The institutional ethnographies collected in Under New Public Management explore how new managerial governance practices coordinate the work of people doing front-line work in public sectors such as health, education, social services, and international development, and people management in the private sector. In these fields, organizations have increasingly adopted private-sector management techniques, such as standardized and quantitative measures of performance and an obsession with cost reductions and efficiency. These practices of “new public management” are changing the ways in which front-line workers engage with their clients, students, or patients. Using research drawn from Canada, the United States, Australia, and Denmark, the contributors expose how standardized managerial requirements are created and applied, and how they affect the practicalities of working with people whose lives and experiences are complex and unique.

The New Public Management paradigm seems to have produced a convergence of administrative reform. However, specific implementations of NPM show range of forms and results including performance indicators, personal reforms and evaluations of reforms. This text demonstrates how NPM is crafted differently in various institutional contexts.

How policymakers should guide, manage, and oversee public bureaucracies is a question that lies at the heart of contemporary debates about government and public administration. This text calls for public management to become a vibrant field of public policy.

Since the third edition of this authoritative volume, most of Western Europe and North America have entered an era of austerity which has pervasive effects on programmes of public management reform. Even in Australasia extensive measures of fiscal restraint have been implemented. In this fourth edition the basic structure of the book has been retained but there has been a line-by-line rewriting, including the addition of extensive analyses and information about the impacts of austerity. Many new sources are cited and there is a new exploration of the interactions between austerity and the major paradigms of reform - NPM, the Neo-Weberian State and New Public Governance. The existing strengths of the previous editions have been retained while vital new material on developments since the Global Economic Crisis has been added. This remains the most authoritative, comprehensive, widely-cited academic text on public management reform in Europe, North America and Australasia.

Drawing on economics, organisational theory and politics, Jan-Erik Lane presents new public management from an analytical perspective.

The UK has played a pivotal role in the development of New Public Management (NPM). This book offers an original, comprehensive and multidisciplinary analysis of the impact of the New Public Management in the UK, and situates these analyses in a broader comparative perspective. Its chapters consider: competing typologies of NPM issues of professionalism within NPM debates on social exclusion and equity the role of different research approaches in evaluating NPM the evolving nature of NPM and impact of modernisation evaluations of NPM in mainland Europe, North America, Africa and the developing World, Australia, and Pacific-Asia. Leading authorities from around the world present evaluations of current thinking in NPM and highlight the challenges which will shape future development and research approaches. New Public Management presents a timely and constructive overview of the nature and impact of the NPM and offers important lessons for public management across the world.

New public management is a topical phrase to describe how management techniques from the private sector are now being applied to public services. This book provides a completely up-to-date overview of the main theoretical models of public sector management, and examines the key changes that have occurred as more and more public services are contracted out to private organisations, as the public sector itself grapples with 'internal markets'. Drawing on economics, organisational theory and poliltics, Jan-Erik Lane presents new public management from an analytical perspective. This book uses game theory and empirical studies in order to assess the pros and cons of new public management.