Human Resource Management in the Public Sector: Getting the Mix Right.

For much of the 20th century, the main governance structure and method of service delivery of the public sector in western democracies was the bureaucracy. In the late 20th century however, public choice theorists proposed that political self-interest, not public concern for providing a range of community services to citizens, caused significant growth in the size of government. Further, it was argued this growth was accompanied by inefficiencies aggravated by the absence of market competition. The response was the implementation of wide scale changes that have been variously described and grouped under New Public Management (NPM). The main thrust of NPM was that the public sector needed to be more market driven and therefore more like its private sector counterparts.