NPM reforms and institutional characteristics in developing countries

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 126-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mouhcine Tallaki ◽  
Enrico Bracci
Keyword(s):  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Implementation Process ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Institutional Factors ◽  
Institutional Characteristics ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Factors Affecting ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
New Public

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the institutional factors affecting the reform of public sector in Morocco. In particular, this study focuses on the adoption path of one such reform, in which Moroccan municipalities had to adopt economic and development plans (EDPs).Design/methodology/approachThe paper’s methodology adopts a qualitative approach. In particular, the paper adopts a mix of primary and secondary sources to analyze the historical development of the EDP reform in the Moroccan context, and the institutional factors involved in the implementation process. It contributes to the existing literature in two ways: it defines a tentative model that combines two approaches (new and old institutional theories); and it contextualizes the proposed model in the Moroccan context by examining the institutional process of implementing the reforms.FindingsThe reform that introduced EDPs in Morocco was the result of a collaboration between the Moroccan government and international donors. The introduction of EDPs was impeded by institutional features of Moroccan society. Therefore, the implementation of EDPs in Morocco did not change taken-for-granted ways of thinking, nor did it remove institutional restrictions and barriers. Municipalities were not affected by the modernizing effects of the reform. They are managed as traditional administrative structures, with very little capacity for organizational and management innovation.Originality/valueThe paper contributes to the debate on the adequacy of new public management (NPM) in less developed countries (LDCs), and in particular with regards to the use of strategic plans in Moroccan municipalities. In doing so, the paper attempts to define a tentative framework that combines new institutional and old institutional theory. The framework proposed helps to explain how NPM in LDCs was diffused and how institutional characteristics could hamper or foster the implementation of NPM reform.

Challenges in transitioning from new public management to new public governance in a developing country context

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (7) ◽  
pp. 689-705 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wahed Waheduzzaman
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Developing Country ◽  
Public Management ◽  
Service Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Public Governance ◽  
Content Type ◽  
New Public ◽  
New Public Governance

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the transitional status of new public management (NPM) into new public governance (NPG) in a developing country context. Some authors, based on their research in developed countries, have claimed that NPM is dead. However, such claims have apparently ignored the transformational status of NPM in developing countries. This paper addresses that gap. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative method was used in this research. Public officials, elected representatives and local users who were responsible for public service management at local levels in Bangladesh were interviewed using semi-structured questionnaires tailored to each group. The interview texts were then organised and analysed using NVivo software. Findings This research reveals that four public management elements comprising decentralisation, market-based services, efficiency and accountability, which are prerequisites for creating an appropriate environment for NPG, have not been established successfully in Bangladesh. This finding suggests that NPG may not be achieved without effective implementation of these elements through NPM practices. The study concludes that NPM needs to be practiced for more time in Bangladesh for the effective transformation of public management into public governance. Research limitations/implications Findings from this research will help public policy makers and researchers to identify barriers to and design the pathway for a smooth shift from NPM to NPG. Practical implications The findings of this research would help the Government of Bangladesh and international aid agencies to better understand the status of NPM and NPG in regional Bangladesh. Social implications The research findings may help identify barriers to enhancing participatory activities in a developing society. Originality/value Though NPM is an obsolete theory for developed countries, it needs to be implemented successfully in developing countries prior to the implementation of NPG.

Are post-Soviet republics ready for the new public management? The case of educational modernization in Kazakhstan

2015 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 150-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agipa Monobayeva ◽  
Cosmo Howard
Keyword(s):  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Implementation Process ◽  
Successful Implementation ◽  
State Transformation ◽  
Administrative Practices ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Higher Education Reforms ◽  
New Public ◽  
Strong Control

Purpose – Since the collapse of the USSR, former Soviet republics have embarked on public service modernization, in most instances drawing on internationally dominant new public management (NPM) principles. Are post-Soviet republics ready for these administrative prescriptions? The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – This paper discusses Kazakhstan’s experience with the implementation of NPM through a qualitative case study of the country’s adoption of the European Bologna higher education reforms. Findings – While implementation of the NPM-inspired Bologna program has produced significant achievements, there are also gaps and shortcomings. These are due to a remnant Soviet administrative practices including strong control by educational ministries, as well as incompatible organizational cultures and a tendency toward superficial formalism in the implementation process. Research limitations/implications – NPM tends to be introduced in a top-down fashion as a taken-for-granted component of state transformation, without sufficient attention to the capacities, cultures and systems required for effective and accountable performance-driven administrative reform. Originality/value – Kazakhstan’s experience provides crucial insights into the governance structures, professional cultures and managerial capacities required for successful implementation of NPM in post-Soviet states.

Public hospital reforms in China: towards a model of new public management?

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 352-366 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jixia Mei ◽  
Ian Kirkpatrick
Keyword(s):  
Public Management ◽  
Public Hospital ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Hospital Management ◽  
Public Hospitals ◽  
Healthcare Sector ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
New Public

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore how far plans to “modernize” hospital management in China are converging toward a global model of new public management (NPM) or represent a distinctive pathway. Design/methodology/approach This paper draws on a systematic review of available secondary sources published in English and Chinese to describe both the nature and trajectory of hospital management reforms in China. Findings In China, while public hospital reforms bear many of the hallmarks of the NPM, they are distinctive in two key respects. First, the thrust of current reforms is to partially reverse, not extend, the trend toward marketization in order to strengthen the public orientation of public hospitals. Second is a marked gap between the rhetoric and reality of empowering managers and freeing them from political control. Practical implications This paper develops a framework for understanding the drivers and obstacles to hospital management reforms in China that is useful for managers, clinicians and policy makers. Originality/value In China, few authors have considered NPM reform in relation to healthcare. This paper contributes in better understanding current reforms taking place in China’s expanding healthcare sector and locates these within broader theoretical and policy debates.

scholarly journals New public management and budgeting practices in Tanzanian Central Government

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 340-371 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Goddard ◽  
Tausi Ally Mkasiwa
Keyword(s):  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Successful Implementation ◽  
Donor Funding ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Inductive Research ◽  
New Public ◽  
Research Findings

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the budgeting practices in the Tanzanian Central Government. New budgeting reforms were introduced following exhortations from the bodies such as the UN, the World Bank and the IMF and reflect the new public management (NPM). Design/methodology/approach A grounded theory methodology was used. This methodology is inductive, allowing phenomena to emerge from the participants rather than from prior theory. This ensures both relevance and depth of understanding. Findings The principal research findings from the data concern the central phenomenon of “struggling for conformance”. Tanzanian Central Government adopted innovations in order to ensure donor funding by demonstrating its ability to implement imposed budgetary changes. Organizational actors were committed to these reforms through necessity and struggled to implement them, rather than more overtly resisting them. Research limitations/implications The research is subject to the usual limitations of case study, inductive research. Practical implications This research has several implications for policy-makers of NPM and budgetary reforms. These include the recognition that the establishment of the rules and regulations alone is not adequate for the successful implementation of budgetary and NPM reforms and should involve a comprehensive view of the nature of the internal and external environment. Originality/value There are few empirical papers of NPM accounting practices being implemented in the public sector of developing countries and none at all based in Tanzania. The paper identifies the existence of struggling to conform to reforms rather than resistance identified in prior research.

scholarly journals Accounting and the post-new public management

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 255-279 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ileana Steccolini
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Public ◽  
Accounting Research ◽  
Societal Relevance ◽  
New Public ◽  
Public Sector Accounting

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to reflect various pathways for public sector accounting and accountability research in a post-new public management (NPM) context. Design/methodology/approach The paper first discusses the relationship between NPM and public sector accounting research. It then explores the possible stimuli that inter-disciplinary accounting scholars may derive from recent public administration studies, public policy and societal trends, highlighting possible ways to extend public sector accounting research and strengthen dialogue with other disciplines. Findings NPM may have represented a golden age, but also a “golden cage,” for the development of public sector accounting research. The paper reflects possible ways out of this golden cage, discussing future avenues for public sector accounting research. In doing so, it highlights the opportunities offered by re-considering the “public” side of accounting research and shifting the attention from the public sector, seen as a context for public sector accounting research, to publicness, as a concept central to such research. Originality/value The paper calls for stronger engagement with contemporary developments in public administration and policy. This could be achieved by looking at how public sector accounting accounts for, but also impacts on, issues of wider societal relevance, such as co-production and hybridization of public services, austerity, crises and wicked problems, the creation and maintenance of public value and democratic participation.

scholarly journals New public management and the rise of public sector performance audit

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 280-306 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee D. Parker ◽  
Kerry Jacobs ◽  
Jana Schmitz
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Public ◽  
Key Stakeholders ◽  
New Public ◽  
Performance Audit ◽  
Performance Auditing ◽  
Strong Control

Purpose In the context of global new public management reform trends and the associated phenomenon of performance auditing (PA), the purpose of this paper is to explore the rise of performance audit in Australia and examines its focus across audit jurisdictions and the role key stakeholders play in driving its practice. Design/methodology/approach The study adopts a multi-jurisdictional analysis of PA in Australia to explore its scale and focus, drawing on the theoretical tools of Goffman. Documentary analysis and interview methods are employed. Findings Performance audit growth has continued but not always consistently over time and across audit jurisdictions. Despite auditor discourse concerning backstage performance audit intentions being strongly focussed on evaluating programme outcomes, published front stage reports retain a strong control focus. While this appears to reflect Auditors-General (AGs) reluctance to critique government policy, nonetheless there are signs of direct and indirectly recursive relationships emerging between AGs and parliamentarians, the media and the public. Research limitations/implications PA merits renewed researcher attention as it is now an established process but with ongoing variability in focus and stakeholder influence. Social implications As an audit technology now well-embedded in the public sector accountability setting, it offers potential insights into matters of local, state and national importance for parliament and the public, but exhibits variable underlying drivers, agendas and styles of presentation that have the capacity to enhance or detract from the public interest. Originality/value Performance audit emerges as a complex practice deployed as a mask by auditors in managing their relationship with key stakeholders.

Changing patterns of individual performance appraisal systems for civil service in European Union countries: toward a developmental or an incentivizing model

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gyorgy Hajnal ◽  
Katarina Staronova
Keyword(s):  
Performance Appraisal ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Individual Performance ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Public Service Organizations ◽  
New Public ◽  
Appraisal Systems

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.

Accounting Reforms for Accountable Public Sector Management

2020 ◽  
pp. 41-64
Author(s):  
Chitra Sriyani De Silva Lokuwaduge ◽  
Keshara M. De Silva Godage
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Public Sector ◽  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Financial Management ◽  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
The Public ◽  
New Public ◽  
Public Sector Accounting

Accounting reforms in the public sector have become one of the most debated aspects of the public sector financial management during the last three decades. Following the steps of developed countries around the globe, Sri Lanka as a developing country made initiatives to adopt international public sector accounting standards (IPSAS). The purpose of this study is to analyse the progress and the challenges they face in adopting IPSAS as a new public management (NPM) reform in Sri Lanka to enhance public sector accountability. Public sector accounting reforms in the developing countries in Asia is relatively under researched. Using the NPM concept, this study attempts to fill this gap. This chapter argues that even though Sri Lanka has initiated the move towards adopting IPSAS, developing countries face practical problems in adopting reforms due to their contextual factors such as limited institutional capacity and resources, high political involvements in decision-making, and high informality.

scholarly journals Accounting for control of Italian culture in the Fascist Ethical State: the Alla Scala Opera House

2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michele Bigoni ◽  
Warwick Funnell ◽  
Enrico Deidda Gagliardo ◽  
Mariarita Pierotti
Keyword(s):  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Public Funding ◽  
Liberal State ◽  
Far Right ◽  
National Interests ◽  
Content Type ◽  
New Public ◽  
Cultural Domain ◽  
Opera House

PurposeThe study focusses on the complex interaction between ideological beliefs, culture and accounting by identifying during Benito Mussolini's time in power the contributions of accounting to the Italian Fascist repertoire of power in the cultural domain. It emphasises the importance of accounting in making the Alla Scala Opera House in Milan a vital institution in the creation of a Fascist national culture and identity which was meant to define the Fascist “Ethical State”.Design/methodology/approachThe study adopts the Foucauldian concept of discourse in analysing the accounting practices of the Alla Scala Opera House.FindingsFinancial statements and related commentaries prepared by the Alla Scala Opera House were not primarily for ensuring good management and the minimisation of public funding in contrast to the practices and expectations of accounting in liberal States. Instead, the dominant Fascist discourse shaped the content and use of accounting and ensured that accounting practices could be a means to construct the Opera House as a “moral individual” that was to serve wider national interests consistent with the priorities of the Fascist Ethical State.Research limitations/implicationsThe study identifies how accounting can be mobilised for ideological purposes in different ways which are not limited to supporting discourses inspired by logics of efficiency and profit. The paper also draws attention to the contributions of accounting discourses in shaping the identity of an organisation consistent with the priorities of those who hold the supreme authority in a society.Social implicationsThe analysis of how the Fascist State sought to reinforce its power by making cultural institutions a critical part of this process provides the means to understand and unmask the taken-for-granted way in which discourses are created to promote power relations and related interests such as in the rise of far-right movements, most especially in weaker and more vulnerable countries at present.Originality/valueUnlike most of the work on the relationship between culture and accounting which has emphasised liberal States, this study considers a non-liberal State and documents a use of accounting in the cultural domain which was not limited to promoting efficiency consistent with the priorities now recognised more recently of the New Public Management. It presents a micro-perspective on accounting as an ideological discourse by investigating the role of accounting in the exploitation of a cultural institution for political purposes.

Understanding complexity of administrative reform

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 630-643 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kwangseon Hwang
Keyword(s):  
Public Management ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Administrative Reform ◽  
Review Of The Literature ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Institutional Values ◽  
New Public ◽  
Functional Nature ◽  
Rational Calculation

Purpose This paper aims to examine the complexity of administrative reform and its implications. Design/methodology/approach This paper is based on an extensive review of the literature. Findings The most conspicuous fashion might be new public management (NPM) and its successor, post-NPM. However, recent reforms which involve complexity created the challenge of “rational calculation” in terms of an understanding of administrative reform. The authors observe that the measure of coordination in a response to fragmentation increases complexity and the rationale behind that reform is based on the instrumental rationality. This hinders real meaning of administrative reform, thereby failing to provide lessons for the future administration. Whether market-based reform or neo-Weberian model of reform, the thing should be considered is the condition under which the reform works. Originality/value This paper reaffirms the importance of the political-bureaucratic system which has multi-functional nature and competing institutional values when the different recipes for reform are imported into different context and a compatibility test by leaders.

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