“New”
New Public Management sparks an array of observations, thoughts and feeling in me. Over the next few pages I will respond to the name itself, its existence in the USA, the principles in today’s world, its lifespan, its forced application, and ultimately its challenges in application.
When beginning my readings on New Public Management I was confused and boggled by the name of the concept. Throughout most fields of study and especially within public administration the naming and defining of concepts is of utmost importance. The theories and concepts being presented did not reflect the name as new, they struck me as normal; reflections of what is currently going on in my public system. The United States has been using elements of New Public Management for years, former president George W Bush implemented reforms that reflected many of the main tenets of new public management theory during his 8 years as president. After reading and reflecting on Dr. Falconers “Public Administration and the New Public Management: Lessons from the UK Experience” and Mark Turners “Governance, Administration, and Development, Making the State Work”, I would rename New Public Management (NPM) as late 20th century public management. The use of the word new is confusing since it is a current management approach, it also will remain confusing when the management evolves again and NPM is in fact old.
Moving away from the name, NPM has had an array of application experiences. As mentioned, components of NPM have been part of the United States experience especially under former president George W Bush. President George W Bush sought for things to be as business like as possible within his government. Dr. Falconer defines NPM as a way of reorganizing public sector bodies to bring their management reporting and accounting approaches close to business methods.
The underlying principles of moving public employees to respond in an accountable private business manner are extremely logical and applicable in today’s governmental climate. In many areas governments have become too large, to allow citizens to feel that they are being directly responded to. Enabling public employees to respond and be accountable to citizens creates a feeling of empowerment as their expectations are being responded to at the basic levels of government. The regional variations of NPM application around the world demonstrates the necessity for NPM to reflect the society it is operating in. In a not so distant past citizens lived under government that allowed direct contact between officials and citizens. With this direct contact the government developed under the direction of a purposive association. As populations have continue to increase citizens no longer have direct contact and therefore are not involved in defining the purpose of the purposive association of government. This growth led to a series of developments most recently of which is NPM.
NPM could very well be the theory that sustains through all development. Robert Kravchuck has expressed his belief the NPM could become the dominate approach to public management. Words such as focus, empowerment, results, performance, entrepreneurship, and management could very well transcend time and development. Great rulers of humanity have been applying aspects of NMP as a method to increase power. Where NPM will fail is if the values we hold no longer are reflected in these indicators. NPM is failing in many situations, not from an inadequate theoretical basis but from failure to implement the key ingredients in NPM. The developed world has found great success in NPM, encouraging the idea that it could be the idea to transcend time.
Most of the developed world has adopted NPM in some form and have concluded that it is the thing developing countries must to improve. Due to this decision it has become a requirement for many large donor agencies to engage in a country. From the donor perspective this is a logical choice. Requiring NPM guarantees that your investment has the best possible chance for success based on your studies and experiences. From a large historical perspective that is not necessarily the case because relatively speaking NPM is new and has not been proven to be the best and most effective way over a prolonged time of application. Building off this concept those interested in NPM will find many academics have found space for critiques.
Mark Turner dedicated a substantial amount exploring the critiques of NPM. I found that the strength of these critiques is when they are examined in the light that NPM is new and has not demonstrated its long term benefits. Therefore reforming, changing, altering, transforming governmental systems in an attempt to gain access to international donor funds will put a nation under internal turmoil that is unavoidable during rapid substantial changes is a risky endeavor if NPM is not complete enough to maintain long term application. It would be quite unfortunate if a developing country government was operating under theory A for the last 300 years however a developed donor nation required them to change to theory NPM, developing country has significant internal strife while implementing NPM only for the end result of being able to gain access to donor funds. If than 50 years latter is becomes clear the theory NPM is not the long term solution and developing country has to change again.
Longevity and stability are noble questions, however having grown up under NPM I find the theory standard and un-revolutionary. My perception of NPM is that it has created a sense of empowerment in the citizens. Citizens feel they deserve and are entitled to top quality service; however they expect to receive a lower quality than from a private industry. This ill founded belief in customer focused government services is relatively unrecognized by the citizens and perpetuated by a government created education system. Most people governed by NPM techniques would select to receive most government services from a private business for a slight higher fee if they had the choice. While the government sector strives towards accountability and performance in most areas they are without competition limiting the incentives for substantial improvements. In areas where the private sector has been able to acquire similar service delivery to that of the government sector I have seen the government sector fall behind. The most apparent example would be that of the United States postal service, a federally operated delivery service. FedEx and UPS private operated delivery services have proven to be more trustworthy and more efficient for a slightly higher price causing clients to shift from the government service to the private one.
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