New Public Management

New public management

The theory of second best creates the possibility of a vicious policy cycle, where policies are enacted to counteract the negative effects of other inefficient policies which were initially enacted to counteract the effects of other inefficient policies.

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Within the field of study, the public sector, there has been significant institutional change, with a rise in the number of inspectorates and audit through performance targets, a kind of accountability through accountancy. It may be argued that this is mirrored by a decline in public sector professionalism and the power of public sector professionals. The understanding of what is ‘improvement’ is dynamic, contested and negotiated, indeed the very question of when it is possible to judge improvements in public service delivery is itself contested.

Policy makers seek innovation in order to improve the situation of citizen consumers within the multiple constituencies of public service stake- holding. This innovation takes place at the level of:
· Strategic policy making;
· The programme and output that flows from the policy;
· Operational procedures used to deliver the programme or output.

The Private Finance Initiative is an example of the above that emerged from the elements of New Public Management; it is justified by its adherents through their claim that it provides value for money.

It is suggested that academics ought to enter the debate about Value Financial Management and how we may define, value, especially when searching for the best methodology, or even an effective methodology to conduct a post-project evaluation. It is also important that future studies of management also study performance as in the private sector managers are judged by their impact on an organisation’s performance, underperformance leads to losses, hostile takeovers and the replacement of the management. The public sector is different, but it should also address the issue of performance through the successful and efficient delivery of service. Public administration scholars, therefore, need to make more use of the generic management literature, especially that which deals with management and performance. The term ‘public management’ has recently partially eclipsed the term ‘public administration’ for many scholars and public management has, of course, drawn heavily on business administration in its modern guise of ‘management’, completing a somewhat ironic trajectory.

Too often public administration, and public sector management, substitute metaphors for genuine theory, these constituents of the social sciences need to be more applied and to search for causal links, using evidence based practice, comparative governance studies and studies of evaluation and performance. We need to be cautious, however, it would not be fruitful to search for a coherent set of micro-foundations among different bodies of social theory, and the most productive approach will remain to look at common problems from the perspective of different disciplines. These should include the legal perspective with its new imperative towards common values in terms of individual rights and the role of the judiciary in acting as society’s umpire through judicial review and civil actions.

There needs to be a recognition of the difference between ‘doing things right’ and ‘doing the right thing’ that an over-reliance on the ‘tick-box’ mentality of managerialism overlooks. There needs to be a contribution to improvement to public sector quality through an identification of the necessary values of public service. The term Excellence is problematic and needs to be defined at the outset of the programme, probably with several overlapping definitions in order to address the real issues with which the programme is concerned, namely that of quality in the provision of public services. Furthermore, recognition of the political context requires a broad and longitudinal setting that takes note of the current situation, but recognizes that in order to be of use over time, the programme needs to address the kinds of problems and issues that will be of importance in the medium to long term. It may be that political scientists are often best placed to undertake this type of analysis.

Questions of process and implementation are an integral part of evaluating the success or failure of a policy or the delivery of services that result from a policy or policy change. Research that demonstrates how to improve delivery will make a valuable contribution. Care needs to be taken here, though, in the use of large data sets, especially those of a longitudinal or comparative nature. These may not always be entirely accurate, and the methodology needs to be robust enough to take account of large margins of error or contaminated data, such as that ‘swayed’ by the ‘need’ to meet performance indicators in some organisations.

Establishing a good incentive scheme within an organization renders effects and benefits, or broader institutional footing, such as:
· Greater efficiency gains;
· An increase in responsiveness and motivation by the workforce;
· An increase in innovation;
· Beneficial segregation and clustering allowing greater transparency and informed consumer choice, for example in the case of schools;
· An improved recruitment and retention of skilled and experienced members of the organisation.
The disbenefits may include:
· Negative effects on recruitment and retention if a flawed incentive system is used;
· There may be gaming, or ‘cream skimming’ segregation;
· There may be organisational and geographical variations in service giving rise to issues of equity;
· There may be an erosion of the public service ethos and some demoralisation, especially if there is also an element of de-profesionalisation;
· Incentives may introduce demotivating and inefficient competition within and between organisations.



Source: The ESRC “Excellence” Programme, Public Services Management Workshop, University of Oxford, April 2004




Information is not an independent organisational resource the shape of which all will be agreed upon. Rather it is a negotiated and contested construct which may be designed with a purpose and used in such a way as to impact significantly upon the social relations of welfare. So too the shape and style of the communications network which conveys such information will act to influence the nature of social control mechanisms. Any information system must therefore act to influence power relations between competing agents and be regarded as an important tool in such social and economic struggle. It may be used to decide who is included and excluded; to reinforce existing patterns of inequality; or to define the terms of engagement. The notion of improving the efficiency of public services suggests a 'new public management' strategy devoted to introducing information systems which challenge the heterogeneous and contested organisational cultures of welfare institutions. The NHS Information Network, for example, has faced considerable opposition from interested parties such as professional groups, trade unions, and citizens rights groups over issues such as clinical autonomy, patient confidentiality, and privacy.
Source:
http://virtualsociety.sbs.ox.ac.uk/nordic/burrows.htm