Fat the Ther

Three OECD countries: the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand have becomeNew public management has become convenient shorthand for a set of broadly similar

administrative doctrines which dominated the public administration reform agenda of most OECD

countries from the late 1970s (Hood, 1991; Pollitt, 1993; Ridley, 1996). It captures most of the

structural, organizational and managerial changes taking place in the public services of these

countries.

leaders in implementing major reforms in public management, starting with different political

perspectives and responding in their turn to crises. The new paradigm is referred to in the literature as

new public management and this terminology is maintained in this paper.

New public management has become convenient shorthand for a set of broadly similar

administrative doctrines which dominated the public administration reform agenda of most OECD

countries from the late 1970s (Hood, 1991; Pollitt, 1993; Ridley, 1996). It captures most of the

structural, organizational and managerial changes taking place in the public services of these

countries.

an ideological thought system based on ideas generated in the private sector and

imported into the public sector (Hood, 1991, 1995).

It is worth noting, for example, that Hood’s original

conception of NPM did not explicitly feature the issue of consumers rights. Another idea is the issue

of consumers to prominence and has since become a key feature of most NPM discussions.

As Hood (1991) has noted, the two broad orientations of NPM are explained by the marriage

of two different streams of ideas (see also Mellon, 1993). The first stresses business-type

managerialism in the public sector and freedom to manage, and comes from the tradition of the

scientific management movement (Hood, 1991:6-7; Ferlie et al., 1996:11).