Abstract:
Purpose – The present paper seeks to examine the recent changes in public management in Malaysia in relation to new public management and assess their impacts on administrative performance and service delivery. Design/methodology/approach – The scope of the paper is limited to the period of 1981 till the present date. The paper is mainly based on secondary sources of information, and it uses a combination of descriptive and analytical methods.
Findings – The paper shows that although reforms are steps in the right direction, their impacts so far have been modest. Despite reforms and a few improvements they have made in service provisions, the public bureaucracy in Malaysia continues to suffer from inefficiency, corruption and a host of other problems.
Originality/value – The paper shows the gap between rhetoric and reality of public management reforms in Malaysia. It is expected to be of great value to all those interested in public management – be they in academia or in policy circles.
Introduction –
The public sector has long been subjected to criticisms for, among others, inefficiency, red tape, lack of flexibility, ineffective accountability and poor performance. Such criticisms have paved the way for administrative reforms and reorganizations seeking to address various administrative ailments and enhance the efficiency and performance of public bureaucracies. With changes in time and circumstances reform agenda has varied, but reforms have always been seen and applied as a means to bring about desired changes in administration and improve its capacity as well as erformance. While reforms are nothing new in public services, the period since the early 1980s has seen a major shift in public management reforms in both developed and developing countries. The recent reforms are unprecedented in terms of their scale and intensity and they have brought about far more profound changes than those experienced in the past. In many cases, such reforms have not only transformed the structure of public bureaucracy or the way it operates, they have also radically altered the nature of the government and its role in the society. Much of the contemporary administrative reforms are seen as either related to or an integral part of what is known as the new public management (NPM). Otherwise known as managerialism, the NPM has not only questioned the philosophical, institutional and operational aspects of the conventional public administration, but also proposed radical changes in different areas of the public sector. The NPM advocates the application of market logic within the public sector for solving the problems of big and inefficient government. As it has offered better solutions to the perennial problems of the public sector, the NPM has attracted the attention of policy framers and practitioners all over the world. Osborne and Gaebler’ (1992) bestseller has provided further impetus to the process. “Reinventing government??? has since then become the slogan in many societies and by the end of 1990s it has assumed a global character, although the scale of implementation has been uneven and the NPM has also been a matter of controversy and debate[1]. Despite skepticisms in some quarters and debates and controversies surrounding it, the NPM has lately become so widespread that it is seen as a new paradigm that is replacing the classical bureaucratic paradigm of public management (see Gow and Dufour, 2000). The influence of NPM is clearly evident in Malaysia, as in other Southeast Asian countries (Cheung and Scott, 2003). Over the past decades, a range of NPM-type reforms have been initiated and implemented in the Malaysian public sector with the aim of transforming it into an efficient, dynamic and market-driven administration. The present paper seeks to discuss the nature of public management reforms in Malaysia and comment on their implications. It begins with a brief note on the NPM seeking to identify its key features and/or elements. This is followed by an overview of Malaysia’s micro and macro economic context, which has spurred demands for reforms. While section three
provides a description of the nature of reforms initiated and implemented since the early 1980s, the final section of the paper is devoted to the assessment of reforms and their implications.
Publication: Flinders Institute of Public Policy and Management, Flinders University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia[Download]