Defining and Defending the New Public Management

• Published date: 01 May 2001
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/0033-3352.00039
• Author: Sandford Borins
• Date: 01 May 2001

Book Reviews 379

Defining and Defending the

New Public Management

Sandford Borins is a professor of public management at the University of Toronto and author of

Innovating with Integrity: How Local

Heroes are Transforming American Government

(Georgetown University Press, 1998). Email: borins@scar.utoronto.ca.

Sandford Borins, University of Toronto

Lawrence R. Jones and Fred Thompson, Public Management: Institutional

Renewal for the Twenty-First Century (Stamford, CT: JAI Press, 1999). 268

pp., $ 78.50 cloth.

This book, written for both academ-

ics and practitioners, represents the

views of two noted public manage-

ment scholars, Lawrence Jones and

Fred Thompson, on the New Public

Management (NPM). For academics,

it conceptualizes NPM in relation to

other theories. For practitioners, it is a

handbook for introducing the compo-

nents of NPM in a more sophisticated

way than the popular literature. Many

readers of this journal will find this

book controversial because Jones and

Thompson believe that there is “a large

area of overlap between business and

public management,” (2) and that pub-

lic management scholars should study

and public managers should use ge-

neric management tools.

The book begins with a definition

of public management and an exhor-

tation to scholars to interest themselves

in the management component. Chap-

ter 2 defines NPM, emphasizing the

role of information technology in re-

shaping public and private sector or-

ganizations. The following chapters

lay out the components of NPM in

terms of five R’s: restructuring, or

downsizing to focus on core

competences (ch. 3), work process

reengineering (ch. 4), radical organi-

zation reinvention (ch. 5), realignment

by introducing activity-based costing

and responsibility budgeting (ch. 6),

and rethinking—by reconceptualizing

public sector bureaucracies as learn-

ing organizations (ch. 7). The book

concludes with an expanded discus-

sion of information technology (ch. 8).

This is a very clear, well-argued,

and stimulating book. The authors are

conversant with a wide range of lit-

erature in business management, bu-

reaucratic history, and economic

theory, and demonstrate convincingly

its relevance to their vision of NPM,

which emphasizes continual organiza-

tional renewal. A number of sections

of the book are particularly compel-

ling. Arguing that the reinventing gov-

ernment exercise was primarily about

organizational renewal through work

process reengineering, the authors’ ex-

tensive treatment of reinvention labs

in the Department of Defense, illus-

trated by 14 case studies, explains the

factors determining whether these bot-

tom-up initiatives succeed or fail.

The discussion of technological

change and global competitive pres-

sures is comprehensive and establishes

the influence of these factors on both

the public and private sectors. Unsat-

isfied with the public interest pluralist

and public choice explanations of the

evolution of government’s role in the

economy, the authors show that gov-

ernment for systemic reasons has been

unable to respond to this rapidly

changing environment. They then ap-

ply Senge’s organizational learning

model to government, revealing it to

be a flawed learning organization. This

leads them, not to the complacency of

public interest pluralists or the cyni-

cism of public choice advocates, but

to an optimistic endorsement of NPM

as a collection of strategies for enhanc-

ing learning by government.

While I found the book cogent and

compelling, it could have been

strengthened. I would have preferred

some restructuring by putting the de-

tailed discussion of the forces creat-

ing change, particularly information

technology, at the beginning of the

book as part of the exposition of NPM,

rather than near the end. A number of

key themes could have been bolstered

by more effective examples. The dis-

cussion of downsizing in chapter 3

could have been illustrated with a case

study of the federal government’s

downsizing initiative that was a com-

ponent of NPR. Radical organizational

reinvention was exemplified by the

response of the Hudson’s Bay Com-

pany to the challenge of the North

West Company in early nineteenth

century Canada. A better—and more

relevant—case study would have been