Revisiting New Public Management And Its Effects

Although, over time, numerous articles and books have been published on New Public Management (NPM), it is still being investigated with a sense of great urgency, as its effects, whether positive or negative, have not yet been fully gauged and comprehended. Given the rather controversial nature of the phenomenon of interest, the purpose of this edited volume is to re-invigorate and revisit the ongoing debate on NPM by providing a fresh perspective and novel insights into how NPM-driven changes have been approached and, more importantly, the effects they have produced in the context of Norway. The current volume comprises seven contributions penned by scholars and experts from all over Norway with a keen interest in NPM. Five of them are geared towards assessing the effects of NPM-style reforms on the Norwegian public healthcare sector in general and nursing in particular, one deals with the impacts of NPM on Norwegian primary and lower secondary education, and one traces the relationship between NPM and the most influential management accounting innovations of the last few decades. It is our profound hope that the book will trigger fruitful discussions and broaden our understanding of NPM and its effects by providing lessons from the empirical evidence presented in the different chapters. Captivating and instructive, it will be of great interest for all readers keeping an eye on NPM, including but not limited to students and scholars of public administration, practitioners and policymakers.

New public management is a topical phrase to describe how management techniques from the private sector are now being applied to public services. This book provides a completely up-to-date overview of the main theoretical models of public sector management, and examines the key changes that have occurred as more and more public services are contracted out to private organisations, as the public sector itself grapples with 'internal markets'. Drawing on economics, organisational theory and poliltics, Jan-Erik Lane presents new public management from an analytical perspective. This book uses game theory and empirical studies in order to assess the pros and cons of new public management.

In this original, comprehensive and multidisciplinary analysis of the impact of New Public Management in the UK, leading international authorities present evaluations of current thinking and highlight the challenges for the future.

Ongaro has made a major contribution to understanding the political and adminstrative systems of Southern Europe. The work goes beyond that, however, by providing an excellent example of comparative analysis in general. This book should be read by all students of comparative administration. B. Guy Peters, University of Pittsburgh, US and City University of Hong Kong This is an important book for several reasons. Public sector reform debates and policies have been heavily perhaps too heavily influenced by Anglo-Saxon models, and literature on reforms in the Latin part of Europe has, until now, only been available in a fragmented way. However, this unique new book offers a coherent vision across Southern Europe. It refers to important parts of our history and how these still influence current times. It also shows that culture does make a difference, and that contingencies are important. European public sector reform is as diverse as the range of its administrative histories, and this book is therefore crucial in our understanding of the future in relation to the past. Geert Bouckaert, Public Management Institute, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, and European Group for Public Administration This systematic, thorough and insightful book offers one of the very rare comparative studies of public management reform in Italy, France, Greece, Portugal and Spain. A unique and most valuable study. Walter Kickert, Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands Scholars of public management reform have been at it for many years but there was always a gap little was really known about southern Europe, those countries that come from the Napoleonic tradition. Now, Professor Edoardo Ongaro of Bocconi University has filled that gap, and we will all profit from his diligent and insightful work. Jeffrey D. Straussman, Nelson A. Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy, University at Albany, US Theoretically eclectic and empirically rich, this is a much-needed volume on the dark side of the moon, that is, public management reform outside the Anglo-Saxon world. Edoardo Ongaro sheds light on Italy and four other Napoleonic systems by producing a far-reaching comparative analysis that also captures the effects of Europeanization and multi-level governance on public management reforms. Ambitious yet ultimately accessible, this book is a must-read for those who want to explain and understand the trajectories of reform in their historical context. Claudio Radaelli, University of Exeter, UK The reader will find in Professor Ongaro s book a clear and thorough discussion of the public sector reform process both in Italy and southern European countries based upon a systematic comparative framework. This is a very useful and original work that any student in comparative politics or public administration will highly appreciate. Luc Rouban, CNRS, Centre de Recherches Politiques de Science Po (CEVIPOF), Paris, France This scholarly volume makes an interesting and distinctive contribution to the global public management reform debate by offering an analysis of reform trajectories in an important but rather neglected group of Southern European countries. Ewan Ferlie, King's College London, UK Since the 1980s, a wave of reforms of public management has swept the world. The investigation into the effects of such major transformations has, however, been unbalanced: important countries have received only limited attention. This timely book fills the gap by investigating the dynamics of contemporary public management reform in five European countries that gave shape to the Napoleonic administrative tradition France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain. Edoardo Ongaro presents an in-depth investigation of the reform of public management in these countries, revisiting major topics of theoretical interest in the study of public administration. He addresses key issues regarding the influence of the past on the transformation of the public se

Following on from the success of the editors' previous book, New Public Management: The Transformation of Ideas and Practice, which examined the public reform process up to the end of the last decade, this new volume draws on the previous knowledge both theoretically and empirically. It examines and debates the post-new public management reform development in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Australia and New Zealand. The ideal follow-up to the previous volume, this book includes many of the same contributors in addition to some fresh voices, and is a must for anyone looking for an integrated framework of analysis. Comprehensive and analytical, it is an important contribution to the study of public administration and particularly to the reform of public management.

The prevailing notion that the best government is achieved through principles of management and business practices is hardly new—it echoes the early twentieth-century "gospel of efficiency" challenged by Dwight Waldo in 1948 in his pathbreaking book, The Administrative State. Asking, "Efficiency for what?", Waldo warned that public administrative efficiency must be backed by a framework of consciously held democratic values. Revisiting Waldo's Administrative State brings together a group of distinguished authors who critically explore public administration's big ideas and issues and question whether contemporary efforts to "reinvent government," promote privatization, and develop new public management approaches constitute a coherent political theory capable of meeting the complex challenges of governing in a democracy. Taking Waldo's book as a starting point, the authors revisit and update his key concepts and consider their applicability for today. The book follows Waldo's conceptual structure, first probing the material and ideological background of modern public administration, problems of political philosophy, and finally particular challenges inherent in contemporary administrative reform. It concludes with a look ahead to "wicked" policy problems—such as terrorism, global warming, and ecological threats—whose scope is so global and complex that they will defy any existing administrative structures and values. Calling for a return to conscious consideration of democratic accountability, fairness, justice, and transparency in government, the book's conclusion assesses the future direction of public administrative thought. This book can stand alone as a commentary on reconciling democratic values and governance today or as a companion when reading Waldo's classic volume.

The information age has become a reality, and has brought with it many implications for public administration. New ICT's offer new opportunities for government and governing, but at the same time they pose challenges in some key areas of public administration, like trust, or the idea of checks and balances. This book is an examination of the developments and effects of ICT in public administration over the last 10 to 15 years. It represents a re-visiting of the 1998 IOS Press publication ‘Public Administration in an Information Age: A Handbook’. As a point of departure, the authors of this new book have chosen the speed of the succession of theoretical approaches, represented by the 'phase of theories' which has appeared since 1998. This approach, which reflects that of the 1998 handbook, avoids the impression of technological determinism and provides an opportunity to focus on the phases of theory and technological developments. The book is divided into five sections. The first section examines key issues, and the second focuses on aspects of democracy. In the third section, the focus shifts towards structural conditions; the conditions that public administration has to meet in order to maintain its effectiveness and its legitimacy in the information age. Section four addresses some objects of implementation, like IT-inspired redesign, HRM and the phenomenon of Street Level Bureaucrats. Finally, the last section offers some concluding thoughts.