Shaping NPM: Social democratic values at work

This article examines the unintended consequences following implementation of a new public management (NPM) reform—a performance-based salary system—in two Swedish public schools. Headmasters and central office personnel were interviewed. The expected reform results at last appeared a decade after implementation when salary-setting procedures adopted the bureaucratic framework. Despite the common view that NPM reforms, owing to unintended consequences, fail because they adapt poorly to the Weberian control regime at public organizations, this article argues that the unintended consequences of an NPM reform can drive the “bureaucratic” organization even when there is no evidence of debureaucratization.

The paper aims to provide new insights concerning the role of Information Systems (IS) in the theoretical and practical debate on New Public Management (NPM) and Public Governance (PG) reforms. If NPM aims to increase efficiency in order to reduce costs and to improve performance, PG suggests to rebuild the relationship with society and to increase public participation. In order to be implemented, NPM and PG reforms require the introduction of new work practices with fundamental changes in public organizations. The paper argues that IS can be regarded as enablers of the two streams of reforms: on the one hand IS are used for in-house government applications, on the other hand they assist in the push toward providing more user-oriented services. To explore this theoretical argument, the 'life-stories' of 44 bureaucrats, operating in four different regional branches of an Italian public agency, have been collected and analyzed. The results show that: a) IS support the planning, control and evolution of activities related with to the achievement of goals; b) IS sustain an increase in administrative responsibility and citizen participation. Empirically, the paper demonstrates that IS support everyday work, putting in practice and combining NPM and PG reforms.

This article discusses the impact of adopting New Public Management (NPM) reforms in the delivery of education services via a case study of the experience of Mwanza City, Tanzania. The case study reveals that NPM reforms, which came with new guidelines for the delivery of education services, have reduced the capacity and discretion of education officers and teachers in the delivery of education services. Furthermore, education services are confronted with scarcity of teaching and learning resources including classrooms, teachers, textbooks and laboratory equipment. Despite the good intentions of the NPM reforms in the education sector, the authors argue that the discretion of education officers and teachers should be protected as an essential tool to translate policies into reality.

The implementation of New Public Management (NPM) reforms since the 1980s has led to a growing emphasis on performance measurement in cultural policy. This chapter investigates how artistic quality is defined and evaluated within a specific performance measurement system in Norway. In the chapter, it is argued that the construction of artistic quality consists both of elements that are closely related to the central ideals of NPM and of criteria that have been central to the artistic field much longer than NPM reforms and instruments have been a part of cultural policy. The managerial criteria and the idea that artistic quality and resource utilisation are two sides of the same coin can be seen as an example of how NPM not only influences but also changes the way artistic activity is understood. However, the performance measurements studied in the chapter have been less concerned with actual results than one would expect given the NPM context within which they were introduced. This calls for a more nuanced discussion on how neoliberalism and NPM affect cultural policy.

Does agency age matter in administrative reform?: Policy autonomy and public management in Swedish agencies

This chapter takes stock of the New Public Management (NPM) and post-NPM public-sector reforms. It describes NPM as an ambiguous, multi-faceted and expanded concept and discusses the driving forces behind NPM. It is argued that there has been no convergence towards one common NPM model but instead significant divergence between countries, government levels, policy areas, tasks and over time. The effects and implications of NPM are ambiguous, inconclusive and contested, The chapter also addresses post-NPM reform trends, examining their background, driving forces and content, with its focus on centralization and increased coordination across public organizations. Post-NPM has been introduced in addition to NPM and thus made public administration more complex, hybrid and layered. The effects of post-NPM reforms have yet to be fully explored.

Welfare systems in Sweden and internationally have gone through major changes regarding modes of operation and means of government in New Public Management (NPM) reforms, which have sought to balance autonomy and control. There is a lively debate about NPM, but research is scarce. NPM indicates improved performances but also unintended consequences and inconsistencies concerning ideas, demands on the services and performance incentives – such as tensions between medical and social professional autonomy and knowledge on the one hand and administrative control, auditing and a growing bureaucracy (e.g., procurement, inspections, documentation) on the other. The research project used addiction treatment with different organisations and professions as a case for studying the impact of NPM on the daily work in regional health care and municipal social services organisations. We charted the broad steering and organisation of addiction treatment. We analysed the extent to which tendencies of NPM have conveyed advantages or created conflicting logics by comparing addiction treatment in three regions and six municipalities with varying degrees of NPM. The study used official statistics, documents, interviews and a web survey. A total of 85 interviews were made with 93 individual state, regional and local policy-makers and officials (including the previously unstudied procurers) and public and private care providers (managers and treatment professionals) in 2017–2018. The interviews formed the basis for a web survey among professionals in Sweden in 2019. Purchasing addiction services was further examined by observing a large procurement process, by organising a workshop with Nordic procurement experts, and by interviewing civil servants in Finland, Denmark and Norway. The study shows how addiction treatment is governed and organised, highlighting developments over time with special emphasis on various NPM features. The interviews addressed advantages and tensions in the daily work and if and how professionals seek to adapt to new, perhaps inconsistent, demands. The web survey allows for comparisons across organisations and professional groups. This technical report presents the background and aims of the study and describes in detail the Swedish study setting, and the study design, methods and data sources used.

This paper aims to investigate the effects of new public management reforms on human resource practices of a public organization in Jordan, a Middle Eastern country in the developing world. The data was collected from fifteen purposeful semi-structured interviews in the Greater Amman Municipality (GAM), one of Jordan’s biggest public organizations. The data was analyzed using thematic analysis (i.e., a coding technique). The findings revealed the challenges and gaps in Human Resource (HR) practices from gaps in implementing New Public Management (NPM) reforms which weakened the performance of the public organization. The discussion and conclusion are presented at the end.

Proponents of new public management (NPM) expect public organizations to become more flexible and adaptive after administrative reforms, effectively showing convergence with patterns of organizational change in the private sector. This “convergence argument” is tested with a sample of 61 public and 61 private organizations in the Netherlands. We analyze whether public organizations, after 20 years of NPM reform, have changed their organizational structures and internal policies in relation to competitive, regulatory, and autonomy pressures, similarly to private organizations. Statistical analyses show that competition increases the incidence of change both in public and private organizations. High managerial autonomy and exposure to regulatory pressures relate to increased incidence of change in public organizations, but not in private ones. The results support the idea that NPM reform has made public organizations more similar to private organizations but that some concrete differences persist between private and public management in the Netherlands.

This article examines the practical experiences of developing countries and Nepal regarding new public management (NPM) reforms. This article employed the descriptive research design based on the systematic literature review using almost 50 articles for the analysis; the study aims to understand the extent of NPM adoptions. While many developing countries have partially embraced NPM principles, full implementation remains a challenge. NPM has portrayed public managers as business-like owners of a leaner, more privatized government, incorporating corporate methods and principles. However, the argument suggests that NPM may not be appropriate for developing nations due to issues like corruption and administrative incompetence. NPM initiatives in the underdeveloped world have resulted in both successes and failures, influenced by localized contextual factors rather than national capabilities. The circumstances should guide reformers, urging open-mindedness towards effective strategies. Since the 1960s, Nepal has pursued public administration strengthening efforts, adopting NPM-related reform principles after 1990. Despite good intentions, NPM-based reforms have not brought significant improvements to Nepalese public administration. The article also focuses on how Nepal's political environment, path-dependency traits, and bureaucratic behavior have influenced the implementation of NPM-oriented reforms.

This thesis examines the operationalisation of performance measurement systems (PMS) in Chinese public universities and their impacts on academics, the research community, and the universities involved. Over the past several decades, public sector organisations (PSOs) have been subjected to considerable new public management (NPM) reforms. Although a number of studies have examined the use and the socio-political implications of calculative and quantification practices in the context of public HEIs (Higher Education Institutions) (Agyemang & Broadbent, 2015; Boitier & Riviere, 2013; Broadbent et al., 2010; Pop-Vasileva et al., 2011), overall, the number is small. This is especially the case compared to the general literature on performance measurement and public management from emerging economies. It is in this context that this project was conducted.

Managing publicly owned entities using private sector principles, commonly known as New Public Management (NPM), is a widespread reform in Developing Countries. The theoretical and empirical debate on the effect of NPM on the performance of Public entities is still ongoing, yet limited research has been conducted in the water sector in developing countries. Using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Tobit regression on 300 observations, the influence of adopting NPM reform dimensions of segregation of functions, managerial autonomy, accountability for results, customer orientation, and market orientation on technical efficiency of urban public water utilities has been addressed. The results indicate a high likelihood of the NPM reform causing a change in the technical efficiency of the Decision-Making Units (DMUs) in National Water and Sewerage Corporation (NWSC) in Uganda though it was not the case for the DMUs of Dar es Salaam Water and Sewerage Corporation (DAWASCO) in Tanzania.

Within the broader field of public administration, no topic has been more controversial in recent years than that of the new public management (NPM) or managerialism. Books, journals, conferences have abounded on this theme and its variants. As could be expected, there is much confusion, much argument, much in the way of contrary claims. There is even some doubt as to whether there is any change at all. For example, Lynn (1996) argues that he is skeptical as to whether new public management is an international phenomenon or even a phenomenon at all. From the perspective of the UK, New Zealand and Australia, such claims seem to fly in the face of what has happened. There has been a period of managerial reform unlike any other this century. While it can be argued that 'the pace of change is greater in some countries, for example New Zealand, Australia and the UK than in others, such as the US and Germany' (Nunberg, 1995, p. 4), this is only a partial answer. It is also possible, along with the institutional differences that might slow the pace of change, that the debate over the new public management shows a further decline in the explanatory power of public administration. From being a world leader over much of the twentieth century, public administration, particularly American public administration has been left behind. Practical inventions are evidenced more in other countries, while intellectual leadership may have passed to institutional economics. The May/June 1998 issue of Public Administration Review advertised a 'symposium* where a number of writers - including another article by Lynn (1998) - put forward their arguments about the new public management. While many cogent points are made, the overall point seems to be missed. At the same time as there is little more than academic debate in the US, the public services in other countries have been transformed and, in some cases, torn apart. There are theoretical changes of some moment in other countries that have not received the attention or understanding they deserve. Something has happened in recent years. Whether or not it is a change of paradigm, or mere reform, or even business as usual is open to debate. The aim here is to look at NPM from a parliamentary perspective, and more particularly an Antipodean one, where more change has occurred than in the US. Rather than the absence of marked change in the US - contra Osborne and Gaebler (1992) and Gore (1993) - being proof that the new public management is a flawed set of reforms, it is argued that what has happened is another kind of American exceptionalism. Despite being the original home of much of the theory behind NPM, particularly economic theory, the political system in the US diffuses and ameliorates major change of any kind. The effects of NPM can be seen more clearly in parliamentary systems where elected governments have far more effective power over their bureaucracies.

How compatible are the reform of New Public Management (NPM) reforms and the creation of public values in practice? This issue is addressed in the light of the reforms of two public water utilities. Building on Moore’s (1995) strategic triangle, we have analysed the process of value creation associated with measures inspired by NPM. These reforms were first intended to secure financial resources. Certain public values were subsequently created, either under the influence of a leader, or through formalized NPM management tools. Under certain conditions, the implementation of an NPM reform thus proves compatible with the introduction of processes that sustain public values. However, an undemocratic context necessarily limits these processes. Points for practitioners This article encourages public managers to think about the values they uphold when implementing a public policy and the terms and conditions of this implementation. The water sector in developing countries, reformed in line with the principles of NPM, offers two distinct illustrations. The cases of the NWSC in Uganda and of the PPWSA in Cambodia allow the question to be studied in contexts where the public service mission entails strong societal challenges that cannot be reduced to efficiency alone.

This Chapter aims to explore the process of adopting International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) as a New Public Management (NPM) based reform in Sri Lanka as a developing country. Based on institutional theory and resource dependence theory, framework was developed to highlight the importance of reforms and of changes in the area of public sector accounting specifically during the last three decades. It shows the extent to which Sri Lankan public sector has adopted IPSAS based accounting reforms and the limitations of adopting these standards in developing countries. This chapter argues that adopting reforms in developing countries is problematic due to limited resources and concludes that, significant changes towards adoption of IPSAS and implementing some of the reform ideas has taken place during the last decade. Relatively little is known about the NPM-based reforms in public sector accounting practices in developing countries. This is an attempt to fill this gap.