New Public Management's Current Issues and Future Prospects

This special issue of FAM is about how New Public Management (NPM) ideas will develop in the future. The articles included in this special issue were selected from papers presented at the fifth NPM Seminar at Vrije University Amsterdam, 14 September 2005. The 2005 NPM seminar’s objective was to discuss recent experiences with NPM reforms and to look ahead to the possible future of New Public Management. Key note speakers addressed specific NPM reforms in different countries. A selection of these presentations is included in this special issue. Each speaker proposed a number of statements about NPM reforms’ current contributions and prospects for the future to the audience. The seminar’s participants, most of whom are active as manager, controller or consultant in government entities and non-profit organisations, had the opportunity to respond using a remote balloting system. Each presenter introduced his topic and presented specific questions or assertions to the audience. The presentations were done in such a way in order to minimize framing or influencing the audience’s responses. This paper presents and analyses a selection of the most intriguing results. The (mainly Dutch) audience’s responses enable us to draw a picture of the current appreciation of NPM and of the expectations for its future. However, we cannot state that the results obtained during the seminar are representative for the general opinion of Dutch practitioners about NPM. The audience suffers from a self-selection bias, as most of the participants occupy responsible positions in practice and show considerable interest in academic insights. This paper is structured as follows. It starts describing the most salient characteristics of New Public Management. The next section discusses the general appreciation of NPM reforms. The following sections discuss two dominant themes in NPM: planning and control, and accrual accounting. This paper concludes discussing NPM’s current position and possible developments for the future.