ABSTRACT
Most scholars would agree that although the heyday of new public management (hereafter NPM) lies behind us, it remains one of the most powerful reform doctrines to have reshaped the public sector in OECD countries and beyond. A core idea of NPM is that task specialization results in performance gains (Hood, 1991). Following this logic, governments have structurally disaggregated major public sector organizations into smaller parts, with some degree of autonomy (Laegreid and Verhoest, 2010). NPM entailed the introduction of managerial autonomy, performance management and incentives, competition and other reform elements (Dunleavy, 1996). Basically, NPM envisaged creating a stimulating environment, as much as possible, similar to the private market, for senior civil servants so that they would push their organizations and staff to perform better, to take risks and to innovate (e.g. Hood, 1995; Lane, 2001; Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2011). In exchange for autonomy, public organizations (or their CEOs) would be held accountable by their minister and parliament for their performance and sanctioned or rewarded accordingly. The process by which the political principal of a public organization sets the objectives and corresponding performance targets in performance contracts, keeps the organization and its management accountable for achievement of these performance targets with respect to these standards, and, if necessary, applies sanctions to the organization or its managers will be referred to in this article as result control. It was believed that an increase in managerial autonomy combined with result control would, among others, stimulate a more innovationoriented culture and ultimately lead to an increase of performance (see e.g. OECD, 1994, 1997).
