Key Elements of the New Public Management

Key elements of the new public management

The overview of traditional public administration.

Public administration is defined by many writers as the use of managerial, political, and theories and processes to fulfill legislative, executive and judicial governmental mandates for the provision of regulatory and service functions for the society as a whole or some segment of it (Hughes 2003:8 quoting Rosenbloom 1986).According to Hughes, public administration refers to the academic study of the public sector, and that the particular theory dominant for most of the twentieth century is the so called the ‘traditional model of public administration’.

Public administration as both theory and practice began in the late nineteenth century.The underlying principles for the traditional mode of public administration include the Max Weber’s theory of bureaucracy, Frederickb Taylor’s theory of scientific management and Woodrow Wilson’s principle of separation of politics from administration. It is characterized as administering under the formal control of political leadership, based on a strictly hierarchical model of bureaucracy, staffed by permanent, neutral and anonymous officials, motivated by the public interest, serving any government part equally, and not contributing to policy but merely administer those policies decided by the politicians.

The traditional model of public administration still remains the long-lasting and most successful theory of management in the public sector, although it is now being replaced by the New Public Management, It is only that in recent two decades， traditional public administration theories and practices are now considered old-fashioned and no longer relevant to the needs of a rapidly changing society. A wave of public management reforms has swept through developed, transitional and developing countries.

The introduction of the new public management.

Over the past twenty years, reform has been a key word, phrase, and...