New Public Management, science policy and the orchestration of university research

• In many countries - during the past three decades - there has been increasing alignment of public administration with neoliberal modes of governance driven by processes of globalization and privatization. In the UK this trend was urged on, equally, by New Labour social democrats and Conservatives. Stephen Cope and others (1997), analyzing the connection between globalization and New Public Management (NPM), state that, ”(I)t is no accident that the wave of NPM crashing through governments worldwide corresponds with increasing globalization.. …States have restructured as a result of globalization. NPM has been a very prominent form of restructuring in most Western governments, though its spread has been uneven. NPM rests on the twin doctrines of removing differences between public and private sectors, and shifting ’methods of doing business in public organizations’, away from complying with procedural rules /and/ towards ’getting results’ (Hood, 1994. p. 129).” NPM is shorthand for applying private sector or market-based techniques to public services, an approach that rapidly spread through the Anglophone world in particular. As a politico-administrative regime it has been successively introduced into one sector after another, hastening, systematizing and legitimating these developments, making it appear that it is only a technical-administrative question mainly of cost reduction, increasing flexibility, and greater accountability and efficiency of performance on the part of public service agencies and their various practitioners. The present article analyses the impact of the entry of NPM into academe and how bibliometrics is used to promote accountability as well as some of the consequences of this development.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Annan samhällsvetenskap -- Övrig annan samhällsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Other Social Sciences -- Other Social Sciences not elsewhere specified (hsv//eng)

Keyword

New Public Management

bibliometrics

evidence-based policy

science policy

conditions of university research

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)