New Public

Management
 What is New Public Management

• New Public Management or NPM is the label given to a series of

reforms from th 1980’s onwards, to improve the efficiency and
performance of western governments and/or public sector
organizations

• NPM points to the future and inadequacies of public sector

performance over time, and locates the problem in the nature
and processes of public sector activity and public administration
 Implications

• Key public change in public sector ethos

• Basis of NPM has been an emphasis of efficiency and cost

cutting and general assumption the government should deliver
more or less

• Ideas borrowed from private sector can improve experience

and serve of those who use the planning system
• NPM seek s to reshape public interactions with the
government

• Customer oriented public service

• At the core of these changes has been a fundamental and

ideological transformation of public sector ethos collectively
referred to as New Public Management
 Driving Paradigms of New Public
Administration

• According to Kickert, the characteristics of NPM are the following eight

(8) aspects:

• Strengthening steering functions at the center

• Devolving authority, providing flexibility
• Ensuring performance, control and accountability
• Improving the management of human resources
• Optimizing information technology
• Improving the quality of regulation
• Providing responsive service
• Developing competition and choice
 Important Criteria of New Public
Administration

• Emphasis on of increasing adoption managerial practices

of private sector in public administration
• Promotion of competition within public sector
• Greater use of contract arrangements within the
government as well as outside it
• Emphasis on results rather than procedures
• Formulation of explicit or definite standards and
measures of performance
• Emphasis on separation of administrative units
• A shift away from policy to management
• Encouragement of lack of wastefulness in public
expenditures
• The public choice perspective in public administration was
increasing in the early seventies
• Various Authors criticized public bureaucracy in their books
• David Osborne and Ted Gaebler made a proposal for re-
inventing the Government in their books
• It was adopted the United State Government via Al Gore’s
(former VP of US) Report of the National Performance
Review (1993)
 It prescribes ten (10) point
programme

• Government must promote competition among service

providers
• It must empower citizens by pushing control out of the
bureaucracy into the community
• It must measure the performance of their agencies
focusing on outcomes, not on inputs
• It must be motivated goals, not by rules and regulations
• It re-defines its clients as customers, and offers them
choices
• It must prevent problems before these emerge, rather than
simply offering services afterwards
• It must direct its energy towards earning money not simply
spending it
• It must decentralize authority and promote participative
management
• It must prefer market mechanism to bureaucratic
mechanism
• It must focus on providing public services but on
catalyzing all sectors in the society public, private,
voluntary-into action to solve the community’s problems
 Criticisms

• Economist Hang-Joon Chang claims that increased NPM inspired

reforms have often increased corruptions, creating new opportunities
for bribes and future, direct or indirect, employment in the private sector
• The reform strategy of the Australian government failed in two
important respects
• The reform technique were expensive and have increased costs in the
short term
• An attempt to save costs has damaged the organizational capacity to
maintain quality services and innovation
 Conclusion

• NPM result oriented and objective focused

• Flexible arranegements in organizations, conditions of
employment, etc.
• Driving motives: Three E’s Economy, Efficiency, and
Effectiveness
• Change in the governing style: from rowing to steering