Perspectives on Public Management Reform as Planned Change

The focus here is on the New Public Management, henceforth NPM, which constitutes a tsunami, virtually worldwide. Thus, inter alia, we hear about “customers” of public services, which are to be provided by “public intrapreneurs” as well as by cadres of employees at all levels who are “empowered.” And so on and on, with the conventional topics including crosstraining, total quality, performance measurement, and strategic planning. Although widely accepted, the NPM dogma – certainly it is no less in influential sources – does not survive critical analysis. In sum, this essay proposes this judgment: that in more or less equal measure, NPM combines ubiquity, too much made of some six useful but limited notions, unreconciled diversities, and major issues at sixes-and-sevens. This essay also intends to show how NPM might rise above its limitations. Specifically, four emphases relate to these critical-cum-constructive ambitions. In preview, the old NPM: seldom even attempted detailing a useful approach to applications; typically neglected systemic or milieu characteristics within which applications occurred; usually did not specify a useful front-load in designs: i.e., training in values, attitudes, and interaction skills that would facilitate developing a “cultural preparedness” for appropriate applications; and seldom specified supportive structural/managerial arrangements and especially how they might be achieved in practice. The text gives illustrative attention to how matters might be improved upon.