Cultural determinants of New Public Management reforms: A comparative study

The purpose of the present paper is twofold. Firstly, it proposes, on the basis of existing approaches, a synthesising model of public management reforms. Secondly, it examines a central question related to the proposed model. Namely, it seeks to decide whether the typical organisational culture of government administration is “responsible” for cross-country differences in NPM patterns. This is done based on a comparative case study of the administrative cultures of the Australian (Queensland) and the Hungarian governmental administration. The basic finding of the study is that the culture profiles of the two administrative (sub-)systems are surprisingly similar. This finding is used to conclude that (i) the organisational level of administrative culture is unlikely to play a significant role in shaping NPM reforms; (ii) alternative explanations - e.g. directing attention towards the role of national culture - seem to offer a promising direction for future research.