New Public Management: Emergence and Principles

As a new paradigm of public administration, New Public Management (NPM) points to the failures and inadequacies of public sector performance over time and the problems lying squarely in the nature and processes of public sector activity and traditional public administration. It has been developed as a handy shorthand and summary description of the way of reorganizing public sector bodies to bring their management approaches closer to business methods. Size of the government, centralized bureaucracies, inadequate mechanisms of accountability, waste and inefficiency in resource use etc are all problems which the new public management sought to address. However, there are few criticisms of the doctrines of NPM from the political perspective and few of the developing countries have become successful in public sector reform. This paper, based on general review of literature such as relevant books, journals, articles and newspapers, attempts to pinpoint the emergence, principles and criticisms of NPM considering its theoretical aspects.