“Newer Than New” Public Management Financial Management and.doc

“Newer Than New” Public Management Financial Management and“Newer Than New” Public Management: Financial Management and Collective Strategizing in New Zealand??? Dr. June Pallot Victoria University of Wellington New Zealand??? Paper prepared for the conference on The New Public Management in International Perspective Institute of Public Finance and Fiscal Law St Gallen, Switzerland, 11-13 July 1996?? Not to be quoted without permission of the author. Comments may be addressed to the author at Faculty of Commerce and Administration Victoria University of Wellington PO Box 600 Wellington NEW ZEALAND e-mail: June.Pallot@vuw.ac.nz? ? “Newer Than New” Public Management: Financial Management and Collective Strategizing in New Zealand”?? June Pallot Victoria University of Wellington New Zealand ?? In his penetrating series of analyses Hood (1991; 1995) identifies the main characteristics of “New Public Management.”? Dominant features are, firstly, the lessening or removal of differences between the public and private sector and, secondly, a shift in emphasis from process accountability to accountability in terms of results.? Accounting has been a key element in the introduction of the new emphasis and new conception of accountability “since it reflected high trust in the market and private business methods . . . and low trust in public servants and professionals . . .whose activities therefore need to be more closely costed and evaluated by accounting techniques” (Hood, 1995, pp. 4-5).? Supporting the removal of public/private sector distinctions and the imposition of explicit standards and rules are a number of specific practices: (1) greater disaggregation of public sector organizations into separate “product” centres (2) a shift towards competition between the separate units offering the services (3) the use of management practices (e.g. accrual accounting, organizational design, career structure and remuneration practices) broadly drawn from the private