New Public Management - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages... It is there to provide the necessary system to deliver the health care, education, business, legal, security and housing needs of the public. It is, by itself, a solutions provider. The logic behind this service is that the people they govern are taxpayers - meaning, they pay the government with a part of their income. This in turn is returned to them thru the services just mentioned. This is what is termed as public service.
Public Service is concentrated on delivering benefits to the public. This is what differentiates it from the private sector whose sole purpose is to generate revenues for the service provider. Thru an efficient scheme, the business owner operates his system. This system must be set-up such that the optimum revenues are generated. It may seem that the public and private sector are diametrically opposed because of this difference in orientation. Does this mean they are irreconcilable
What if you adapt the system used by the private sector and incorporate it to the way the government operates its 'business' This is actually the rationale behind the philosophy "New Public Management (NPM)".
This paper aims to explore the concept of NPM and determine whether it has left any legacies on the current public management in the United Kingdom setting or whether it was just something that came out of the blue, had a short lived existence and died naturally. To facilitate this, an analysis with the Modernization trend that is operating in the contemporary setting shall be done to determine whether NPM is related to it somehow.

The New Public Management

The theory behind NPM is that public organisations import decision-making processes from the private division, emulating their winning techniques. It requires governments to be more market concentrated treating the citizens much like customers. NPM stands for a main shift in paradigm from customary public administration. Additional notice is paid to the "achievement of results and the personal responsibility of managers." (Mishra 2001, 36-41) It need extra stress on program assessment, performance dimension and increased import of private sector practices into the area of public management. By these strategy, the rudiments of accountability, performance, free flow of information and smooth management can be addressed thereby resulting to good governance(Osborne 2002, 203-209).
According to academic think tanks, the mainly widespread elements for good governance comprise political answerability, a sound judicial system, accountability and an amalgamation of marketing principles in the operation of public organisations. A mixture of such elements has been explained by a range of titles. Pollitt labelled the new approach as "managerialism," (2001, 175) as Hood preferred to call it "new public management" (2001, 3-19) .These views from Europe highlight the management element. On the additional side of the Atlantic, Lan and Rosenbloom favoured the term "market-based public administration," as Osborne and Gaebler went one step additional and used the term "entrepreneurial government." In spite of different labels, the spirit of "new public management" centres on the use of market main beliefs and seeks to make stronger the elements of competence, performance and consequences in the process (Lan, Z. 2002, 535-537). Whatever the terms maybe, they still are

To facilitate discussion, the main elements of NPM are presented below:
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