Where does the coalition government stand on the New Public Management (NPM)?
Where does the coalition government stand on the New Public Management (NPM)?
With all the talk of cuts and fairness this does not perhaps seem to be the most important question to be asking. However, just as New Labour had a mantra of ‘invest and reform’, the Coalition government is pursuing a policy of ‘cut and reform’. We can only understand public sector cuts within the context of reforms to the management of the public sector.
Some background first; NPM has been the dominant approach to management within the public sector for several decades now. Broadly speaking advocates of the NPM argue that workers and managers are motivated by self interest. In the public sector this can mean that, if left to their own devices, managers in the public sector spend their time building little empires for themselves.
This has lead to an array of management techniques in the public sector from targets to bonuses to the outsourcing of public service delivery. In different ways each of these techniques attempts to counter-act the perceived deficiencies of public sector workers due to “x-inefficiency”.
Despite some flirtation with “digital era governance” the previous New Labour government was a firm believer in the NPM, notably in targets, performance related bonuses and outsourcing in various sometimes ingenious ways. The Coalition government has been critical of these techniques. Targets have been scrapped and bonuses criticised.
I would argue that what is emerging is a new approach but one that has only been made possible by the successes of the previous approach. Let me give you three examples;
just as New Labour had a mantra of ‘invest and reform’, the Coalition government is pursuing a policy of ‘cut and reform’
- Innovation comes through freedom from central control
I would argue that this approach has been made possible because public agencies such as local authorities have internalised NPM. The Coalition government is not concerned about militant tendency or the People's Republic of South Yorkshire. Anyone who has worked in local government over the last few years would probably agree that the prospects of a great revolution in human affairs starting in local government is small.
- Public sector managers are not in favour but commissioners and front line workers
- Public sector will not generate its own league tables but will make data freely available
In all three of these examples the Coalition’s approach is distinct from the previous approach but is still based on the assumptions which underpin the NPM. It is a new iteration rather than a complete break with the past.
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