- Title
- Understanding adoption, implementation and outcomes of new public management reforms in developing countries: a case study of Botswana
- Creator
- Molefhe, Kaelo
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2011
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- New Public Management (NPM) reforms came to prominence in the 1980s in developed countries introducing market principles in the running of the public sector organisations. In the specific case of developing countries, the drive towards such reforms emerged towards the late 1980s/early 1990s, often under coercion from external actors, as prescription to many of the problems afflicting their bureaucracies and the economy in general.This thesis investigates application of such reforms in developing countries. It does so by looking at the adoption, implementation and outcomes of NPM-type of reforms within one developing country; namely, Botswana. The specific reform measures considered in this study are Work Improvement Teams (WITs) and Performance Management System (PMS). Since the early 1990s into the 2000s, the Botswana government grappled with issues of low productivity and performance within its public services that threatened specifically the capacity for effective public sector management and broadly the post-independence impressive socio-economic gains of the country and, thus, proved a strong imperative towards public sector reforms. Consequently, various reform efforts, including NPM ones, were applied across the public service to improve its efficiency and effectiveness. Among the NPM ones WITs and PMS were introduced. Two government departments namely, DPSM and CTO were investigated using a case study research methodology to better understand application of WITs and PMS. The study findings indicated that both reform measures were adopted voluntarily by the government of Botswana through DPSM. However, in other ministries and departments across the public service including CTO, the adoption of the schemes was imposed. Regarding implementation of both schemes, structures and process were put in place to guide their success. Various challenges, however, were also identified. For instance, in the case of WITs in both study organisations lack of support for the scheme at senior levels was identified. For PMS, the scheme failed to attract support especially among industrial class employees in DPSM. Despite few systematic evaluation efforts undertaken, empirical evidence for both PMS and WITs pointed towards improved performance in the two study organisations.
- Subject
- New Public Management; performance management system; public sector reforms; developing countries; Botswana
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/931657
- Identifier
- uon:11127
- Rights
- Copyright 2011 Kaelo Molefhe
- Language
- eng
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