Successful Models of Public Administration and

Management
Pratap Kumar Pathak

Problems with Traditional Models of 'Public Administration'

It is hard to imagine today, but 100 years ago the bureaucratic model of public
administration meant something positive, rational, efficient and superior model of public
management. With the hierarchical system, rational-legal authority and functional
specialization, bureaucracy made possible the efficient undertaking of large and complex tasks
of government.

The traditional model of public administration theorised and contributed largely by

Woodrow Wilson and Max Weber can be characterised as
 An administration under formal control of political leadership;
 Based on a strictly hierarchical model of bureaucracy staffed by permanent, neutral
and anonymous officials,
 Motivated only by the public interest;
 Serving any governing party equally; and
 Not contributing to policy but merely administering those policies taken by politics
in power.

The traditional models of public administration have been taken into criticism in terms
of role-behaviour and efficiency value internalisation. Such criticisms include
 Inputs and process focus subordinating result/outcome focus
 Lack of accountable administration towards citizens: Absence of citizen control and
superordination of citizen's agenda
 Administrative empire building rather than entrepreneurial structures
 Lack of strategic approach to cope changes and manage complexities
 Little room for collaboration and partnership building with private sector
management
 Difficulty in citizen participation and ownership by citizen at large
 Excessive political control rather than professional control over administrative inputs
and processes
 Institutionalisation of inefficient structures and cultures
 Barriers to good governance
 Resistance to change and reforms
 Low level of readiness to address globalization and liberalization

The idea of New Public Administration1 incorporates the following:

 Relevance regarding the needs of the emerging post-industrial society;
 Emphasis on normative concerns of Public Administration;

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  Consideration on the realization of social equity as the main concern of Public
Administration;
 Debureaucratization of the government and replacement with more flexible, humane
and democratic form of organization;
 Concern for citizens as clients of government and efficient delivery of services and
goods as per the needs of society.

The First New Public administration

Because of the rigid, hierarchically based proverbs of administrative practice proved
totally ineffective in the changing environment, Herbert Simon, Dwight Waldo, Frank Marini
and Paul Appleby produced a catalytic approach for reshaping of public administration to
address the necessity of flexibility, creativity and discretion in decision making. As a result of
their experiences, the authors reintroduced a focus on the broader social, moral and political
theoretical effectiveness to challenge the dogma of managerial effectiveness.

 Herbert Simon's "Administrative Behaviour" in 1948 came to attack against the

established proverbs of public administration. It challenged public administration to
abandon its single-minded focus on the structural and replace it with a concern for
the behaviour within the organization. Simon suggested that organizations that have
employees who understand and agree with established goals are more likely to
succeed in achieving those goals.

 It is agreed by all the starting point of the New Public Administration movement was
the Minnewbrook conference sponsored by Dwight Waldo of Syracuse University in
1968. As the outcome of this conference, Frank Marini pioneered the work of
creating "Toward a New Public Administration: The Minnowbrook perspective".

 The politics/administration dichotomy was most effectively challenged by Dwight

Waldo in his "The Administrative State". Waldo introduced the concept of
administrative politics, leaving the dichotomy as a way to differentiate certain
activities of government, not as a basic principle of government organization.
Waldo's hypothesis was that the government is equipped with five branches of
government including policy branch and the rank-and-file branch with distinct in the
government structure.

 Carl Friedrich and Herbert Finer focused on the appropriate values that must underlie
the actions and decisions of individual bureaucrats if government is to achieve its
goal of a better society. They argued that professionalism of the bureaucracy was the
vehicle for "better government " apart from being neutrally competent. Only by
immersing the professionalism in constitutional values and political traditions,
bureaucratic organization could make appropriate decisions.

 Paul Appleby, in his "Morality and Administration in Democratic Government",

raised the question of morality or value perspective based in ethical decision making.
 He furthered the debate of new public administration by raising two somewhat
parallel concerns:
 The moral foundations of government, and
 Differences at the level of operations or day-to-day practice of public
administration and business administration.

In the 1960s, public administration scholar Herbert Kaufman described personnel theory
as an attempt to integrate and balance three conflicting goals:
 Neutral competence
 Representativeness, and
 Executive control

The Second New Public Administration

In 1968, as the outcome of Minnowbrook Conference, emerging theories of public
administration were explored with particular emphasis on views that were anti-hierarchical and
also "people-oriented". The prominent themes for action initiated by the venture included

 There was a renewed emphasis on the importance of bureaucratic decision making

on policy making and on the lives of citizens.
 The failure of the primary constitutional institutions requires the emergence of the
bureaucracy as a fourth branch with co-equal status, authority, and responsibility.
 Only by replacing hierarchy would government agencies achieve the flexibility or
organization and sensitivity to client needs to accomplish government goals.

Another starting point for new public administration is the 1968's Fulton Committee's
Report which noted concerns with the management capability of the public service.

The fundamental concerns of public administration highlighted by the new public

administration movement included
 Effectiveness in achieving the goals of government: Program efficiency
 Competence in the performance of all public institutions: Managerial effectiveness
 Constitutionalism- supporting the values implicit in government: Political
theoretical effectiveness
 Citizen effectiveness
 Global effectiveness

The Third New Public Administration: Successful Models

Imperatives of changes in traditional model of 'Public Administration' include
 Increasing attacks on public sector values, competencies, role-behaviour and
accountability
 Political economic theory – Principal/agent theory
 Application of economic theory – public choice theory or economic rationality
 Addressing globalisation and increasing competitiveness
 Introduction of strategic management in public sector
 The late 1980s and early 1990s have witnessed a transformation in the public sector
management of advanced countries. The rigid, hierarchical, bureaucratic form of public
administration is changing to a flexible, market-based form of public management. This is not
simply a matter of reform or a minor change in management style, but a change in the role-
behaviour of government in society and the relationship between government and the citizenry.
Traditional public administration has been discredited theoretically and practically, and the
adoption of new public management means the emergence of a new paradigm in the public
sector.

This new paradigm has challenged the following principles of public administration:
 Relevance regarding the needs of the emerging post-industrial society;
 Emphasis on normative concerns of Public Administration;
 Consideration on the realization of social equity as the main concern of Public
Administration;
 Debureaucratization of the government and replacement with more flexible, humane
and democratic form of organization;
 Concern for citizens as clients of government and efficient delivery of services and
goods as per the needs of society.

Such challenges have come into influence with the following:

 Delivery by bureaucracy is not the only way to provide government goods and
services. Government can use the capability of private sector.
 Governments for efficiency and effectiveness should adopt flexible management
systems pioneered by the private sector.
 Public administration should be accountable to society in a visible manner.

The beginning of the 1990s advanced new model of public management in varied
successful forms:
 "Managerialism" (Pollitt, 1990)
 "New Public Management" (Hood, 1991)
 Market-based Public Administration" (Lan and Rosenbloom, 1992)
 "Entrepreneurial Government" (Osborne and Gaebler, 1992)
 Strategic Management Model (Nutt and Backoff, 1992)

New Public Management (NPM), Managerialism, Market-based Public Administration

and Reinventing Government are a few incarnations of a new model of public sector
management which emerged since the 70s in pursuit of efforts to find out new ways for making
the governments more efficient and effective. This model of public management has been
reinforced during 90s in response to the challenges of globalisation, international
competitiveness and technological changes. The approach manifests a change in the role and
behaviour of government and bureaucracy in society and the relationship between government
and citizenry with respect to deliberate concern for economic performance, culture of
competitiveness, performance orientation and decentralized structures.

New Public Management or Managerialist Model

 Managerialism is a 'determined effort to implement the "3Es – Efficiency, economy and
effectiveness" in management of public affairs'. The emergence of a new managerial model of
public administration marks a shift from earlier reforms. It focuses on improving performance
and reducing government and involvement as far as possible.
NPM represents a transformation of the public sector and its relationship with
government, bureaucracy and the society. It is theoretically based on economics and private
management.

New public management model has the following doctrines:

 Focus on management, not policy, and on performance appraisal and efficiency;
 The disaggregation of public bureaucracies into agencies which deal with each other
on a user-pay basis;
 The use of quasi-markets and contracting out to foster competition cost-cutting; and
 A style of management, which emphasises output targets, limited-term contracts,
monetary incentives and freedom to manage.

OECD has argued for "a more contractual, participative, discretionary style of
managerial relationship between the hierarchies, between control agencies and operating units,
and between producing units." The two 'avenues' of OECD intervention include
 Raise the production performance of public organizations; and
 Make greater use of the private sector.

The main elements of OECD's managerial programme introduced the following

elements:
 Improving human resources, including performance pay system;
 Staff involvement in decision making;
 Relaxing controls, but imposing performance targets;
 Using information technology;
 Service to clients;
 User charges;
 Contracting out; and
 Deregulation of monopolies.

Andrew Massey, in his 'Managing the Public Sector – 1993' has presented the goals of
reform in managerial model as follows:
 To reduce the role and extent of the 'state' in order to enhance that of the private
sector.
 To facilitate the acquisition of entrepreneurial skills and activities within society
generally.
 To prevent future expansion of the public sector.
 To de-politicise many policy decisions and their being entrusted to professional
experts, rather than the whim of politicians and bureaucrats perceived to be in the
thrall of self-serving interest groups.
  To inculcate public sector organisations with the best techniques of private sector
practice in order to bring the discipline and inherent efficiencies of the marketplace
to the activities of the state.
 To entrench the divisions between the private and public in such a way that
individual civil liberties are protected by inalienable property rights, which act as a
flexible bulwark against the power of the state and the temptations of state
employees and elected politicians to behave in an arbitrary and capricious manner,
abusing their power, power loaned to them in trust by the citizenry.

Christopher Hood, in his "A Public Management for all Seasons – 1991, has elaborated
managerialism or new public management in the following format:
 Hands-on professional management in the public sector;
 Explicit standards and measures of performance;
 Greater emphasis on output controls;
 A shift to disaggregation of units in the public sector: 'efficiency centers' or 'profit
centers'
 A shift to greater competition in public sector;
 A stress on private sector styles of management practice;
 A stress on greater discipline and parsimony in resource use.

Entrepreneurial Model of Public Administration

Entrepreneurial government is a search for more efficient, productive, competitive and
functional model of public sector management. Osborne and Gaebler's Model 1 of public
administration has the proposal of reorganizing government by creating entrepreneurial
incentives for the purpose of giving priority to the consumer, reducing bureaucracy, and
empowering employees with the expectation of creating a "governmental market". Such 'market'
is expected to create
 Save the government money and significantly decrease wasteful spending or bad
investment choices;
 Increase the efficiency of governmental employees and the entire system of
government; and
 Reduce the amount of 'red tape' within the systems.

Most entrepreneurial governments promote competition between service providers. They

empower citizens by pushing control out of the bureaucracy, into the community. They measure the
performance of their agencies, focusing not on inputs but on outcomes. They are driven by their goals—
their missions—not by their rules and regulations. They redefine their clients as customers and offer
them choices… They prevent problems before they emerge, rather than simply offering services
afterward. They put their energies into earning money, not simply spending it. They decentralize
authority, embracing participatory management. They prefer market mechanisms to bureaucratic
mechanisms. And they focus not simply on providing public services, but on catalyzing all sectors—
public, private, and voluntary—into action to solve their community problems.

The basic forms of government postulated by this model include

 Catalytic Government: Steering rather than Rowing
 Community-owned Government: Empowering rather than Serving

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  Competitive Government: Injecting Competition into Service Delivery
 Mission-Driven Government: Transforming Rule-Driven Organizations
 Result-Oriented Government: Funding Outcomes, not Inputs
 Customer-Driven Government: Meeting the Needs of the Customer, Not the
Bureaucracy
 Enterprising Government: Earning rather than Spending
 Anticipatory Government: Prevention rather than Cure
 Decentralized Government: from Hierarchy to Participation and Teamwork
 Market-oriented Government: Leveraging Change through the Market

New Public Sector Management Model

The World Bank, since 1997, introduced this model for the recipient member countries
in response to the growing need of governance effectiveness in managing result-oriented
changes, applying performance management system, ensuring effective service delivery and
accountable governance by virtue of professional competence. This model of management has
derived the following operating measures for efficiency and effectiveness of public sector
management:
1. Cost cutting, capping budgets and seeking greater transparency in resource
allocation,
2. Disaggregating traditional bureaucratic organisations into separate agencies,
3. Separating purchaser and provider, i.e. the functions of providing public services
from those of purchasing them,
4. Introducing market and quasi-market type mechanisms,
5. Decentralisation of management authority with public agencies (‘flatter
hierarchies’),
6. Introducing Performance Management: Staffs are now required to work to
performance targets, indicators and output objectives,
7.New personnel policies, which shift the basis of public employment from
permanency and standard national pay and conditions toward term contracts,
performance –related pay (PRP) and local determination of pay and conditions,
8. Increasing emphasis on service quality, through standard setting and a new focus on
‘customer responsiveness’.

Strategic Management Model of Public Administration

Strategic management is a stream of decisions and actions, which leads to the
development of an effective strategy or strategies to help achieve corporate objectives in a
competitive way. It is the process which deals with the fundamental organizational renewal and
growth with the development of strategies, structures, systems and behaviour to achieve such
renewal and growth, and with the organizational systems needed to effectively manage the
strategy formulation, implementation and control processes.

Strategic management is a systematic approach to a major and increasingly important

responsibility of general management to position and relate the enterprise to its environment in a
way that will assure its continued success and make it secure from surprises. It is a deliberate
process through which enterprises analyze and learn from their internal and external
environments, establish strategic direction, create strategies that are intended to help achieve
established goals, and execute these strategies, all in an effort to satisfy key organizational
stakeholders. It drives for strategic positioning, strategic advantage and strategic influence of
the enterprise on the basis of competitive advantage and comparative benefits.
Strategic management aims to extend the strategic vision throughout all units of
enterprise, encompassing every managerial system. Instead of being mechanistic, it 'recognises
the central role played by individuals and groups and the influence of corporate culture'. The
overall purpose of strategic management process is the experimental strategic learning and
management process is to establish which strategic options or elements thereof are robust
across the scenarios and use the most healthy elements to develop your strategic intent - your
core strategic focus or theme.

The strategic management model considers the administration in its external

environment aiming to specify clear goals and objectives. It attempts to move away from routine
management tasks to consider longer-term considerations of the very future of the organization.
It aims to extend the strategic vision throughout all agencies of public administration. Instead of
being mechanistic, it 'recognises the central role played by individuals and groups and the
influence of corporate culture'.

The strategic management model of public administration is guided by four principles:

 Concern with long-term impacts
 Integration of goals and objectives into coherent hierarchy
 Synergic combination of opportunities, capabilities and impacts
 Recognition that strategic management and planning are not self-implementing
 An external perspective emphasising not adapting to the environment but
anticipating and shaping of environmental changes

The strategic model of public sector management recognizes the reality and contingency
of policy environment. It identifies the internal and external environments of policy through
environmental as well as institutional analyses. It incorporates an outward-looking, proactive
focus that is sensitive to environmental changes without assuming that the institution has the
perceived threats of changes in its policy environment.. The aim of strategic policy making and
administration is to place the institution in a distinctive position relative to its environment.

The basic requirements for a successful "New Public Management" include (a) political
ownership and support by virtue of capability and desirability, (b) governance reform guidance,
(c) appropriate legal and judicial systems, (d) management autonomy and performance
management, (e) professional bureaucracy and ownership by political leadership and
citizenship, (f) management of competition, result-based outsourcing and contract management,
(g) result-based public financial management, (h) strengthened public scrutiny of public
performance, and (i) continuous improvement. Past reform experiences in developing countries
have suggested that reforms that take into account a country's demands, needs, socio-economic
and cultural conditions are more likely to be successful. The challenges created by globalization,
pressures from citizens for responsive government, development in information technology,
rising citizens expectations and demand, and competition from the private sector, among others,
would continue to influence the public administration in the future. Public administration has to
be proactive, adaptive to change and has to exploit new ways of working continuously. There is
a need for re-invigorating New Public Management principles to suit the local socio-economic
environment so that these could be used successfully to produce desired results.

Selected References
1. Binod Atreya and Anona Armstrong, Evaluation of the Applicability of NPM Reforms to
Developing Countries: A Case of Nepal, paper presented at the Victoria University of
Technology, Melbourne, Australia.

2. David Osberne and Ted Gaebler, Reinventing Government, Addison-Wesley Publication Co.,
1992. Fowler, Alan (1997), Gurus for Government: Lessons from Management Gurus for Local
Government Managers. Hemel Hempstead, UK: ICSA Publishing Limited, Fowler, 1995.

3. Hammer, Michael and James Champy, Reengineering the Corporation: A Model for Business
Revolution, New York: Harper Business, 1993

4. Herbert Kaufmann, "The Growth of the Federal Personnel System," in Bureaucratic Power in
National Politics, 2nd ed., edited by Francis Rourke (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1972.

5. Hood, C. (1989), “Public Administration and Public Policy: Intellectual Challenges for the
1990s”, Australian Journal of Public Administration, Vol. 48 No. 4.

6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New Public Management

7. Raymond W. Cox III, Susan J. Buck and Betty N. Morgan, "Public Administration in Theory and
Practice", Pearson Education, 2004, New Delhi.

8. Romeo. B. Ocampo, Models of Public Administration Reform: "New Public Management

(NPM)", Asian Review of Public Administration.

9. R. Paul Shaw, New Trends in Public Sector Management in Health: Applications in Developed and
Developing Countries, World Bank Institute, April, 1999

10. S.P. Naidu, Public Administration, Concepts and Theories, New Age International Publishers P
(Ltd), New Delhi, 2003.