Twenty‐five years of studying new public management in public administration: Accomplishments and limitations

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/faam.12214
• Author: Tom S. Karlsson,Elin K. Funck
• Published date: 01 November 2020
• Date: 01 November 2020

Received: 11 June 2018 Revised: 18 July 2019 Accepted: 29 July 2019

DOI: 10.1111/faam.12214

REVIEW ARTICLE

Twenty-five years of studying new public

management in public administration:

Accomplishments and limitations

Elin K. Funck1Tom S. Karlsson2

1School of Business and Economics, Linnaeus

University, Växjö, Sweden

2School of Public Administration,University of

Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

Correspondence

TomS. Karlsson, School of Public Administration,

Universityof Gothenburg, P.O.Box 712, SE-

40530,Sweden.

Email:Tom.Karlsson@spa.gu.se

Abstract

In 1991, Christopher Hood made a substantial contribution to pub-

lic administration research when he formulated the concept of new

public management (NPM). His article can in many ways be under-

stood as an enabler of research focused on public sector reforms.

To this day, numerous articles and books have been published, dis-

cussing the concept itself and the empirical phenomenon. In celebra-

tion of the 25-year period since the concept of NPM was introduced,

this article revisitsthe current knowledge through a systematic liter-

ature review of 299 articles published between 1991 and 2016. This

approach enables a meta-analysis of research published in five top-

rankedinternational public administration journals. We identify four

important themes as emerging from our review: (a) a reform with a

vague intention, (b) the limping concept, (c) the one-sided perspec-

tive, and (d) NPM as the new norm. An important effect of this is that

Hood’s framework may have been curtailed, leading to a distorted

knowledge base when it comes to future studies.

KEYWORDS

future developments, literature review, management reforms, new

public management

1INTRODUCTION

New public management (NPM) is a phenomenon that has been a major focus of the debate in the public manage-

ment literature since the seminal contribution of Hood (1991, 1995). Hood’s first article has received over6,000 cita-

tions and has deservedly become one of the most cited public administration articles (Hood & Dixon, 2016; Pollitt,

2016). The phenomenon continues to capture attention, and the amount of literature that has addressed NPM today

is considerable. From the literature, it appears that NPM in practice has the capacity to change and confound neat

descriptions. As a consequence, NPM as a phenomenon has been criticized for being obfuscated and nontranspar-

ent (Dan & Pollitt, 2014; Pollitt, 2009; Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2011), a loose concept (Christensen, Lægreid, Roness, &

Financial Acc & Man. 2020;36:347–375. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/faam c

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348 FUNCK ANDKARLSSON

Røvik, 2007), multifaceted (Lapsley, 2008), and with chameleon-like capacity to change overtime (van Thiel, 2007).

Given the 25-year milestone of NPM in international journal publications, we argue that the time is ripe for a meta-

analysis of what has been undertaken from an academic point of view. We believe that the concept itself and the

research published under its flag deserves close scrutiny in order to further understand what NPM is and what it

has become. The purpose of this article is to systematically and critically review published research about NPM in inter-

national top-tier public administration journals. Based on this purpose, our review addresses two questions. First, what

are the key achievements emanating from NPM publications over the 25-yearperiod since the concept of NPM was

introduced and how have they contributed to our understanding of public sector reforms? Second, to what extentare

there limitations to NPM publications, and how should these be remedied by future advances in public administration

research?

NPM has been described in very many different ways. Hood himself called the term middle aged (Hood &

Peters, 2004), while others have taken a more radical stance, suggesting the era of NPM a thing of the past

(Alonso, Clifton, & Díaz-Fuentes, 2013; Denhardt & Denhardt, 2000, 2001, 2015; Dunleavy, Margetts, Bastow, &

Tinkler, 2006; Dunn & Miller, 2007; Osborne, 2006, 2010). Others refute such radical stances, arguing that it is

very much alive (Hyndman & Lapsley, 2016). In many ways, we argue, it is a cursorial concept that should be

understood primarily as a movement (Hood, 2000) and not a fixed set of techniques or ideas (Hyndman & Laps-

ley, 2016), or a transitory phase between what was and what will come in paradigmatic terms (Hyndman & Liguori,

2016; Lapsley, 2008; Pollitt, 2007). The pandemic (Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2011) or virus-like (Hyndman & Lapsley,

2016) diffusion of NPM-inspired reforms globally has been described as a complement to already existing ideas

(Christensen, Lie, & Lægreid, 2008) and organizational culture (Baird & Harrison, 2017; Denison, 1990). NPM is

a concept that demands and allows for continuous forms for adapting and adopting ideas empirically (Karlsson,

2017b).

In addition, much literature has been devoted to discussions about the effects created in public organizations

(Butterfield, Edwards, & Woodall, 2004; Dan & Pollitt, 2014; Ford & Ihrke, 2015; Thomassen, Ahaus, Van de Walle,

& Nabitz, 2014; Tummers, Bekkers,& Steijn, 2009). Accounting and financialization have been highlighted in the lit-

erature and the adoption of accrual accounting within the public sector has been especially criticized (Carlin, 2005;

Guthrie, 1998). Although financial matters are only one part of the vast NPM umbrella, they have rightfully been

described as a focal ingredient for the development of many contemporary public sector reforms (Guthrie, Olson, &

Humphrey,1999).

There are many well-written articles that help us understand NPM from a conceptual and empirical perspec-

tive. Financial Accountability & Management (FAM) has published a wide range of articles on NPM (see Table 1). This

study contributes an evaluation of NPM studies from a public administration perspective which should be of inter-

est to public sector accounting researchers whether established researchers, emerging scholars or doctoral stu-

dents. This study constitutes a comprehensive and systematic review of NPM studies in international journals over a

25-year period after the concept was introduced in 1991. As such, it is to our knowledge the first full examination of

published research within the field of public administration. The findings suggest that one reason why NPM is still

very much alive may be that the intentions of the NPM reforms contain a certain ambiguity. Moreover, NPM as a

concept is characterized by a severely limp and one-sided perspective. This comprehensive and systematic review

brings forth and highlights key achievements and limitations as published in public administration literature dur-

ing 25 years, making it readily available for scholars in adjacent academic fields such as public management and

economics.

The remainder of this article is organized as follows. The next section contains a brief summary of Hood’s view of

NPM,where we also present and argue for the distinction between management- and market-based reforms (Karlsson,

2017a). In Sections 3, we discuss our review approach and coding of articles. Section contains our findings, where we

discuss the themes and relate them to research about NPM published in public sector accounting literature. Finally,we

end the article with a discussion and conclusion, elaborating on the implications for research and researchers.