New Public Management (NPM)

Study Notes

Move from hierarchy to participation and teamwork to get decentralized government
Leverage change through the market to get market-oriented government
Scholars in this paradigm include Christopher Hood, Osborne, and Gaebler, among others

Hands-On Professional Management: emphasizing skilled management in public services
Explicit Standards and Performance Measures: clearly defining what success looks like
Output-Based Controls: prioritizing results over bureaucratic processes
Disaggregation of Units: breaking down large organizations into smaller, more manageable parts
Internal Competition: encouraging competition within the public sector
Private-Sector-Style Management Practices: adopting flexible approaches, including human resource management
Efficiency and doing more with less: striving for cost-effectiveness

Business leaders are profit-driven, while government leaders desire to be re-elected
Businesses get money from customers, while governments get money from taxpayers
Businesses are driven by competition, while governments use monopolies
Governments are democratic and open, hence slow, while business managers can make quick decisions behind closed doors

More responsibilities were given to the private sector through a well-defined mechanism for service delivery
Client or customer-oriented approaches, decentralization of authorities, and being more business-oriented gained high momentum
NPM advocates for governments to be treated like businesses
Osborne and Gaebler's book "Reinventing Government" lists 10 principles for governments to adopt, including:
- Steer rather than row to get catalytic government
- Empower rather than serve to get community-owned government
- Inject competition into service delivery to get competitive government
- Transform rule-driven organizations to get mission-driven government
- Fund outcomes, not inputs, to get result-oriented government
- Meet the needs of the customer, not the bureaucracy, to get customer-driven government
- Earn rather than spend to get enterprising government
- Prevent rather than cure to get anticipatory government

Governance paradigm was introduced by the UN, World Bank, and other international institutions
Lack of good governance was believed to be the reason for poor economic growth in Africa
Good governance became the guiding principle for donor agencies to demand that recipient governments adhered to proper administrative processes
Good governance brings about sustainable development

The focus of NPS is the citizen, community, and civil society
Efficiency and satisfaction of the needs of citizens and value citizenship
Value people not productivity
Accountability of officials to the citizenry
Government to serve, not to steer - help citizens to meet their needs
Other themes include re-integrating government responsibility, IT, digital storage, public participation, transparency, and accountability