What Paradigm Shift?

In recent years, it has become increasingly commonplace for scholars and international organisations to claim that there has been a global paradigm shift in public sector management. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) (1995b: 8), for instance, has argued that a ‘new paradigm for public management has emerged, aimed at fostering a performance-oriented culture in a less centralised public sector’. This paradigm, it has argued, is characterised by a closer focus on public sector performance in terms of efficiency, effectiveness and quality of service; decentralisation of management structures; greater competition within and among public sector organisations; privatisation; and the strengthening of strategic capacities at the centre to shape public sector development and relations with private interests. ¹ Similar claims have been made by scholars who work on the so-called ‘new public management’ and the related notion of ‘informatisation’ in public management (Hood 1998: 196–7).