Rise Of New Public Management Research Articles

The rise of new public management at the institutional level: an analysis of a Dutch university and the role of administrators in initiating organizational change, 1980s to 2010s

ABSTRACT New Public Management (NPM) is a remarkable development in the history of the management of public and semi-public organizations and one that requires more attention from historians working on the history of management and organizations. This article examines the rise of NPM at the institutional level through an in-depth analysis of a Dutch university in the 1980s to 2010s. By combining a social-science-based analytical framework for NPM in higher education with a variety of sources, including organizational archives and oral history, the article sheds light on how NPM ideas, techniques, and concepts were transposed to the institutional level. In line with earlier studies, the article illustrates that this was essentially a ‘pick-and-mix’ process in the NPM toolbox. The study complements previous research by generating insights into how management concepts were used to initiate organizational change. The analysis advances previous studies by revealing that NPM-style changes were not only the result of shifts in national policies, but were also instigated by actors (administrators) at the level of the institution. This means that if we want to fully understand NPM, more historical research focusing on the institutional level and the actors involved in organizational change is needed.

Government accounting in Canada: A special issue

AbstractThis paper introduces a special issue on government accounting in Canada. Accounting for the public sector has undergone a significant change over the past 2 decades, much of which can be attributed to the rise of New Public Management (NPM). In the post‐NPM era, research on the role of accounting in the management of public sector organizations and the delivery of government programs and services is essential to understanding and improving government accounting practices and reports. This collection of articles illustrates the richness of this area of study and highlights the need for further research.

The neoliberal workings of The Family Meal campaign: Unfortunate others, European citizens, and the branding of the EU

Due to increased privatization of development assistance, humanitarian communication is usually considered to be the domain of non-governmental organizations. However, (inter)governmental and (supra)national institutions still play an important role in development assistance. Notably, the European Union has become a leading development actor globally – and also actively brands itself as such. In this process of branding, the European Union not only celebrates its empathic recognition of vulnerable non-European Others, but also aims to promote a sense of European citizenship. In this article, we examine this process in the context of The Family Meal, a 2014 awareness campaign on food assistance led by the Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection Department of the European Commission. We argue that the campaign reflects both the logic of neoliberal humanitarianism and the quest for European citizenship. To develop our argument, we will assess The Family Meal in three steps. First, we discuss how the campaign mimicked post-humanitarian tendencies in non-governmental campaigns aimed at raising funds. Second, we demonstrate how The Family Meal not only reported on (helping) non-European Others, but also, and importantly, promoted a sense of European belonging. Finally, we introduce the concept of successional campaigns – that is, campaigns that follow up on the action taken rather than preceding it – to show that The Family Meal largely appeared as the result of the neoliberal trend toward administering accountability and branding organizations. Altogether, we consider the campaign, with the neoliberal branding of the European Union and its citizens at its center, as emblematic for humanitarian communication within the rise of New Public Management in the 21st century.

Quantification 2.0? Bibliometric Infrastructures in Academic Evaluation

Due to developments recently termed as ‘audit,’ ‘evaluation,’ or ‘metric society,’ universities have become subject to ratings and rankings and researchers are evaluated according to standardized quantitative indicators such as their publication output and their personal citation scores. Yet, this development is not only based on the rise of new public management and ideas on ‘the return on public or private investment.’ It has also profited from ongoing technological developments. Due to a massive increase in digital publishing corresponding with the growing availability of related data bibliometric infrastructures for evaluating science are continuously becoming more differentiated and elaborate. They allow for new ways of using bibliometric data through various easily applicable tools. Furthermore, they also produce new quantities of data due to new possibilities in following the digital traces of scientific publications. In this article, I discuss this development as quantification 2.0. The rise of digital infrastructures for publishing, indexing, and managing scientific publications has not only made bibliometric data become a valuable source for performance assessment. It has triggered an unprecedented growth in bibliometric data production turning freely accessible data about scientific work into edited databases and producing competition for its users. The production of bibliometric data has thus become decoupled from their application. Bibliometric data have turned into a self-serving end while their providers are constantly seeking for new tools to make use of them.

Born Researcher or Political Influencer? Professorial Identity in Higher Education

With the rise of new public management and ever increasing competitive pressures in research organizations, the demands on professors have enlarged in that their responsibilities go far beyond research and teaching. Specifically, they are now expected to be effective leaders, who understand and shape the changing environment. Yet, we have surprisingly little theoretical knowledge or empirical data about how professors balance and integrate the demanding–and sometimes conflicting–roles of being a researcher, teacher, manager, and/or leader. In this paper, we use an identity perspective to investigate how professors at the tenured career stage construe their identity and enact their careers. We applied a qualitative approach and interviewed 26 professors about their motives, personal success criteria, leadership behaviors, and daily work challenges. Based on these data, we propose five types of professorial identity: (1) Born researchers, (2) cultivating teachers, (3) stimulating coaches, (4) ambitious all-rounders, and (5) political influencers. By exploring the complexity of professorial identity, we enhance knowledge about manifold ways of professors’ academic career development. We provide a more nuanced picture of how the professorial identity shapes professors’ behaviors, challenges, and careers. Based on these findings, we discuss important implications for management education in terms of selection and development of academics.

International advisory councils and internationalization of governance: a qualitative analysis

ABSTRACTThis paper discusses the emergence of international advisory councils (IACs) at universities around the world and introduces the concept of internationalization of governance. Global trends in the field of higher education, such as the quest to create world-class universities and advance in global rankings, the rise of new public management, and internationalization have primed universities to create adjacent governing structures in the form of IACs. Primarily composed by international members, external to the university, IACs are positioned to offer advice on the strategic direction of the institution and its main challenges. In order to better understand this new phenomenon, we interviewed 20 members of different IACs and 6 representatives of universities hosting such structures. This paper presents the thematic analysis conducted on these interviews, answering questions about the composition, structures, modes of operation and effectiveness of IACs, as well as the motivations of members joining IACs and the driving rationales of host institutions. In addition, this paper advances a typology of IACs where three types of IACs are identified: transformative, prestige-oriented and symbolic.

Individualisation, Accounting and Management in the Public Sector - Accountability, Efficiency and the Makeablee Employee

This paper suggests that despite various shortcomings of New Public Management (NPM) and the developments since the concept was introduced, NPM-like initiatives have seemed to remain important in the public sector in the Netherlands. The paper first addresses some societal forces, trends and developments in economic theory, which have played a role in the rise of NPM. Here the paper’s focus is on individualisation, and in particular on what Beck (2002) calls ‘institutionalised individualisation’, since this is an aspect which did not receive much attention in the NPM literature until now. In addition, the paper presents findings of recent field research in local government organisations in the Netherlands. The paper also sketches some recent developments in the management of a number of local government organisations (municipalities and provinces) in the Netherlands. The paper particularly focuses on the role of the (institutionalised) individualisation in these organisations. It seems that the more recent developments in the management of such organisations are largely directed at the individual civil servant, since (new) ‘technical’ changes in, for example, organisational structures and accounting instruments, were considered as not very effective. This emphasis implies in particular that the performance evaluation and ‘behaviour and personal development’ of the individual receive much attention from the management of the organisation. This should help organisations as a whole to improve their performance, i.e. to work more efficiently. The paper concludes that (institutionalised) individualisation, which has been an important factor behind the rise of NPM, is still a major force, and certainly since the start of the financial and economic crisis in 2008. This observation suggests that NPM-like influences continue to play a prominent role.

Fixing the facts: The rise of new public management, the metrification of “quality” and the fall of the academic professions

In this article I argue that neo-liberal reforms of universities since the 1980’s have installed a new type of governance – usually known as New Public Management (NPM) – that is undermining the very idea of professionalism. NPM does so basically by replacing professional ideas and practices concerning the judgment of quality by the continuous “metrification of output” in both the domain of teaching and of research. As the idea of the university is based on the idea of professional specialisation, NPM is rendering the discussion about “the idea of the university” irrelevant. NPM does so especially by “impact factor measurement” and by university ranking, but in the Dutch case also by using “performance agreements” between the government and the universities that force faculties to produce fixed “outputs”. Simultaneously, in terms of labour relations, the faculty’s autonomy is effectively undermined by replacing tenured faculty positions by casualised academic labour. Therefore NPM also requires the permanent “re-education” of the faculty – usually advertised in NPM-New Speak as the faculty’s “professionalisation” – although in fact it boils down to the faculty’s de-professionalisation. The article primarily uses the example of the Dutch universities in order to analyse “impact factor measurement” and “performance agreements” and their role in the general neoliberal economisation of academic teaching and research.

Does Leadership Style Make a Difference? Linking HRM, Job Satisfaction, and Organizational Performance

With the rise of New Public Management, public organizations are confronted with a growing need to demonstrate efficiency and cost-effectiveness. In this study, we examine the relationship between public organizational performance and human resource management (HRM). Specifically, we focus on job satisfaction as a possible mediating variable between organizational performance and HRM, and on the influence of a supervisor’s leadership style on the implementation of Human Resource (HR) practices. Drawing on a secondary analysis of data from a national survey incorporating the views of 6,253 employees of Dutch municipalities, we tested our hypotheses using structural equation modeling. The findings indicate that (a) job satisfaction acts as a mediating variable in the relationship between HRM and organizational performance and (b) a stimulating leadership style has a positive effect on the amount of HR practices used, whereas (c) a correcting leadership style has no effect on the amount of HR practices used.

A Nova Gestão Pública como indutora das atividades de Engenharia de Produção nos órgãos públicos

O propósito deste trabalho é o de mostrar como a Nova Gestão Pública, ao incorporar ferramentas e pontos de vista oriundos da iniciativa privada, abre espaço para maior atuação dos engenheiros de produção no Estado. Na introdução é apresentada uma contextualização histórica da evolução da gestão pública, desde o modelo patrimonialista, passando pelo modelo burocrático e pelo gerencial, até a assunção da Nova Gestão Pública. É também apresentada uma contextualização histórica da própria Engenharia de Produção. A busca por interfaces entre esses dois campos do conhecimento se deu a partir de uma investigação teórica, na qual se procurou entender quais práticas de gestão estariam associadas, simultaneamente, a elementos da Engenharia de Produção e da Nova Gestão Pública. Os resultados dessa investigação nos mostram que essa interface atinge todos os elementos da Nova Gestão Pública e todas as subáreas da Engenharia de Produção.

Rethinking the ‘Public Service Bargain’: the changing (legal) position of civil servants in Europe

It can be argued that because of the rise of New Public Management and the growing dominance of labor law and HRM practices, the so-called ‘traditional’ public law formulation of the position of civil servants has come under pressure in a number of Western European countries in recent decades and have shaken the ‘bargain’ agreed between the political and administrative leaders since the Second World War. By contrast, in Central and Eastern Europe and Britain, new Weberian-type civil service legislation has been introduced. In this analysis, we examine both apparent opposites from a public sector bargains perspective and find that European countries are at a crossroads in their reflection on the ‘bargain’. Points for practitioners For practitioners in this field two considerations are important to note. The first is that while the discussion about the (legal) position of civil servants within their political-administrative system may seem to be a national debate, in essence it forms part of a more general debate that is conducted all across Europe. The second is that both theoretically and empirically, two dimensions of the bargain have to be distinguished, namely on the one hand the material labor conditions (pay, job protection, etc.) and on the other hand the values of bureaucracy (impartiality, integrity, loyalty, etc.). As our empirical analysis shows, these two dimensions have become increasingly independent from each other in the discussions and reforms in various countries over recent decades. In other words, managerial reforms in terms of material labor conditions have in practice been paired with the renewed emphasis on Weberian values of bureaucracy. Whether this decoupling is sustainable from a policy point of view in the long run (i.e. whether Weberian-style labor conditions are or are not conditional for high levels of Weberian values of bureaucracy), remains to be seen.

Performance Management in Universities: Effects of the Transition to More Quantitative Measurement Systems

The measurement of research and teaching performance is increasingly common within universities, driven probably by the rise of New Public Management (NPM). Although changing over time and varying from country to country, NPM involves the use of private sector methods in the public sector. Traditionally, performance measurement in universities has had a developmental role – helping individuals to improve their (future) performance. However, the new systems seem more judgemental – i.e. seeking to quantitatively evaluate (past) performance. We study performance measurement in two Accounting and Finance groups – one in the Netherlands and one in the UK. In both we see an increasing use of judgemental forms of performance evaluation and, in particular, the use of more quantitative performance measures. The use of these more judgemental quantitative systems is seen to have various effects. Although these systems emphasise objective quantitative measures, they relocate subjectivities (usually at a greater distance from the subject), rather than remove them. This creates uncertainty and anxiety about how the systems are used. There is a danger that the new systems could inhibit creativity in teaching and limit contributions to the world outside the university. Furthermore, they could damage creativity and innovation in accounting research – as researchers play safe in getting the publications they need. As we are both researchers and practitioners in this area, we should be challenging these trends and pointing to the dangers for research (and teaching) in our field.

Rationalism and public policy: Mode of analysis or symbolic politics?

This article takes up the distinction between incremental analysis and incremental politics as elaborated by Lindblom in his 1979 article. We argue that while rationalism as a mode of analysis has lost much of its prominence, rationalism as symbolic politics is still very much alive and might even be more present today than it was back when Lindblom wrote his famous 1959 article. The recent shift to new modes of governance whereby elected officials are increasingly delegating decision-making powers to independent bureaucracies – what Majone calls the “regulatory state” or what the British describe as “agencification” or quangoisation” – has created an important legitimacy deficit for those non-majoritarian institutions that exercise political authority without enjoying any direct link to the electoral process. In such a context – and in addition to growing public distrust towards partisan politics – rationalist politics is likely to become more rampant as independent bureaucracies lack the legitimacy to publicly recognize the fundamentally incrementalist – and thus values-laden – nature of their decision-making processes. To develop these ideas, the article looks at the case of “supreme audit institutions”. We argue that the synoptic model is a mean for SAIs to legitimize their shift from classical financial auditing to performance auditing. In comparison to other independent bureaucracies, they are particularly prone to rationalist politics not only because of their institutional independence, but also because of the tradition of financial auditing and the rise of new public management.

Performance Measurement in Universities: A Comparative Study of Two A&F Groups in the Netherlands and the UK

Traditionally, the management of universities has been relatively informal and, to a large extent, the responsibility of academics. However, with the rise of New Public Management in the 1980s, and its introduction of rational, ‘businesslike’ management into the public sectors of most Western countries, many universities have made various changes in their management and control systems. For example, in many countries university funding is now much more dependent on ‘performance measures,' with such things as journal rankings, research assessments, teaching quality audits and so on. In this paper we describe a study we conducted in our own two universities; i.e., the Accounting and Finance groups in Groningen and Manchester. The objective of this research is to explore the reasons for the similarities, and more importantly, the differences in the use of performance measurement systems in the two universities. Our research is informed by recent developments in institutional theory which have begun to explore the internal processes through which organizations respond to external institutional pressures. The aim is to examine how the institutional pressure for more performance measurement in universities in general is reproduced in terms of performance measurement systems within the specific universities and how these systems impact on individual departments and the academics working within them. Although there are differences, the perceived effects of the new performance measurement systems appear quite similar in both cases. For example, individual academics understand and probably to some extent positively welcome the new more ‘rational and objective’ systems, but these systems also create uncertainty, stress and, in some instances, even anger and frustration. In the past, resource allocation and performance measurement were relatively implicit and subjective, but they were largely developed and ‘owned’ by the academics themselves, and were a part of their ‘group culture’, whilst nowadays the systems are imposed from higher levels of the faculty and/or university. It seems that adding elements of rationality and objectivity to the systems does not necessarily reduce uncertainty and stress; more likely it can even add to them.

Inclusion or control? commissioning and contracting services for people with learning disabilities

Accessible summary • The rise of new public management has seen the role of the social worker becoming increasingly administrative and less about face to face contact with service users. • When commissioning managers seek to help people with learning disabilities plan their services, who actually makes the decisions? • Direct payments are proposed as the answer for people with learning disabilities to take the lead, but is this a real shift in power from managers to service users? This paper examines what commissioning and contracting means for people with learning disabilities. It asks if the voices of service users are heard when it comes to planning their services and, more significantly, are their choices respected and acted upon by commissioners? The government believes the introduction of direct payments will change the way social care is administered, by placing both the decision-making and funding, firmly in the hands of people with learning disabilities. However, the question remains as to how far this can be successful, considering the complicated administration and financial processes involved. The paper explores new ground in terms of research by investigates the effects that new public management, in the form of commissioning and contracting, has on the lives of people with learning disabilities. It looks at the relationship between the service user, care manager and commissioner, and asks whether management structures help individuals or actually create further barriers to participation and inclusion. Summary This paper seeks to critically assess the impact made by the introduction of commissioning and contracting as a new culture of social care in learning disability services. It offers an evaluation of the growth in importance of the user as consumer. Does the commissioning and the contract process give users with learning disabilities a greater influence over their services and ultimately their lives? It is suggested that far from empowering people with learning disabilities to have a say in the services they want, the emerging culture of business contracts and new public management transfers power firmly back into the hands of professionals making the decisions. Social work practice is changing in response to major shifts in social trends and at the behest of market values. Traditional models are being rejected and the challenge for social work is to adapt itself to operate within a competency based paradigm. The paper argues that at the centre of this new culture is a government use of a system of performance management that successfully drives down cost.Thus there remain contradictions between the adoption of a mixed economy of care; services planning; consumerism; resource constraints; and the communication difficulties experienced by many people with learning disabilities.

Globalization, new public management and the enabling State

Explores the links between processes of globalization and new public management (NPM), and examines their effects on the management of the police in particular. Assesses whether managerial unity or managerial disunity will characterize the future of police management. Looks at the effects of globalization on academic disciplines; the role of the State in an era of globalization; the rise of NPM; the effects of NPM on the management of the British police; the implications of police management reform for the police; and future scenarios of police management.

A Study of the Use of Targets in the Planning Documents of Executive Agencies

The use of quantitative, often non‐financial, targets and performance measures in the plans of both businesses and not‐for‐profit organisations has recently received increasing attention in the academic literature. In the UK public sector this has been particularly important, given the rise of New Public Management. This has resulted in a shift from issues of policy to issues of management, and the break‐up of traditional bureaucratic structures. These changes have been supported by an increasing focus on setting quantitative targets which cover all aspects of an organisation's performance. This paper seeks to examine the possible role of quantitative targets in planning and control in public sector organisations. Furthermore, through an exploratory study of over eighty planning documents from executive agencies, the nature and breadth of targets being used are examined and discussed.