“New Public Management” in China at the Local Level: Competition-Driven Local Public Service Reform in Tianjin

2012 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xufeng Zhu ◽  
Qiyuan Jiao
Keyword(s):  
Public Service ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Public Management ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Service Outsourcing ◽  
New Public ◽  
Tianjin City ◽  
Administrative Licensing

New public management (NPM) paradigm plays an increasingly important role in contemporary public management practices throughout the democratic world. This article argues that the driving force behind NPM reform in China at the local level is the competitive pressure to improve administrative performance. In China, where there is no electoral democratic regime, local governments face pressure in competition with counterparts over economic performance and consequent promotion opportunities for their leadership. The introduction of NPM can make local governments more effective and efficient in providing public services, which can result in local governments attracting more investments and enhancing competitiveness. The administrative licensing reform with public service outsourcing in Heping District, Tianjin City, China, is an example of NPM reform driven by competition among local governments. Keywords: new public management • local governments • administrative licensing • public service outsourcing • China

scholarly journals A Critical Review of New Public Management Reforms in Korea

2003 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Tobin Im
Keyword(s):  
Public Administration ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Critical Review ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Western Countries ◽  
New Public ◽  
Service Charter ◽  
The Way

This paper argues the limits of New Public Management reforms. More precisely, it examines the process of introducing pulic service charters in Korean local governments simply benchmarking fom western countries. Having elaborated two opposing models, the Jupiter and Hercules models, this paper defines public service charter as a reform based on the Hercules model, which goes against Korean public administration based on Jupiter model. From this theoretical viewpoint, I examine the way of introducing this reform and discuss its questionable cost and effectiveness.

English public management reform after 2010

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ewan Ferlie ◽  
Sue Dopson ◽  
Chris Bennett ◽  
Michael D. Fischer ◽  
Jean Ledger ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Performance Management ◽  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Global Financial Crisis ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Management Reform ◽  
Big Society ◽  
New Public ◽  
Primary Care Sector ◽  
The Global Financial Crisis

This chapter characterizes the overall strategy of public services reform apparent in England after the global financial crisis of 2008 and during the period of the UK’s Coalition government 2010–15. It argues that what can be termed a ‘proto narrative’ of reform, orientated around so-called ‘Big Society’ ideas, emerged around 2010. However, we argue it was trumped in the end by Treasury-led and New Public Management-friendly austerity discourse. The concrete example is taken of the health policy to form new clinical commissioning groups in the primary care sector. They were presented as a mechanism which could promote professional engagement in commissioning. However, they were soon subjected to top-down performance management pressures and systems, including strong attempts to prevent financial deficits from emerging at a local level, which eroded bottom-up and professionally driven innovation. We conclude that the Big Society proto reform narrative failed to consolidate itself.

Collaboration Consequences: New Public Management and Police-Academic Partnerships

2021 ◽  
pp. 193672442098437
Author(s):  
Carrie B. Sanders ◽  
Debra Langan
Keyword(s):  
Policy Development ◽  
Public Management ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Organizational Contexts ◽  
Police Services ◽  
New Public ◽  
Academic Partnerships ◽  
Institutional Strategies

With increasing pressure on public organizations to demonstrate accountability, police services and public universities are being tasked with demonstrating how their institutional strategies are effective and economically efficient. In this paper, we draw on our own research collaborations with two different Canadian police services (Bluewater and Greenfield) on a similar community crime prevention strategy, Situation Tables. We illustrate how new public management practices are embedded in the political, economic, and organizational contexts that have inspired police-academic partnerships and invigorated the evidence-based policing movement in Canada. Our analysis illustrates how our partnerships were influenced by the performance strand of new public management that prioritizes the quantification of measures of outputs over qualitative evaluations of impact. We argue that these practices, if not interrogated, can jeopardize the integrity of evidence-based practice and policy development. Academic freedom must be retained when partnering with the police to ensure an examination of the implications of police practices.

scholarly journals Bringing the Law Back in the Law-Government Nexus in an Era of Network Governance

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stavros Zouridis ◽  
Vera Leijtens
Keyword(s):  
Public Management ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Network Governance ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
Management Theory ◽  
Public Governance ◽  
The Public ◽  
New Public ◽  
The Law

Abstract Recently, scholars have claimed that public management theory has too much ignored law. Consequently, the under-legalized conception of public management has produced a flawed understanding of public management theory as well as public management practices, threatening public institutions’ legitimacy. In this article, we argue that law never left public management theory. Rather, the link between government and law has been redefined twice. We refer to the assumptions that constitute this link as the law-government nexus. This nexus changed from lawfulness in a public administration paradigm, to legal instrumentalism in a (new) public management paradigm, and to a networked concept in the public governance (PG) paradigm. In order to prevent a faulty over-legalized conception of public management, bringing the law back in should be built on lessons from the past. This article elaborates on three strategies to reconnect law and public management. We map the strengths and weaknesses of each law-government nexus and illustrate these with the case of the Dutch tax agency. In our strategies that aim to reconceptualize the current law-government nexus, we incorporate the benefits of each paradigm for public management theory. The revised law-governance nexus enables the PG paradigm to correspond to contemporary issues without encountering old pathologies.

Understanding the impact of mandatory accrual accounting on management practices: interpretation of Japanese local governments’ behavior

2021 ◽  
pp. 002085232198895
Author(s):  
Makoto Kuroki ◽  
Keiko Ishikawa ◽  
Kiyoshi Yamamoto
Keyword(s):  
Internal Control ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Public Management ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Institutional Pressures ◽  
Accrual Accounting ◽  
Logistic Analysis ◽  
The Impact

Accompanying the spread of “new public management” since the 1980s, accrual accounting and results-based management has become a global standard. However, whether accrual accounting results in successful outcomes and which drivers lead to the intended impacts of the reform have been contested. Given the mixed arguments in the literature, we set out two research questions: (1) “Have public sector organizations realized any positive impacts on management practices by adopting mandatory accrual accounting?”; and (2) “What are the primary drivers of such impacts?” To answer these questions, we examine the impact on management practices by analyzing a survey to ascertain how financial department officers in Japanese local governments perceive the benefits of adopting mandatory accrual accounting on management practices. The results indicate that they have so far not recognized the intended benefits, though they had expected higher benefits in internal control. Then, we use technical-rational, socio-political, and institutional isomorphic perspectives in a comprehensive approach to understand the impacts on management practices. The logistic analysis shows that financial managers in local governments that do not have a majority party in the assembly, but consist of several parties in power, as well as in those with greater financial dependence on the central government, perceive higher benefits. Further, we find that financial managers that imitate other local governments as a form of mimetic pressure perceive fewer benefits. The results show that some technical-rational tools, socio-political conditions, and institutional pressures change the perceived benefits for public managers of adopting mandatory accrual accounting. Points for practitioners We find that some technical-rational, socio-political, and institutional factors explain the intended internal benefits of the mandatory adoption of accrual accounting. In practice, financial managers in local government feel the merits of accrual accounting in less autonomy in not only politics, but also finance, and few mimetic conditions. It might be understood that difficult situations would drive practitioners to use mandatory information.

Perceptions towards the quality of public services in Romania. Poor outcomes of public administration reforms?

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 263-285
Author(s):  
Claudia Petrescu ◽  
Flavis Mihalache
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Public Management ◽  
Public Services ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Local Level ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Administration Reform

Public services represent an important dimension of quality of society, as they create the contextual conditions for people to further their quality of life. Romanian public administration reform has brought about a constant institutional transformation, which has influenced both the specific features and the quality of the services. This article aims to analyse trends regarding the perceived quality of public services in Romania, in European comparative perspective, using the data of the European Quality of Life Survey (2003–2016). The article aims to understand the low satisfaction with public services in Romania against the background of the public service reform measures taken by government in this period. The article describes the context of Romanian public administration and public service reform, the most important public policy measures adopted and the most important challenges. The lack of vision in the public service reform, the partial introduction of reform elements, the permanent and, sometimes, conflicting changes are issues that may have influenced the way in which the population perceives the quality of public services. The decentralisation process of public services and the insufficient allocation of public funds for delivering such services at local level might have an impact on their quality and quantity perceived by the population. Keywords: public services; public administration reform; citizens’ satisfaction; New Public Management; New Weberianism.

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.

Does Citizens’ Self-Identification of Their Public Role Affect Their Satisfaction with Public Services?

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-100
Author(s):  
Hemin Choi ◽  
Jong Seon Lee
Keyword(s):  
Public Service ◽  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Role ◽  
New Public ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Service Expectations ◽  
Manova Analysis

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.

scholarly journals Exploiting conditionality: EU and international actors and post-NPM reform in Ireland

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-200
Author(s):  
Muiris MacCarthaigh ◽  
Niamh Hardiman
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Policy Coordination ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Sector Reforms ◽  
New Public ◽  
Public Sector Unions ◽  
Administrative Elites

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.

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