Public management policy pdf

Formulation and adoption Policy formulation means coming up with an approach to solving a problem. Congress, the executive branch, the courts, and interest groups may be involved. Contradictory proposals are often made. The president may have one approach to immigration reform, and the opposition- party members of Congress may have another. Implementation The implementation or carrying out of policy is most often accomplished by institutions other than those that formulated and adopted it.

A statute usually provides just a broad outline of a policy. People inside and outside of government typically use cost-benefit analysis to try to find the answer CliffsNotes. Issue emergence ii.

Agenda setting iii. Alternative selection iv. Enactment v. Implementation and vi. Evaluation All of these stages can be analyzed in an individual manner in relation to the packaging policy of Tesco. The basic aim of their approach is to assist someone who is required to analyze a given situation and to derive a policy to deal with it. The analysis for policy is the central approach in social science and educational policy studies.

It is linked to two different traditions of policy analysis and research frameworks. Policy analysis is a technique used in public administration to enable civil servants to examine and evaluate the available options to implement the goals of elected officials. It has been defined as the process of "determining which of various policies will achieve a given set of goals in light of the relations between the policies and the goals Wikipedia.

The second category — policy as cultural agent — sees how policy aims to provide certain roles, characteristics or social identities to particular actors and how these actors understand, internalise and act upon the roles and characteristics given to them. It encourages researchers to explore both overt and ulterior motives of policy makers for introducing a new policy. Its scope is the micro-scale and its problem interpretation or problem resolution usually involves a technical solution.

The primary aim is to identify the most effective and efficient solution in technical and economic terms e. It aims at determining what processes, means and policy instruments e. As well, it tries to explain the role and influence of stakeholders within the policy process.

Meta-policy The meta-policy approach is a systems and context approach; i. It aims at explaining the contextual factors of the policy process; i. As problems may result because of structural factors e. According to Carl V. Patton and David S. On what criterion is the decision likely to be made? Will it be minimizing the cost of some service? Avoid the Tool-box Approach to Analyzing Policy: Some disciplines specify analytical routines in detail for many circumstances.

This may encourage some people to begin work on a policy problem because it lends itself to their favorite method Learn to Deal with Uncertainty: Neophyte analysts are tempted to isolate each parameter of a policy problem and then establish their most likely future values.

Having tacked down the key parameters of the problem because the task is never-ending, many spend most of their allocated time on this phase , they believe the problem can be solved. Say It with Numbers: Much of this book deals with using numbers to understand and resolve problems. Most policy problems have an associated data base, and it is important to use these data in gaining insights about the problem.

Make the Analysis Simple and Transparent: Does the analysis inform your clients? Do they understand it and as a consequence make better decisions? These central questions should be asked about any policy analysis. Check the Facts: It is important to develop a healthy skepticism for widely held beliefs and established facts in matters of public policy. Learn to Advocate the Positions of Others: There are three principal reasons that taking a position different from your own can be beneficial.

This is not to suggest that analysts should be amoral. Give the Client Analysis, Not Decisions. Policy analysts and planners usually give advice to their clients; they do not make decisions for them. Often problems come in very circumscribed forms. Someone has already decided what the problem is and what the alternatives are.

Quality of analysis can be judged only in the context of time and resources available. Policies are the ways by which annual objectives will be achieved. Elements of policies are Policy objectives: These are the "ends" of a policy and reflect the overall purpose or long-term aim s. Components of Policy: Policy is very important to any organization, and of course with policy everything seems mess, however the following are the essential components of a policy. Strategic management: concepts and cases.

New Jersy: Pearson Education, Inc. Although clearly offering a number of benefits to the public service, these reforms have also contributed to an environment of turmoil, a largely disillusioned and cynical public service, and almost pervasive strain between competing values and goals Aucoin, ; Boston et al.

The need to move toward a value-driven public administration that incorporates improved management but more fundamentally addresses the right and entitlement of clients, taxpayers, and citizens is clear. Each country should address the specifics of the problems it has encountered, and not import a set of reforms designed initially for one country and adopted by another one. In fact, NPM has been implemented selectively, some countries have adopted some parts and not others, or adopted and then adapted the reforms in a variety of ways, while others such as China have focused on their immediate needs, such as providing agencies a single estimate of revenue for the year, and South Africa, which is focusing intensively on accountability issues as part of the effort of nation building.

Those who considered NPM as a consistent and ready-to- use concept to reform the public-sector never understood that there is no NPM that has been used as a single concept in any country. Most NPM-related contributions have been made out of an Anglo-Saxon, in the beginning, mostly British perspective which is, in fact, closer to a U. What is New Public Management? Is NPM just another management fad, a fashion, another thing promising everything?

NPM is nothing more than a set of almost every management tool found to be suitable for the public-sector. And the opponents of the past, as well as those of today, usually evaluate any change in public-sector with a highly normative and idealistic view of public-sector.

NPM is by far more than management systems or performance measurement. Excessive customer orientation also raised concerns about democratic accountability and control. Several people have considered NPM as a set of tools, but some have seen it as a political theory. NPM tries to realign the relationship between expert managers and their political superiors. Particularly, it seeks to set the relationship closer to parallel, allowing the expert manager to have greater discretion than in the immediately preceding paradigm.

NPM looks more like an echo than a rejection of the bureaucratic paradigm. Cross-National Communications and NPM The cluster of reform ideas dominant in international discourse during the s provided a global diagnosis and a standard medicine for the ills of the public-sector around the globe. It was suggested that the medicine would have beneficial effects whether used in established democracies, in the former Warsaw Pact countries or in third world, less-developed countries.

The old public administration emphasizing due process and rules was declared old-fashioned and dysfunctional. Reformers advocated replacing old public administration with NPM focusing on goals and results and getting lessons from private-sector techniques in public-sector reform.

As Peters explains: The ideas of reform have served as a relatively common stimulus to which the countries have responded, and the responses provide valuable insight into their administrative and political systems. Most of the examples of reforms provided in text books are derived from the Anglo-American parts of the world, but similar changes are being implemented in other developed, developing, and less-developed countries. The Anglo-American countries have been home to much of the advocacy of free enterprise and the market while the continental Europe has opted for a more restrained form of mixed-economy welfare state even when conservative political parties have been in power.

Many of the reform techniques, such as TQM and strategic planning, have been imported directly from the private sector into government. Peters , p. Most of these ideas for reform are based implicitly on the assumption that government will function better if it is managed more as if it were a private-sector organization guided by the market, instead of by the hierarchy Peters, To achieve better results in the public-sector, governments should run like business. Although the influence of NPM varies across Western democratic regimes, everywhere there is recognition of the need to reduce the micromanagement of govern- ment operations by legislatures, the executives, and central administrative agencies OECD, AQ1 The bureaucratic model of management worked exceedingly well for its time, but times have changed and a new approach to management, empha- sizing teams and customer service, has emerged to challenge the traditional model of public administration.

The market models of reforms take places against the traditional models of public administration as alternative models. There were three ways to deal with deficit. These two ways seem to be unrealistic alternatives from a political perspective. These financial crises have led to budgetary restraint and downsizing of public employees, as well as attempts to privatize govern- ment operations and to deregulate private economic initiatives Aucoin, ; Peters, What is especially remarkable about the contemporary NPM movement is the simi- larity of the changes implemented, and the similarity of the discourse about change in the public-sector occurring in many of those settings.

The ex- pectations from NPM are the same for all the governments: more efficient, more effective, small, transparent, and less expensive government Peters, ; World Bank, How a fashion is established is one of the most intriguing questions of public policy. Major Characteristics of NPM Reforms In all the leading Western democracies, the reforms of the s and early s drew upon previous dissatisfaction with government and upon the work of previous commissions or groups that studied the problem.

The Grace Commission in the United States simply argued that government should be operated like a business Ingraham, As a result, the reforms that eventually ensued emphasized not only significant down- sizing, but also significantly improved management capabilities. The main idea for reforming government was if government guided private-sector principles rather than Weberian rigid hierarchical bureaucracy, it would work more efficiently and more effectively.

These surveys clearly demonstrate the extent and depth of recent administrative reform initia- tives. The OECD surveys arrive at a number of trends that seem to be common to all countries, such as increased result and cost consciousness, service provision and customer orientation, performance budgeting, human resources management, performance control, and evaluation of results. The shift from bureaucratic administration to business-like professional management with NPM was promoted as a strategy fitting for all levels, and branches of the public-sector, local as well as central governments, and every kind of administrative culture in any country whatsoever.

NPM has been presented as a remedy to cure management ills in various organ- izational contexts, as well as in various areas of policy making, from education to healthcare. According to its general applicability in various settings, the style of NPM obviously differs depending on the political and historical conditions of the administrative cultures under which it has to operate. Therefore, it should be obvious that NPM is not a monolithic administrative reform doctrine that operates similarly in all countries, governmental levels, and agencies OECD, At the very least, differences in the state and administration need to be considered before an idea of public management is transferred to another country.

According to specific political goals or national ad- ministrative cultures, NPM approaches differ in two main respects. First, there are substantial differences in the role the states take on in the reform process, and second, there are essential differences in the orientation of reforms: the targeted subject matters with which to improve efficiency and goal attainment in public service.

The core reform ideas and principles included in most national efforts of the past three decades are frequently put up with the term managerialism. Manage- rialism relies on an essentially private-sector set of techniques and practices, largely raised by public choice and market theories Aucion, ; Peters, ; Flynn, Greater efficiency is a primary objective of managerialist reforms: decentralized, privatized, or otherwise off-loaded government services are also central to the managerialist strategy.

In the Westminster systems, the separation of policy advising from service delivery was com- mon. In virtually all cases, the senior civil service was a target of reform with the use of performance contracts, often in combination with greater au- thority and discretion in budgetary and personnel matters, as a common feature.

Since the early- to mids, the search for smarter as well as smaller government has led numerous countries to launch major public-sector re- forms. In Australia, there have been important financial management reforms and machinery of gov- ernment changes at the federal, state, and local government levels.

Although the rhetoric might have varied around the world, most of the recent efforts at governmental reinvention, restructuring, and renewal have shared similar goals. The major goals are to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the public-sector, enhance the responsiveness of public agencies to their clients and customers, reduce public expenditure, and improve managerial account- ability Halligan, ; Kettl, The choice of policy instruments has also been remarkably similar: commercialization, corporatization, and privatiza- tion; the devolution of management responsibilities; a shift from input con- trols to output and outcome measures; tighter performance specification; and more extensive contracting-out Holmes, ; Boston et al.

National NPM Programs There are some trends in public-sector modernization in terms of changing processes and structures and in state modernization in terms of institu- tional changes of the system, and nationwide policy changes. Usually, these trends have been named internal modernization, marketization, and democracy and participation.

Most of the terms seem to be the smallest common ground of OECD reforms. It can be found useful to form groups of countries. Speed is also different, as well as the approaches. For example, in Britain — at least until the very early s — democracy and participation were mostly a managerial driven customer orientation in public-sector modern- ization. It was not based on democracy. However, it would be wrong to conclude that British modernization efforts were only management based — at least after the Conservative era.

Changes in the political structure — devolution in Scotland and Wales, the regional debate in England, the introduction of cabinets on the local level, etc.

In public-sector reform in developing countries, the large donors relied heavily on deregulation, instruments, and promoted leadership. This is especially true for sub-Saharan Africa, to some extent to South America, and to Asian countries as well. The structural adjustment programs had a severe impact on stability, and the failure in democratic terms encouraged large donor organizations to formulate joining programs.

The missing success of NPM-related reforms in developing countries is a logical consequence of its missing institutional and path dependency perspective. Although many ascribe the adoption of NPM-oriented methods as responses to economic and fiscal stress and global trends, drawing on research on Spain, Mexico, Brazil, Thailand, and the United States, Barzelay and his colleagues show that reform agenda setting is sensitive to a number of context-specific political and other variables.

The influences of traveling ideas and economic policy over public management policy making are overdrawn. NPM ideas have created a distinctive legacy that prompts continuous adjustments. Public-sector managers now take for granted private-sector-like routines that are more the exception than the rule inter- nationally.

Effective public services stem ultimately from effective routines, the following are the really important legacies: decentralized authority for financial management within central budget limits , backed by information about assets and liabilities, which put constant pressure on managers to consider the best mix of capital and staffing, and decentralized authority for human resource management, meaning that managers have considerable discretion over who they can hire and how they manage performance.

Considerably more information is available for scrutiny than was the case prior to , a healthy development for democratic debate. Of course managing by results is a very old idea, closely tied to managing by performance, which seemed new back in the Kennedy administration, but even then was just the upswing of an older cycle. That was as true of its founders in the progressive era as it is of the most dedicated contemporary manage- rialists.

The main issue that divides students of public administration goes to this issue of administrative control. Conventional study of control treats control as technical process related to inputs resources, including em- ployee behavior and desired outputs specific organizational goals and economic efficiency generally Ouchi, ; Peterson, If there is anything consistent about NPM, it is the mantra — let the managers manage; make the managers manage, which is usually translated to say: give them the flexibility to acquire and deploy resources and then hold them account- able for results.

Of course, the efficacy of this prescription depends not only on several variables, at a minimum the specification of organizational purpose, but also effective mechanisms for central handling of accounts payable and perhaps also an appropriate structure of accounts. Many if not most developing nations lack these minimum conditions. NPM should be and has been implemented as a reaction of local, regional, national problems perceived by decision makers — and its success should be measured by its ability to solve these problems.

In many cases, severe existing problems have been solved by methods of the NPM. New Zealand and Australia have acted as a testing ground for a set of reforms intended for widespread implementation.

The rhetoric might differ in different countries, but emerging research suggests that the basic set of NPM reforms is essentially the same. In many developing countries, the public-sector is an optimal place where the political class can situate its clientele and the bureaucratic class its relatives, and nobody wants to give it up. The managerial public teams possess almost absolute ignorance about managerial tools and the public administration personnel grows in number and inadequacy of profiles to duties to be performed despite the public rhetoric.

Control is focused on procedures and not in results. The managerial aspects of the reform are systemat- ically put aside because they can drive to let the political and bureaucratic classes with less power and nobody has interest in such a scenario.

NPM is indeed a set of tools rather than a consistent program to be applied to all countries in all circumstances. It is a set of tools based on the use of markets instead of bureaucracy — i. The institutional frameworks of countries differ and this is what conditions the utility of using NPM or any other model to signal the failure of formal bureaucracy.

So rather than saying NPM is all bad and formal bureaucracy all good, there needs to be some appreciation of the circumstances in which one, and not the other, might work and in which direction. It is patronizing to say that developing countries must stick to the AQ2 bureaucratic model when they are developing markets and other institu- tions to assist their people. Conclusions NPM reforms, if they are to be effectively implemented, require a holistic approach, integrating the multiple human resources, financial, technical, and structural factors involved within a dynamic environment OECD, Kaul , p.

Equally important is the institutional- ization within the government machine of the skills necessary for the con- tinuation and development of good management in government.

A country with huge pressing problems of corruption or lack of work ethic among public employees is probably not matured for more frontline empowerment reforms, and it probably needs to get its house in order before it can start in a serious way worrying about the quality of public- sector results. Conversely, we should not impose hypercontrol and rule boundedness on public-sector organizations where these are less serious issues, and where the costs of a lack of result-orientation are much greater Kelman, It is useful to think of NPM not as a management reform ideology, movement or trend but rather as a set of tools, any of which may be applied or not in specific settings.