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The discussion about public sector performance is still present today, despite the profound research that has already tried to address this subject. Furthermore, theory links negative effects on organizational performance with increased levels of organizational complexity. However, literature thus far did not succeed to put forward a successful theory that explains why and how public organizations became increasingly complex. To answer this question, we argue that increased organizational complexity can be explained by viewing public organizations as the hybrid result of different institutional logics, which are shaped by various management views. However, former research mainly concentrated on the separate study of management views such as traditional public management (TPM), NPM, and post-NPM. Although appealing, research that approaches hybridity from this perspective is fairly limited.

We conducted a literature review in which we studied 80 articles about traditional public management, NPM, and post-NPM.

We found that these management views essentially differ on the base of three fault lines, depending on the level of the organizational culture. These fault lines, according to the management view, together result in nine dimensions. By combing dimensions of the different management views, we argue that a public organization becomes hybrid. Furthermore, in line with findings of contingency theory, we explain the level of hybridity might depend on the level of tight coupling for a given organization. Finally, we developed propositions that explain hybridity as the result of isomorphic forces, organizational change, and organizational resistance to change and that link hybridization with processes of selective coupling.

The value of this chapter lies in its real-life applicability.

The purpose of this paper is to address studies of New Public Governance (NPG) as a post-New Public Management (NPM) tendency. Although NPG is considered a contrast to NPM and its market incentives, it argues that the practices emerging in tensions of NPM and NPG discourses indicate not a clear-cut shift away from NPM, but rather changes that combine competition with collaboration and trust.

It offers a discourse approach to advance the theorizing and empirical unfolding of the tensions of contradicting, yet co-existing discourses of NPM and NPG and their effects in practice. Drawing on a case study from the Danish daycare sector, it investigates local collaborative governance initiatives that develop new quality-management methods.

The study elucidates how NPM and NPG discourses collide in local practices of public sector management within daycare. It shows that the discursive tensions between such value-laden practices indicate a changing marketization associated with collaboration and trust, yet also competition.

To research it becomes critical to advance theoretical and empirical knowledge on the constitutive effects of such complex discursive tensions in public organizations.

To practice it becomes necessary to acknowledge and handle co-existing, yet contradicting management discourses, and not mistake their opposing values as necessarily distinct, but rather as entangled in practice.

The paper contributes with original findings that shed new light on colliding management discourses in practices and their effects within the public sector area of daycare.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the transitional status of new public management (NPM) into new public governance (NPG) in a developing country context. Some authors, based on their research in developed countries, have claimed that NPM is dead. However, such claims have apparently ignored the transformational status of NPM in developing countries. This paper addresses that gap.

A qualitative method was used in this research. Public officials, elected representatives and local users who were responsible for public service management at local levels in Bangladesh were interviewed using semi-structured questionnaires tailored to each group. The interview texts were then organised and analysed using NVivo software.

This research reveals that four public management elements comprising decentralisation, market-based services, efficiency and accountability, which are prerequisites for creating an appropriate environment for NPG, have not been established successfully in Bangladesh. This finding suggests that NPG may not be achieved without effective implementation of these elements through NPM practices. The study concludes that NPM needs to be practiced for more time in Bangladesh for the effective transformation of public management into public governance.

Findings from this research will help public policy makers and researchers to identify barriers to and design the pathway for a smooth shift from NPM to NPG.

The findings of this research would help the Government of Bangladesh and international aid agencies to better understand the status of NPM and NPG in regional Bangladesh.

The research findings may help identify barriers to enhancing participatory activities in a developing society.

Though NPM is an obsolete theory for developed countries, it needs to be implemented successfully in developing countries prior to the implementation of NPG.

In 2016, New Zealand's Ministry of Health introduced the System Level Measures Framework which marked a departure from health targets and pay-for-performance incentives towards an approach based on local, collaborative approaches to health system improvement. This exemplifies an attempt to “overwrite” New Public Management (NPM) institutional practices with New Public Governance (NPG). We aim to trace this process of overwriting so as to understand how attempts to change institutional practices were facilitated, blocked, translated and edited.

We develop a conceptual framework for understanding and tracing institutional change towards NPG which emphasises the importance of discursive strategies in policy attempts to overwrite NPM with NPG. To analyse the New Zealand case, we drew on policy documents and interviews conducted in 2017–18 with twelve national key informants and fifty interviewees closely involved in local development and/or implementation of the SLMF.

Policy sponsors of collaborative approaches to health system improvement first attempted formal institutional change, arguing that adopting collaborative, quality improvement (NPG) approaches would supplement existing performance management (NPM) practices, to create a superior synthesis. When this formal approach was blocked, they adopted an approach based on informal persuasion of local organisational actors that quality improvement should supplant performance improvement. This approach was edited and translated by local actors, and the success of local implementation varied considerably.

This article offers a novel conceptualisation of public management institutional change, which can help explain why it is difficult to completely erase NPM practices in health.

This paper explores the rhetorical practices that are used in the introduction of a New Public Governance policy framework.

The purpose of this paper is to explore, if, similar to other management initiatives, new public management may be a repackaging of already existent concepts. Emerging in the 1970s and 1980s as an innovative way to manage public sector elements, new public management affected both the ownership and management of public sector companies, services and utilities. Minimal research has been undertaken previously, using historic archival sources of public entities, to explore if elements of the concept originated prior to the 1970s.

This research draws on archival records from a publicly owned electricity company, covering about three decades from 1946, during which a large investment project was undertaken by the company. This study draws on key tenets of what is today called new public management, examining prior research to ascertain if similar elements were present in the case organisation.

When reviewing the progress of the investment project, many of the key elements of new public management emerged, even during the early part of the project.

There is little historical research on the origins of new public management, and the findings here suggest that it may not be entirely new. While this does not at all invalidate existing research, it suggests that new public management may be to an extent a repackaging of previously extant techniques. This opens up possibilities for future historic research in terms of how and why it was repackaged, and also what was/was not repackaged.

This conceptual article aims primarily to illustrate the impact of public value thinking on the process of public sector modernisation. Public value management (PVM) is analysed from two perspectives. First, the principles and features of PVM approaches are detailed, including a comparison of the literature on the other approaches characterizing the modernisation process, that is, traditional public administration (TPA), new public management (NPM) and new public governance (NPG). Then PVM is contrasted with NPM and TPA. Subsequently, the elements connecting PVM with NPG are explored. Second, the theoretical and methodological frameworks within which public value has been operationalized are investigated. One of the core topics is the measurement of public value, which is illustrated focusing on the link between public value (in the singular) and public values (in the plural). The impact that the adoption of public value thinking exerts on the multiple performance objectives for public sector organisations is also investigated. Ultimately, the article aims to highlight the potential of the public value view – considered in conjunction with performance measurement and performance management systems – without neglecting the challenging and problematic aspects of this wave of reform. The comparison with other waves of reform is intended to provide a clearer picture of the way forward for PVM.

Theoretical and methodological investigation, elaborating on the relevant literature on the process of public sector modernisation, is carried out.

The approaches that have emerged during the last two decades (PVM, NPG) are other than alternative solutions. But also less recent waves of change have left, or are expected to leave, their own legacy for public administration over time. This could be the case for NPM, although, according to many scholars, it is in trouble and has lost its driving force, while others see it as simply ‘dead’ and doomed to give way to the ‘digital-era governance’. Several core elements of NPM are no longer in evidence either in PVM or in NPG. Different distinguishing elements have been brought into the foreground. For instance, the idea of the public as citizens characterises PVM and NPG, instead of the public as customers, qualifying NPM. What we are seeing is a progressive expansion of the public’s involvement, through co-production and participation. Contemporary public officials interact with members of the public in ways that involve all of their possible roles: as citizens, customers, partners. There are two salient aspects under which public value thinking can contribute. First, a focus on public value can – better than other approaches – represent a ‘glue’ capable of bringing together debates involving ‘values, institutions, systems, processes, and people’ (Smith, 2004, p. 18). Second, such a focus makes it possible to link insights from different analytical perspectives, fostering a broader view on the determinants of public sector change. This could be of decisive importance for the purpose of reshaping performance measurement and performance management systems, which is a crucial step in public sector reform.

Significant contributions are offered under two aspects. First, in terms of exploration of the concepts of public value (also in relation to public values) and private value. Second, in terms of analysis of the impact that PVM can exert on the logic of performance measurement and performance management.

An international management movement known as New Public Management (NPM) emerged during the 1970s and 1980s. It relies on the normative use of economic market models, transaction cost theory, and public choice theories to deliver public services. While the manifestations of this new approach have taken many different avenues across the world, in the United States the primary manifestations have been found in the “Reinventing Government” movement (Gore, 1993), and the “Competitive Sourcing” plan of the Bush Administration (Office Management and Budget, 2002, 2003). A central component of NPM practices in the United States is the use of “outsourcing” of government service delivery to private or non-profit organizations.

This paper examines whether public sector reforms in a developing country is consistent with the principles of new public management (NPM). It examines whether Indonesian public sector reforms from the late 1990s to 2015, specifically the adoption of accrual accounting, are motivated by NPM philosophy. Reviewing and analysing Government regulations and reports, the study finds that the reforms are an attempt to implement NPM, specifically in relation to five financial management aspects (i.e. market-oriented, budgeting, performance management, financial reporting and auditing systems). However, the reforms are inconsistent with the NPM philosophy of efficiency and effectiveness in public service provisions. By requiring the use of the existing system, the reforms actually created inefficiency. This research is novel in investigating the gap between 'ideal concepts' and examining practices in an emerging country context.

This paper seeks to examine the impacts of the new public management (NPM)‐oriented management accounting on political control at the Malawian local government level. The objective is to investigate the extent to which NPM‐based management accounting practices have increased managerial autonomy and reduced political control.

The paper is based on an empirical study conducted in six local government assemblies in Malawi. These include Salima Town Assembly, Blantyre City Assembly, Lilongwe City Assembly, Mzuzu City Assembly, Mzimba District Assembly, and Zomba Municipal Assembly. It is based on qualitative research methodology. The qualitative data were mainly collected through personal interviews with assembly managers and councillors. In addition, the study also relied on a review of various literature and newspaper articles providing insights to the subject under study.

The paper has found that the NPM‐based management accounting has led to loss of local political control. In this regard, politicians resort to unproductive behaviors which include interference, sabotage and corruption to regain their lost political control. On the other hand, the administrators sustain their managererial autonomy through NPM‐based managerial prerogatives, seeking central government intervention and colluding with the councillors in corrupt activities.

The paper is of both theoretical and empirical value. Theoretically, the paper contributes to the management accounting literature by looking at management accounting in the context of new organizational arrangement models. In addition, the paper makes an empirical contribution to the knowledge vacuum of the impacts and applicability of the NPM‐based management systems in developing countries. It provides information and insights for reformers to consider the social, political, and cultural environment of the implementing countries so as to prevent counter‐productive consequences that may present massive negative implications on public policy outcomes.

This chapter discusses the implications of New Public Management (NPM) and of alternative theories on the higher education sector. Three clusters of alternative concepts and theories are identified, positioned in relation to NPM, and discussed. The chapter concludes that the different theoretical approaches: (1) cannot always be distinguished easily, (2) entail a risk of normativity due to the position of higher education in society, and (3) demonstrate that higher education policy and research are in need of a multi-theoretical approach that is able to put higher education back into its social, political, and economic context. By formulating research questions on the role of higher education and on the impact of former reforms, it is suggested that policy and research look further than the current concepts and theoretical approaches to build a new agenda for future.