There is no denying the fact that the the components of new public management were both structural and
managerial . While
the justification for the reforms was founded on the need to make the delivery of public services manageable and accountable, to avoid waste and reduce costs, to encourage
competition and customer responsiveness, to apply proven private sector practices and to focus on results, it lead to changes away from a uniform and inclusive public sector and from ‘qualitative and implicit standards and norms’ towards an environment of fewer procedural constraints, more discretionary powers, and to performance-related pay and less secure conditions of employment.
After F.W.Taylor’s ‘The principles of scientific
Management’, the various management theories and schools have been developed. There is one theory, model and technique of business management. The trend to introduce business like management in government therefore seems not so much inspired by scientific reason as it is by the ideological Zeitgeist. Several authors have examined the phenomenon of managerial reforms in western administrations, and various more or less different typologies have been published. What they all have in common is at least the following three characteristics:
1. business management techniques,
2. service and client orientation,
3. Market-type mechanisms such as competition.
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'In Britain, PUBLIC MANAGEMENT REFORM has two divergent strands: managerial and the new institutional economics. Managerial refers to introducing private sector management in the public sector. It stresses: hands-on, professional management, explicit standards and measures of performance, managing by results, and value for money and more recently closeness to the customer. It is often synonym for the '3Es'. The new institutional economics refers to introducing incentive structures (such as market competition) in to public service provision. It stresses desegregating bureaucracies, greater competition through contracting-out and quasi-markets and consumer choice'
The introduction of businesslike management began in the British civil service when Margaret Thatcher created the Rayner scrutinies. Mr. Rayner came from a private office and presided in the cabinet office over a project group, which had to support the many scrutinies in the various departments. The terms of reference for the scrutiny team which produced the report ‘Improving Management in Government: ‘The Next Steps’ “to identify the progress achieved in improving management in the civil service” and “to identify the institutional, administrative, political and attitudinal obstacles to better management and efficiency that still remain”. This report recommended reducing the civil service to a small “core” of policy makers and “transferring” other officials to work under free standing agency boards. The ‘agencies’ should be established to carry out the executive functions of government within a policy and resources framework set by a department. Next step report was published in 1987 with view to ensure higher efficiency, better quality, and more value for money-by granting more autonomy to the executive service delivery agencies. Germany, the concept of PUBLIC MANAGEMENT REFORM adopted in different name, which is called New Steering Model. It is evident that France does not particularly have an Anglo-Saxon tradition in respect to state, government and civil service.
New public management in Belgium is associated with a more business-oriented style of management, cutting back on public spending and privatisation. The tradition of neo- corporatism, however, is still firmly in place. In the new structures of the Autonomous Public Enterprises, conventional political and interest groups are settling down in the executive boards with a view to controlling the policy of the public organisations. In these circumstances the freedom of action of the PUBLIC MANAGEMENT REFORMs is likely to continue to be limited.