Context Of New Public Management Research Articles

Financial Delegation System in the Context of New Public Management: Evidence from an Australian Public Sector Organization

This paper contributes to the study of financial management in public sector organization in the context of New Public Management (NPM). It deploys an earnest attempt to explore the financial delegation system in the context of NPM initiatives in Australia. A government department in the Australian Capital Territory has been adopted as the field for investigation. The nature of the present research is explorative and the focus of this research is to study in depth of a particular phenomena. Qualitative research methodology was chosen to obtain a better understanding of the phenomena. Case-based research method was used in developing a fuller understanding of the relative role of financial delegation system in the management of organisational performance. In this study, data collection involved a triangulation approach and the three sources were archival records, interviews and observation. As financial delegation system is socially constructed, Giddens’ structuration theory was adopted in this research to obtain a better understanding of human actions and to explore how these control devices are implicated in the wider social context through time. Empirical evidence from the field supported that the selected researched organisation has adopted a wide range of financial delegation mechanisms within the organization. The research also demonstrated that the implementation of financial delegation system in the selected organization is the function of NPM in the key areas of financial management. These findings are consistent with the view that NPM promotes a culture of performance in Australian public sector.

Australian welfare workers and street-level discretion when working with clients from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds

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.

The empowerment–organizational performance link in local governments

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of how to raise organizational performance in public sector organizations through human resource management. Specifically, this paper aims to investigate the link between structural empowerment and organizational performance, and the mediating role of the psychological empowerment of employees.Design/methodology/approachThe authors apply multilevel structural equation modeling using a sample of 103 local governments’ managers and 461 employees from Spain.FindingsThe results show that structural empowerment is positively associated with organizational performance. Surprisingly, this relationship is not mediated by psychological empowerment, although it is a powerful antecedent of organizational performance.Originality/valueIn the context of new public management, structural empowerment emerges as a useful component of human resource management for improving organizational performance in public sector organizations. Nevertheless, scant research has combined structural empowerment practices and employees’ feelings of empowerment, which would create a global view to shed light on their role to increase organizational performance. Therefore, this paper examines the mediating function of psychological empowerment (individual level) in the structural empowerment–organizational performance link (organizational level) in the context of public sector organizations.

Leadership Support of Supervision in Social Work Practice

This article discusses research findings that highlight the importance of leadership support of supervision for social workers in human service organizations. While supervision is considered a cornerstone of social work practice, whether and how such supervision is supported by human service leaders is not adequately analyzed. Using qualitative research data from interviews with supervisors and managers in southern Ontario, this article presents the vital role social work leaders play in supporting supervision by modelling values, and creating a safe organizational culture. The challenges of providing this support are also discussed in the current context of new public management. The article concludes with a series of recommendations, including: prioritizing supervision to promote organizational learning, organizational restructuring to reduce power differentials, modelling social work values to create a safe learning culture, and supporting supervisory and leadership training for social workers. Findings may be of interest to social workers who are leading, supervising, teaching or practicing in human service organizations.

What Happens When Digital Information Systems Are Brought Into Health and Social Care? Comparing Approaches to Social Policy in England and Australia

This review article offers a brief comparative overview of approaches to the application of public sector information systems in England and Australia, with particular reference to health and social care. Since the 1990s, reforms to the public sector in both countries have looked to information and communication technologies (ICTs) from the private sector as the key to modern, citizen-centred services. These efforts have been conducted in the wider context of New Public Management, with the emphasis on the marketisation of government services, reducing the size of the state, and improvements in efficiency. Both countries are typically seen as being at, or near, the forefront of the digital transformation of public services (United Nations, 2012; McLoughlin and Wilson, 2013). Moreover, there is a shared history of experimentation, most recently in the shaping of the information agendas around records and personalisation.

New Public Management and Health Reform in Kazakhstan

Faced with limited resources, governments around the world are struggling to devise the most effective means to deliver basic health services. This is especially true for transitional countries, such as Kazakhstan, which gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. The country has embarked on a framework known as Kazakhstan 2030, which aims among other things, to improve the living standards of all Kazakhs by the year 2030. A number of reform agendas have been underway in the health sector. This article provides a brief history of Kazakhstan's healthcare reform efforts, and analyzes its most recent comprehensive healthcare reform, the National Program of Health Care Reform and Development for 2005–2010, within the context of new public management (NPM). The article juxtaposes aspects of the National Program of Health Care Reform and Development for 2005–2010 within the following elements of NPM: decentralization, competition, efficiency and quality, and civil society and partnerships.

ACCOUNTABILITY AND VALUE FOR MONEY IN PRIVATE FINANCE INITIATIVE CONTRACTS

Within the context of New Public Management (NPM), successive UK governments have claimed that PFI projects provide more accountability, and arguably, more value for money (VFM) than conventional procurement for the public (HM Treasury 1995, 2000, 2003a and 2003b). However, recent empirical research in the UK on PFI has indicated its potential limitations for accountability and VFM (Broadbent, Gill and Laughlin, 2004; Edwards, Shaoul, Stafford and Arblaster, 2004; Shaoul, 2005; and Ismail and Pendlebury, 2006) albeit these are based on either published accounts or a limited number of key stakeholders. This paper attempts to partially redress this gap in the literature by presenting an interesting case of the impact of PFI on accountability and VFM in Northern Ireland's education sector. The findings of this research, based on forty-two interviews with a wide range of key stakeholders, suggest that stakeholders have different and often conflicting expectations and the actual PFI accountability and VFM benefits are much more obfuscated than those claimed in Government publications.

06/01969 Public-private partnerships: a multidimensional model for contracting: Zarco-Jasso, H. International Journal of Public Policy, 2005, 1, (1–2), 22–40

This paper considers the relationships between public and private organizations entering into public-private partnerships (PPPs) within the context of New Public Management (NPM). After offering a brief discussion of similarities and differences between public and private organizations and their relationships, it provides a short overview of how PPPs are organized in practice. Through elaborating on three dimensions of differentiation between public and private organizations -ownership, funding and control- it proposes a matrix model for identifying a suitable dimensional mix for PPP contracts.

Performance Management for Community Empowerment Networks

Community participation is now highly valued in urban regeneration partnerships in Britain. The major current policy innovation is a National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal, which set up Community Empowerment Networks to engage communities. This article describes the Performance Management Framework produced for these networks, and examines themes from practitioners' responses to the draft framework, against a wider context of New Public Management and performance management. The article addresses the important question of whether the framework acts as a learning tool for those directly involved in organizing community participation or as a control mechanism applied to them by more powerful actors.

Organisational governance structures in allied health services: a decade of change.

A ten year review of developments in the organisation and management of allied health services in Australian acute care public hospitals reveals a steady transformation away from a medically managed universal model towards more complex and contested models of governance. This article revisits early observations about the reorganisation of allied health services and presents more recent research findings to guide managerial decision-making about restructuring the diverse disciplines that constitute allied health. A new organisational model "integrated decentralization" is presented as an approach to managing allied health services which accommodates multiple stakeholder demands in the context of New Public Management (NPM) related reforms. The focus on the institutional level is complemented by examining developments in the profile and activity of allied health at the regional, state and national levels to present a more comprehensive picture of change over the decade of the 1990s.