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Challenging New Public Management

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Title: Challenging New Public Management


1
Challenging New Public Management
  • Neil Collins
  • University College Cork, Ireland
  • n.collins_at_ucc.ie

2
University College Cork
3
(No Transcript)
4
Why bother?
  • And one should bear in mind that there is nothing
    more difficult to execute, nor more dubious of
    success, nor more dangerous to administer than to
    introduce a new order of things for he who
    introduces it has all those who profit from the
    old order as his enemies, and he has only
    lukewarm allies in all those who might profit
    from the new (Machiavelli 1998 21).

5
An Era of Change
  • Late l980s and early 1990s transformation in
    public sectors
  • Rigid, hierarchical, bureaucratic form changing
    to flexible, market-based form
  • Change role of government in society
  • Change in relationship between government and
    citizenry.

6
Traditional public administration
  • Discredited theoretically and practically
  • New public management new paradigm in the
    public sector.

7
The Changes
  • Hierarchical, bureaucratic principles
  • far more diligently, far longer in the public
    sector.
  • Direct provision
  • standard operating procedure.
  • Political and administrative separate
  • policy or strategy the preserve of political
    leadership.
  • Professional bureaucracy
  • employed for life, serve any political master
    equally
  • New paradigm challenges fundamental principles of
    public administration

8
Verities challenged
  • Delivery by bureaucracy is not the only way to
    provide government goods and services.
  • Flexible management systems pioneered by the
    private sector are being adopted by governments.
  • Governments can operate indirectly.
  • Political and administrative matters intertwined
  • Public demands better accountability
  • Case for unusual employment conditions weaker.

9
New public management central doctrines
  • No book but
  • focus on management, not policy
  • performance appraisal and efficiency
  • disaggregation of public bureaucracies
  • user-pay relationships
  • use of quasi-markets and contracting out to
    foster competition
  • cost-cutting output targets limited-term
    contracts monetary incentives freedom to
    manage.

10
NPM implies
  • focus inside the organisation
  • substantial changes for personnel
  • Osborne and Gaebler
  • government needs to be reinvented
  • bureaucracy neither necessary nor efficient
  • other means should be used.
  • entrepreneurial governments promote competition
    between service providers.
  • pushing control into the community
  • measure performance by outcomes.

11
NPM the mission
  • Redefine clients as customers
  • Offer choices
  • Prevent problems before they emerge
  • Earning money, not simply spending it
  • Decentralise authority
  • Participatory management
  • Preference for market mechanisms
  • Energising all sectors public, private and
    voluntary to solve their communitys problems.

12
SMI Framework
  • Delivering Better Government (1996)
  • Public Service Management Act (1997)
  • new management structure
  • to enhance the management, effectiveness and
    transparency
  • mechanism for increased accountability of civil
    servants.
  • Delivery driven by Implementation Group of
    Secretaries General
  • 2002, PA Consulting
  • Progress of SMI in the Civil Service. 
  • Vision Statement, Strategy and Action Programme
    to 2007
  • http//www.bettergov.ie/thematic_areas/smiframewor
    k/index.asp?langENGloc79

13
SMI
  • Strategic approach
  • better planning and management
  • schedule of change
  • strategy statements
  • searching self-analysis
  • external evaluations
  • departmental performance indicators and other
    forms of assessment.
  • Many civil servants enthusiastic many reluctant.

14
Citizens as Consumers
  • Republics political system as other lib dem.
  • facilitates translation needs into political
    action
  • material, ideological, social, spiritual
    dimensions.
  • Neat sequential processing model
  • recognises peoples needs
  • provides alternative ways of meeting them
  • chooses between options
  • sets up mechanisms to implement the solution.
  • Politics as a system injustice to complexity
  • NPM citizens as customers

15
Marketing and Modernisation
  • running government like a business
  • NPM advocates
  • market-like models
  • citizens as consumers.
  • tools and techniques from marketing

16
Three central marketing applications.
  • rapid responses to consumer concerns
  • extension of choice and customisation
  • market research

17
Rapid responses (1)
  • distinctive characteristics
  • restraints, duties and opportunities
  • transfers resources
  • monopoly of violence.
  • efficiency depends on consent
  • broad assent of the governed.

18
Rapid responses (2)
  • NPM - clear distinction between political and
    administrative matters
  • central dichotomy - unsupported by evidence
  • politicians concerned about implementation
  • public servants, non-partisans, rarely neutral

19
Rapid responses (3)
  • Time-based competition - profound strategy issue
    in business
  • underpins business process re-engineering
    literature and practice of the past decade.
  • NPM mirrors emphasis on speed of response

20
Rapid responses (4)
  • Osborne and Gaebler (1992) Bureaucracy designed
    earlier in the century simply do not function
    well in the rapidly changing, information rich,
    knowledge intensive society and economy of the
    1990s.
  • In public service delivery
  • IT applications proliferated
  • hierarchies flattening
  • response times shorter

21
Rapid responses (5)
  • information provided at whatever speed is not
    disinterested
  • private sector
  • influence purchasing, consuming, investing
  • political system
  • affect the behaviour of citizens
  • representative system of democracy
  • more measured and deliberate reaction

22
Rapid response (6)
  • NPM diffuses political accountability.
  • new public managers authoritative allocations
    of value.
  • Even if called customers, still citizens.

23
Extension of choice and customisation
  • polar opposites standardised vs. tailored
  • today customised at mass production prices
  • public sector products customised but scarce
    and free at point of consumption.
  • political system rationing function
  • Putman enable individuals to retreat from
    society result in a reduction in social capital
    through a narrowing and fragmenting perspective.

24
Market research
  • Surveys, opinion polls, focus group interviews
    commonplace
  • IT offers lower costs, larger samples, the
    ability to focus on small subpopulations, routine
    use of visuals and easy access to low-incidence
    samples but
  • traditional means of political participation
  • can challenge the deliberative and accountable
    mechanisms of the democratic process by its
    immediacy and claims to scientific validity.
  • Your representative owes you, not his industry
    only, but his judgment and he betrays instead of
    serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.
    Burke 1774

25
Modernisation the project
  • clientelism moderated service delivery
  • demise is associated with modernisation or
    democratic maturity
  • influenced Irish political science greatly in the
    1960s
  • Democracies undergo a transition from clientelist
    to programmatic politics

26
Modernisation the project
  • In a modern state, as understood by modernisation
    theorists, clientelism has no place
  • Form of political immaturity dampens collective
    action
  • But, links between citizens and elites
    are? voluntary? connect people of unequal
    status? personal and face-to-face? long lasting.

27
Modernisation the project
  • Neither party is forced to take part both feel
    some sense of obligation it may be a response to
    impersonal or alienating bureaucratic structures.
  • modernisation theorists confounded by predictive
    failure

28
Modernisation the project
  • to be successful in politics aspirants to office
    have to be able to show they have power. Those
    who can deliver material favours are said to have
    'pull'an ability to 'deliver' more than other
    competitors for political officeIn local
    parlance the actions which most strikingly
    demonstrate powerare termed 'strokes'. The
    perpetrator of a stroke is called a 'cute hoor',
    a term which denotes a certain admiration for the
    way in which he outmanoeuvres his competitors (O
    Carroll 198782).

29
Modernisation the project
  • the cute hoors serve a useful function
  • in marketing terms, as market research, market
    testing, complaint management, refining
    implementation procedures and the like.
  • self-interest of politicians of appearing
    influential could be harnessed

30
Modernisation the project
  • Peters minor rule-bending, or irritating of
    headquarters on the customers behalf, downright
    heroic!
  • Similar behaviour portrayed as anachronistic and
    unhelpful.
  • A good starting point is to recognise the cute
    hoor as hero.
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