Varieties of new public management or alternative models? The reform of public service employment relations in industrialized democracies

New public management (NPM) has been the dominant orthodoxy in analysing public service reform with major implications for employment relations. Drawing on comparative studies of major OECD countries, including Australia, Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden and the United States, this article examines recent reforms of public service human resource management. It refutes the proposition that reforms indicate convergence towards an NPM model and argues that the ‘varieties of NPM’ thesis is also unconvincing. Several reform trajectories exist which have sought to modernize public sector pay, performance and working conditions, but these highlight the existence of alternative models rather than a shift towards NPM or even the emergence of ‘varieties of NPM’.