Ideas in Public Management Reform for the 2010s: Digitalization, Value Creation and Involvement

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the three key ideas for an agenda for the public sector that are emerging as dominant ideas in the 2010’s in the literature on public organizations. The paper examines a select number of self-styled conceptual alternatives from the literature on public management to what has been the dominant paradigm in recent years, the New Public Management (NPM). “Self-styled” means that they explicitly present themselves as alternatives to NPM and address the shortcomings in NPM to promote alternative conceptualizations. They include Digital-Era Governance, Public Value Management (PVM), Collaborative Governance, also known to some as the New Public Governance (NPG). The paper takes each of these as broad categories, and proposes that each shelters sub-categories of ideas. DEG: transparency, social media and shared service centers. PVM: strategy-making, performance governance, and innovation and strategic HRM. NPG: networks and collaboration, public-private partnerships and new ways of engaging active citizens. The paper sees these ideas as competing for dominance in the public organization literature as they are new drivers for reforms. Together they form the building blocks of how public management reforms can be build. The paper also recognizes that there are disagreements between them. The paper suggests that these tensions must be addressed if the reform movement is going to be coherent.