New Public Management and Service Privatization in Australia

Author(s):  
Siobhan O'Sullivan

Since at least the 1980s, New Public Management (NPM) has had a dramatic impact on public service delivery in Australia. NPM is a contested concept, but it is often closely associated with making government more businesslike, using a range of techniques such as the establishment of quasi-markets for the delivery of goods and services by private companies that work for government on short-term contracts. Australia’s strong embrace of NPM principles is most evident in its transformation of welfare-to-work under the Keating and Howard governments. Yet the evolution of Australia’s employment services system also points to some of the unresolved tensions inherent in NPM. In particular, the Australian experience suggests that it is difficult to strike a balance between maintaining control in a way that meets the expectations of citizens and allowing private companies freedom to innovate and capitalize.

Author(s):  
Clarissa Salazar ◽  

The purpose of this theoretical essay is to reflect on the current discussion about the management of the Judiciary. We are currently living in a moment of rupture, in a scenario of disproportion between the offer of services and the number of conflicts to be resolved. Co-production has been advocated as an alternative through the participation of users of these services in decision-making. For this discussion, we bring in the New Public Management that proposes reforms based on the same logic of action that governs private companies. And the New Public Service, which defends productivity and efficiency in a larger context of democracy and public interest. We conclude that there is no dichotomous thought in the construction of a management model that is coherent with the difficulties and the complexity of the provision of justice. But there is a rupture with the conservative past, the search for a new identity, without losing its legitimacy and commitment to democratic principles.


Author(s):  
Ian Greer ◽  
Karen Breidahl ◽  
Matthias Knuth ◽  
Flemming Larsen

Denmark, Germany, and Britain have marketized their employment services in different ways. This chapter introduces the tasks involved in moving jobless people into, or closer to, paid work (assessment, advice, training, job placement, and the organization of make-work schemes). In Denmark New Public Management and municipalization trends have combined to produce dramatic fluctuations in the volume of work and the rules of the market; marketization has proceeded in three waves since 2005. In Germany, there are diverse market segments reflecting the persistence of three different transaction modes in the wake of the Hartz reforms; marketization was implemented in 2002–5. In Britain, a series of privatization experiments led to the creation of a highly concentrated, centralized, and uncompetitive market, with several multinational firms managing the bulk of the market as Work Programme prime contractors; this market structure was created in 2008–11.


Revista Foco ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 138
Author(s):  
Albino Alves Simione

A gestão estratégica de recursos humanos no setor público constitui-se como desafio contemporâneo para a sustentabilidade dos programas de governo. Estratégias relacionadas à reforma da gestão de pessoal são recomendadas por vários praticantes, pesquisadores e organizações internacionais especializadas, com o propósito de que os governos as adotem para melhor gerir seus funcionários como meio de garantir resultados positivos. As recomendações propõem o uso de abordagens estratégicas na gestão de recursos humanos fundamentadas na modernização das respetivas políticas, inspiradas nas concepções da New Public Management que advogam uma administração mais eficiente baseada nas práticas aplicadas pelas empresas privadas. Porém, pairam questões sobre a aplicabilidade dessas recomendações, bem como sobre de que modo a gestão estratégica de pessoas, mecanismo pensado fundamentalmente para as empresas privadas, irá se efetivar na área pública. O ensaio foi baseado em uma revisão bibliográfica e documental e enfatiza o contexto do serviço público em Moçambique. The strategic management of human resources in the public sector constitutes a contemporary challenge for the sustainability of government programs. Strategies related to personnel management reform are recommended by a number of practitioners, researchers, and specialized international organizations, with the aim of governments adopt them to better manage their employees as a means of ensuring positive results. The recommendations propose the use of strategic approaches in human resources management based on the modernization of their policies, inspired by the New Public Management concepts that advocate a more efficient administration based on the practices applied by private companies. However, questions remain about the applicability of these recommendations, as well as how the strategic management of people, a mechanism designed primarily for private companies, will be implemented in the public area. The essay was based on a literature and documentary review and emphasizes the public service context in Mozambique.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gyorgy Hajnal ◽  
Katarina Staronova

PurposeThe purpose of this article is to examine whether the incentivizing type of performance appraisal (typical of New Public Management) has indeed been superseded by a post-New Public Management (NPM), developmental type of performance appraisal in European Civil Services.Design/methodology/approachThe literature review lead to a unidimensional, twofold typology: incentivizing (NPM) and developmental (post-NPM) performance appraisal. The empirical basis of the research is two surveys conducted among top civil servants in 18 European countries.FindingsFirst, there are crucial discrepancies between performance appraisal systems in contemporary European central government administrations and current theorizing on performance appraisal. Contrary to our expectations developed on the basis of the latter, “developmental” and “incentivizing” do not seem to be two distinct types of performance appraisal; rather, they are two independent dimensions, defining altogether four different types of performance appraisal systems.Practical implicationsThe authors results give orientation to policymakers and public service managers to engage in designing or applying performance appraisal systems, in particular by identifying assailable presumptions underlying many present-time reform trends.Social implicationsCitizens and communities are direct stakeholders in the development of public service performance appraisal both as possible or actual employees of public service organizations and as recipients of public services.Originality/valueThe paper proposes a new fourfold typology of performance appraisal systems: incentivizing, developmental, symbolic and want-it-all.


2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-100
Author(s):  
Hemin Choi ◽  
Jong Seon Lee

This study investigates how citizens define their role qua citizen and how the public role they assign themselves matters in their assessment of satisfaction with public service performance. We compared survey respondents who identified their citizen role as customer (n=280), partner (n=353) or owner (n=467) to test this relation. Theoretically, the dominance of New Public Management (NPM) scholarship has resulted in the framing of citizens as simply customers, but our empirical study finds that citizens consider themselves more as partners or owners of government. This mismatch in conception was our research hypothesis for further research. We then ran a number of t-tests and carried out a MANOVA analysis, the results of which indicate that there is a significant difference between the customer and partner groups regarding expectations and satisfaction on the quality of their living area but not regarding performance. There is also evidence that shows that the role citizens assign to themselves is related to their public service expectations but that the connection between their view of their role and their assessment of performance is weak.


2021 ◽  
pp. 40-61
Author(s):  
Christoph Hermann

Even though commodification is a quasi-natural tendency of capitalist economies, the extent of commodification can vary over time, depending, among other things, on government intervention. In the last three decades, neoliberal reforms have fueled (re-)commodification. This chapter looks at six major policies: privatization, liberalization, deregulation, marketization, New Public Management, and austerity. Privatization promotes commodification by abolishing non-commodified alternatives to the sale of goods and services. Liberalization fuels commodification by exposing producers to competition and by forcing them to make profits. Deregulation eliminates restrictions that in one way or another limit commodification. Marketization creates markets in economic and social spheres where no markets have existed before, while New Public Management promotes metric output measurements that closely resemble what, in the private economy, are market values. Austerity and related cuts in welfare expenditure drive re-commodification by making citizens more dependent on markets and on private alternatives to the welfare state.


2019 ◽  
Vol 68 (3) ◽  
pp. 372-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tran Nguyen

This article explores street-level discretion of Australian welfare workers when working with clients from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds. The research is situated within the context of New Public Management (NPM) and neoliberalism in the welfare sector. Findings suggest that workers’ discretion oscillates between extra support for clients, or further scrutiny and sanction. Such contradictory patterns of discretion highlight workers’ capacity to resist neoliberalism while concurrently upholding it. The article argues that cultural understanding, recognition of the limitations in welfare-to-work policies and neoliberalism, and how those factors, together with ethnicity, may influence street-level discretion are necessary for welfare workers to support CALD clients effectively.


2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-200
Author(s):  
Muiris MacCarthaigh ◽  
Niamh Hardiman

Between 2008 and 2015, Ireland undertook unprecedented and systemic public sector reforms in a polity not traditionally considered a prominent reformer. While some of these reforms comprised part of the loan programme agreement with EU and international actors, many others did not. This article argues that the crisis in Ireland provided a window of opportunity to introduce reforms that political and administrative elites had previously found difficult to implement. The authority of the Troika was invoked to provide legitimacy for controversial initiatives, yet some of the reforms went further than the loan programme strictly required. A number of these concerning organisational rationalisation, the public service ‘bargain’ and transversal policy coordination are considered here. Agreements were negotiated with public sector unions that facilitated sharp cuts in pay and conditions, reducing the potential for opposition to change. The reform effort was further legitimated by the reformers’ post-New Public Management, whole-of-government discourse, which situated considerations of effectiveness and efficiency in a broader framework of public service quality and delivery.


2016 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 437-450
Author(s):  
Hsiu-shan Yeh ◽  
Wan-I Lin

In the 1990s, both Australia and Taiwan were influenced by new public management (NPM) and subsequently reformed their public employment services. However, the reforms of the two countries have led to divergent results. This study assumes that the essential differences lay in the mobilization capacity of the disabled rights advocacy organizations and the disability employment benefits. Taiwan’s disability employment services (supported employment), though privatized, are limited to nonprofit organizations (NPOs), while for-profit organizations (POs) remain absent in this area. In Australia, the employment services (open employment services for people with disabilities) have been privatized, and for-profit organizations are encouraged to compete with one another to enhance the service quality and to reduce the costs. By providing job-search benefits for disabled people and implementing workfare policy, the Australian government reforms have resulted in the change of the relationship between the government and the citizens. In contrast, since the Taiwanese government never provided sufficient social welfare benefits for disabled people, they have to actively seek employment not after encouragement from the government, but as a result of their desperate need to earn a living. Despite the two countries’ differences, the force of neoliberalism, along with NPM, ostensibly continues to be a part of their employment policies for the socially underprivileged.


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