The provenance of public management and its future: is public management here to stay?

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present the views of authors in regard to the provenance and future of PM and the advantages of using management science in administrative science. The authors point to the meaning of both sciences for government studies and to the use that both theoreticians and practitioners may gain from adequately balancing the disciplines for the public interest. Design/methodology/approach The paper is based on a wide literature review of empirical and epistemological studies on new public management (NPM) and its evolvement across continents and cultures, and on a critical analysis of lessons learned from implementations of ideas and practices. Findings The authors identify the managerial reform in public administration as one of the more influential reforms of modern nations that cut across multiple policy areas, public agencies and cultures. The authors expect that public managers in the years to come are about to play a decisive role and be required to build collaborative capacity while governing creatively but without bending the rules. Ingenious civil servants are going to carry weight and devise new mechanisms for coping with prospective challenges; no doubt they will have to be savvier, more adept and open-minded than ever to be able to step up to the plate and assist governments to deal with impending crises. Originality/value The originality of this essay is reflected in the wide coverage of transitions in the managerial language of the discipline. Using manifold examples from different perspectives on NPM provides a unique and balanced look into what became the most influential reforms in public administration since the second half of the twentieth century, and is still alive and kicking.

Converging and diverging pressures in PBB development: the experiences of Finland and Sweden

“…The significant experience of the practice in the two countries has been a crucial factor allowing us to analyse and interpret the institutional development of PBB. In addition, the countries' specificities have influenced the findings, emphasizing some aspects of the reforms such as the strong tendency to decentralize due to the strong democratic basis of the Scandinavian governments (Kisner and Vigoda-Gadot 2017). However, although the focus on two countries can be considered a limit to the generalizability of the findings, the research aims to build some room for thoughts that can be useful for explaining the development of budgeting practices in different contexts.…”

Advancing Indigenous Research Sovereignty: Public Administration Trends and the Opportunity for Meaningful Conversations in Canadian Research Governance

“…The economic recession of the early 1980s focused attention on what was perceived as a bloated and inefficient public sector. New public management (NPM), a manifestation of neoliberalism (Brown, 2015), inaugurated a wave of governmental reforms across the Western world, notably in the United Kingdom's Thatcher government and under the Reagan administration in the United States (Gruening, 2001;Kisner & Vigoda-Gadot, 2017). NPM describes the trend in public sector reform in which new initiatives draw on methods and experiences from the business world to ostensibly enhance effectiveness, efficiency, and performance of the public sector (Kisner & Vigoda-Gadot, 2017).…”

“…New public management (NPM), a manifestation of neoliberalism (Brown, 2015), inaugurated a wave of governmental reforms across the Western world, notably in the United Kingdom's Thatcher government and under the Reagan administration in the United States (Gruening, 2001;Kisner & Vigoda-Gadot, 2017). NPM describes the trend in public sector reform in which new initiatives draw on methods and experiences from the business world to ostensibly enhance effectiveness, efficiency, and performance of the public sector (Kisner & Vigoda-Gadot, 2017). Manifestations of NPM include reduction in government, privatization of public services, production of the citizen as customer, regulation and performance evaluation as the primary means of ensuring program quality, reformulation of funding packages based on outputs and outcomes rather than inputs, and more (Bleiklie, 2018;Osborne, 2006).…”

Strategy Formation in Government

“…The simple storyline of the development of public administration describes a movement from the old form of public administration -with its red tape, hierarchical control, and sometimes overly legalistic rules and procedures -into a streamlined, business-like, market-oriented form of public management in the 1980s. Recently, some voices have supported a shift to a new form of public governance defined by voluntary networks, cooperation and the co-production of public services (Kisner, Vigoda-Gadot 2017). In assigning these broad labels, it is not easy to determine whether they refer to specific reform, actual forms of public administration, or theoretically driven models of the current state of current affairs.…”