There are so many things that the New Public Management fall short of in the process of its implementation. These are what we would call the shortcomings that may either make it unrealistic or not depend on the argument that is presented forth. Here, the gaps of the NPM are to be established and hence their contribution in making the whole process unrealistic or not. The first flaw is the centralisation process (Ferlie, 2017). This happens through the decentralisation process when managers are given more authority in their operations and management of programs, thus a concentration of the decisions made by an organisation. It is the centralised decision-making that is not appropriate since it may create a situation of less creativity in the workforce as they are not allowed to participate in the decision (Lynn, 2009). This eventually creates limited communication in organisations and inflexibility of workers. It is this that is very detrimental to the public institutions and thus making it unproductive.
Secondly, the use of New Public Management has encouraged techniques of the private sector management to be used which on many occasions has always proved to have a lot of risks associated with it. Again, NPM is flawed because the control of private sector is rarely adopted in the operations of the government (Christensen" Lægreid, 2017). This means that the use of private sector techniques might not be appropriate in the management of the public sector as it has the more turbulent political environment and intricate accountabilities compared to the public sector.
Despite the fact that NPM associates typically with transparency within the public sector, it has proved to harbour corruption practices within the public areas (Christensen" Lægreid, 2017). This implies that it undermines ethical standards in the society and hence lowering the morality within the community. This has been brought by the increased autonomy in management, leading to blurred accountability in the management process and this encourages managers to be corrupt and unaccountable. Additionally, where there is increased management freedom, there are more opportunities created for unethical behaviours in the society.
Lastly, the issue of contracting out complicates the issue. It is not a solution to contract unprofitable and unwanted services hence not a guarantee that it will continue (Ferlie, 2017). This happens especially where a local government takes itself to be the employer of last resort in areas with high rates of unemployment and high population of the disadvantaged group. This employer role cannot easily be played out by contracting out, and hence it becomes a challenge when the public entities are contracted out in the whole process.
As to whether these shortcomings make NPM unrealistic, the answer could be no. This is because anything that happens must have its pros and cons and it would only be impractical if the cons outweigh the pros. In this case, the advantages of NPM are far much beyond the powers hence these shortcomings might not be relied upon to make it unrealistic (Lynn, 2009). The many benefits include corporatisation, performance contracting, contracting out projects not working out for them, privatisation and lastly decentralisation. All these have much weight compared to the disadvantages that have already been discussed. It can, therefore, be concluded that all the shortcomings do not contribute in any way in making the whole process unrealistic.
References
Christensen, T., " Lægreid, P. (2017). Transcending new public management: The transformation of public sector reforms.
Ferlie, E. (2017). The New Public Management and Public Management Studies. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Business and Management. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780190224851.013.129
Lynn, L. E. (2009). Public management: Old and new. New York: Routledge.
