Is there a conflict between the new public management and ethics - Essay Example

A minimum ethical standard is expected from the behaviour of public servants and this has become a major issue for every government. NPM involves maintaining proper allocation of responsibilities for public servants, managing budgetary constraints and implementing innovations in public services. In this era of globalization, where almost every country is participating in the international trade of goods and services, it has become even more vital that public services be conducted in ethical manner to enhance international economic relations.

For conduct management of public servants, it is necessary that an efficient management system be in place. The principles that are to be used by any government should comply with the socioeconomic structure of its country. These principles can be used by political leaders to assess how efficiently ethic management regulations are followed and how well ethics is maintained at every operational level of the government. The Basics of New Public Management The overall success of NPM and its businesslike approach depends on further development of management principles to ensure that NPM is effective in sustaining ethical efficiency in public sector.

The purpose is to manage integrity in public services within the framework of NPM. . The three aspects are virtues that need to be developed, rules that need to be duly followed, and focus should be on getting positive results. In order to work within the framework of the triangle, certain drawbacks of public services need to be avoided like overstating the advantages of any proposal, hiding errors, not making maximum usage of established systems, practicing favoritism, not accepting responsibilities for a mistake, etc.

In order to do maximum good to the maximum number of people in a community, emphasis should be on doing the right thing according to the set rules (Bowman, et al., 2010, pp.78-79). The principle of NPM includes various elements like consistent increase in efficiency, use of recently developed technologies, public servants with the goal to maintain discipline in their activities, proper implementation of professional management role, and managers being given liberty in performing their tasks (Kolthoff et al., 2007, p.400).

However, in spite of the above mentioned elements, the businesslike approach of public administration can have a serious negative impact on democracy because such technique is faced by a consistent accountability problem. Even the strong advocators of public entrepreneurship policies in democratic governance cannot ignore the questions of accountability. The elements attached to public entrepreneurs like promoting own virtues, tendency towards non-compliance with rules and regulations, striving for power, taking risks, all these conflict with the democratic theory (Terry, 1998, pp.197-198). Ethics is often defined as acting in accordance with one’s “good personal conscience” (Somerville, 2004, p.284). This is not always right as doing ethics is a long and complicated process.

One aspect of public