Development of public sector client capabilities within the context of new public management

Abstract

Around the world, Governments are charged with delivering various services, including infrastructure, to the citizens whose taxes support them. Within the democratic countries of the developed world, the past 30 years have seen significant changes in how the public sector is organized to provide these infrastructure assets. These changes have been driven, in no small way, by wider public sector reform and ideas of New Public Management (NPM). NPM could usefully be understood as the development of an explicitly managerial approach to public administration, which espouses borrowing from private sector practice to improve the delivery of public services. Despite the adoption of NPM practices by the public sector clients with expectations of improved project outcomes, the evidence suggests otherwise. Infrastructure projects are fraught with poor delivery outcomes. Research in project management has emphasized the importance of a 'strong owner' to the success of projects. This paper takes as its point of departure that public sector clients charged with infrastructure acquisition need to be strong owners. The argument is made to the effect that NPM practices make it difficult for public sector clients to act as strong owners. We suggest that in order for these public sector clients to be strong owners they need dynamic capabilities, i.e. the ability to undergo change by making use of internal resources. Theoretically we link the wider debates within the domain of New Public Management with that of public sector clients involved in infrastructure delivery. We also contribute to the limited literature on public sector clients within the project management domain.