are less programmatically committed than their Wellington counterparts, and considerably more “elitist” in their attitudes to popular involvement in policymaking. In both capitals officials are proactively rather than reactively orientated, a finding that may run counter to reformers' beliefs in the predominance of “Sir Humphrey Applebys.” The article goes on to relate the survey findings to major public sector changes that have taken place in both cities since the data for this article was collected. It speculates that, especially in New Zealand (but perhaps less so in Australia), these changes will see the emergence of more strongly technocratic attitudes among top public officials. Such attitudes may not sit easily with expectations that senior public servants be both politically accountable and managerially orientated. Finally, the four categories used in this study are related to the “images” of political-bureaucratic role relations developed in other comparative research.     

A Comparison of the Values and Commitment of Private Sector, Public Sector, and Parapublic Sector Employees

This study investigated differences in general values, work values and organizational commitment among 549 private sector, public sector, and parapublic sector knowledge workers. No differences in general values were observed across sectors, although five significant work value differences were revealed: parapublic employees value work that contributes to society more than public servants, who value it more than private sector employees; parapublic employees value opportunities for advancement less than both public and private sector employees; public servants value intellectually stimulating and challenging work more than parapublic employees; and private sector employees value prestigious work more than public servants. Private sector employees displayed greater organizational commitment than the employees in the other two sectors. Overall, the findings suggest only limited value differences among employees of the various sectors. The finding of some work value differences between employees in the public and parapublic sectors suggests that these two groups merit separate consideration in comparative studies such as this one.