This article discusses: the doctrinal content of the group of ideas known as ‘new public management’(NPM); the intellectual provenance of those ideas; explanations for their apparent persuasiveness in the 1980 s; and criticisms which have been made of the new doctrines. Particular attention is paid to the claim that NPM offers an all-purpose key to better provision of public services. This article argues that NFM has been most commonly criticized in terms of a claimed contradiction between ‘equity’ and ‘efficiency’ values, but that any critique which is to survive NPM's claim to ‘infinite reprogrammability’ must be couched in terms of possible conflicts between administrative values. The conclusion is that the ESRC'S Management in Government’ research initiative has been more valuable in helping to identify rather than to definitively answer, the key conceptual questions raised by NPM.

A public management for all seasons

In 1974 an article appeared in Science magazine with the dry-sounding title “Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases” by a pair of psychologists who were not well known outside their discipline of decision theory. In it Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman introduced the world to Prospect Theory, which mapped out how humans actually behave when faced with decisions about gains and losses, in contrast to how economists assumed that people behave. Prospect Theory turned Economics on its head by demonstrating through a series of ingenious experiments that people are much more concerned with losses than they are with gains, and that framing a choice from one perspective or the other will result in decisions that are exactly the opposite of each other, even if the outcomes are monetarily the same. Prospect Theory led cognitive psychology in a new direction that began to uncover other human biases in thinking that are probably not learned but are part of our brain’s wiring.

Thinking fast and slow.

Changes in public sector accounting in a number of OECD countries over the 1980s were central to the rise of the “New Public Management” (NPM) and its associated doctrines of public accountability and organizational best practice. This paper discusses the rise of NPM as an alternative to the tradition of public accountability embodied in progressive-era public administration ideas. It argues that, in spite of allegations of internationalization and the adoption of a new global paradigm in public management, there was considerable variation in the extent to which different OECD countries adopted NPM over the 1980s. It further argues that conventional explanations of the rise of NPM (“Englishness”, party political incumbency, economic performance record and government size) seem hard to sustain even from a relatively brief inspection of such cross-national data as are available, and that an explanation based on initial endowment may give us a different perspective on those changes.

The “new public management” in the 1980s: Variations on a theme

Various strategies are available within qualitative research to protect against bias and enhance the reliability of findings This paper gives examples of the principal approaches and summarises them into a methodological checklist to help readers of reports of qualitative projects to assess the quality of the research

In the health field--with its strong tradition of biomedical research using conventional, quantitative, and often experimental methods--qualitative research is often criticised for lacking scientific rigour To label an approach “unscientific” is peculiarly damning in an era when scientific knowledge is generally regarded as the highest form of knowing The most commonly heard criticisms are, firstly, that qualitative research is merely an assembly of anecdote and personal impressions, strongly subject to researcher bias; secondly, it is argued that qualiative research lacks reproducibility--the research is so personal to the researcher that there is no guarantee that a different researcher would not come to radically different conclusions; and, finally, qualitative research is criticised for lacking generalisability It is said that qualitative methods tend to generate large amounts of detailed information about a small number of settings

The pervasive assumption underlying all these criticisms is that quantitative and qualitative approaches are fundamentally different in their ability to ensure the validity and reliability of their findings This distinction, however, is more one of degree than of type The problem of the relation of a piece of research to some presumed underlying “truth” applies to the conduct of any form of social research “One of the greatest methodological fallacies of the last half century in social research is the belief that science is a particular set of techniques; it is, rather, a state of mind, or attitude, and the organisational conditions which allow that attitude to be expressed”1 In quantitative data analysis it is possible to generate statistical …

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Rigour and qualitative research.

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Narrative Methods for the Human Sciences

Since its publication in 2000, Public Management Reform has established itself as the standard text in the field, presenting a comparative analysis of recent changes in Public Management and Public Administration in a range of countries in Europe, North America, and Australasia. This completely rewritten second edition radically expands, develops, and updates the original. Two countries have been added to the comparison (making twelve countries in all) and a much fuller treatment has been provided of the European Commission (including a commentary on the recent reforms led by Vice-President Kinnock). Empirical data has been brought up to date, so as to cover many key developments of the last few years. The theoretical framework of the book has been further developed, including a challenging new interpretation of the trends in continental Europe, which are seen here as markedly different from the Anglo-American style 'New Public Management'. This second edition provides an unparalleled synthesis of developments in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, the UK, the USA, and the European Commission. It is organized in an integrated format, within an overall theoretical framework that identifies the main pressures for, and trajectories of, change. It includes a multi-dimensional analysis of the results of reform, and a chapter reflecting on the dynamic relationship between management reform and politics. Extensive appendices provide an invaluable information resource for students.

Public Management Reform: A Comparative Analysis

Public management reform : a comparative analysis - new public management, governance, and the Neo-Weberian State

Naming the parts - the content for managerialism evolution - the contexts for managerialism in the US and the UK first steps - the initial impact in the UK first steps - the initial impact in the United States stunted growth - a critique of managerialism some alternatives reflections.

Managerialism and the Public Services: The Anglo-American Experience

In this paper I want to address some fundamental questions concerning the nature of knowledge about public management reform, and particularly its transferability between countries and contexts. My main point will be that knowledge of what works and what does not tends to be heavily contextdependent. That is to say, a technique or organisational structure which succeeds in one place may fail in another. So – to put it bluntly – there is no set of general tools that can be transferred from one jurisdiction to another, all around the world, with confidence that they will work well every time. This means we have to look carefully at contexts, and at the "terms of trade" each time we are thinking of borrowing a good management idea from somewhere else. This is not a "how-to-do-it" paper. Rather it is a series of reflections on the nature of the "trade" in public management reforms, drawing on the existing academic literature and seeking to identify issues where further work seems to be desirable...

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Public Management Reform

IntroductionPublic sector, private sectorwhere would we be without a few good stereotypes?The New Public Managementrevolution or fad?Partnerships, networks, joined-up governance, the information age (and all that)Politicians, citizens, participation and accountabilitypublic managers facing every which way?Evaluationhow do we measure success?Values, ethics and motiveswhat makes public managers tick?Getting and giving advice on public managementReferencesIndex.

Christopher Pollitt

Papers

Public Management Reform: A Comparative Analysis

Public management reform : a comparative analysis - new public management, governance, and the Neo-Weberian State

Managerialism and the Public Services: The Anglo-American Experience

Public Management Reform

The essential public manager