A Critique of the New Public Management and the Neo-Weberian State

- **List item**The New Public Management, NPM, paradigm is a good direction in managing such an organization, state organization in particular that introduced into the developing coutries, like Indonesia. This paradigm notion is fundamentally based on how the organization management directed to the public needs and public services, not only in good procedure, but in direct, uncomplicated, and fast.
- List item

Actually, this paradigm emerged as a critic to Old Public Administration, OPA, that had been introduced through Max Weber's bureaucracy perspective. OPA paradigm was seen a very hierarkhy notion that obstructs the fast and good service delivery to the consuments. Beside that, this perspective was assumed to trammel the staff initiative and potentiality to be developed in order to give a direct and fast service to the customers.
-
- List item-At first glance, the NPM notion seems to be better and useful than the OPA, if it applies to the developing countries whose public managements, especially the state public management, were deeply influence by the combination between the feodal management and OPA. But, it is very hard to change the idea, the way of thingking, and the behaviour of the bureaucracies in the developing coutries, in Indonesia particularly. Indonesian bureaucracy is still very affected and coloured by the mandate from above, the boss. The decicion maker is the boss, the head, therefore the service delivery to the public in most of the government organization always fail to provide a good public services. There are some research data that may prove the unsuccessful application of the NPM in Indonesia, such as the case of some fresh water managements in a great part of Indonesian regions.
In Indonesia, issues on the bureaucracy performance of the public service gets increasing attention from many quarters as its performance is, in providing public services, still socially considered unsatisfactorily that assumed to be a stigma. According to Dwiyanto et.al. (2002) that such a bureaucracy will affect the performance of the government and the society as a whole in the effort to improve competitive advantage. The idea from Dwiyanto (2000) concerning bureaucracy is deeper and more critical. He states that a rigid implementation and understanding of practical and technical guidelines has made the lower level bureaucracy unable to take initiatives in decision making. A hierarchical bureaucracy will create a fear on the apparatus of the bureaucracy towards their superiors. The leadership style in the bureaucracy tends to create a figure of an absolute ruler rather than a manager in the superiors. The fear of the bureaucrats to take initiative and innovation in the provision of service is strongly related to the fear of making mistakes and being reprimanded by their superiors. Therefore, bureaucrats tend to act in accordance with the existing guidelines and avoid to take discretion despite the fact that it is sometimes necessary to do so. Bureaucracy seems to be still under the sway of dictatorial culture.

Dwiyanto (2000) explains further that centralistic tendencies in the bureaucracy has trapped the bureaucracy in the development of a organizational culture which tends to vertical orientation than the horizontal orientation which is more amenable to public interest. Centralization in the bureaucracy has created pathological symptoms in the form of many abuses of power and authority in the bureaucracy. The bureaucratic pathology appears because the norms and values which guide the actions of the bureaucracy is more upward-oriented, that is to the political interest of power, rather than to the public. Many development policies of the government is controlled by the central government and this shows that the centralistic culture is strong in the bureaucracy. This condition has reduced the responsiveness of the bureaucracy to the values, norms, aspirations, needs and interest of the public.
Mahmudi (2005) added that NPM has a doctrine which is focused on management instead of policy, and on de-bureaucratization, performance and performance evaluation, result-based accountability, splitting up public bureaucracy into working units, the application of market mechanism by contracting-out or outsourcing to help develop the competition in public sector, cost cutting and efficiency, performancebased pay, and managerial discretion in running the organization. This doctrine emphasizes that NPM is related to the increasing importance of customer service, devolution of authority, reform of regulations, reform of budgeting process into performance budgeting.

Actually, the changes in the NPM orientation above has been adopted by state-owned enterprises such as PLN (state-owned electric utility company), Telkom and PDAM in Makassar. PDAM in Makassar has adopted the second orientation aspect of NPM, that is decentralization, where authority is delegated to the smaller service units. Unfortunately, the aim of this delegation of responsibility is only to increase bureaucracy. The authority to provide service directly without any letter of instruction (surat perintah kerja, SPK) is not delegated so that the objective of authority delegation is not achieved in the correct sense as understood by NPM.
As citizens, each individual has equal right to receive service from the bureaucracy. But in reality, it is not manifested according to expectation. Service provider often tends to give more favor to certain groups which are considered powerful, such as the well-to-do and those with strong bargaining power to the bureaucrats. As a consequence, according to Partini et. al. (2004), a gap occurs between the bureaucracy and the citizens that it should serve. The officers should provide the service in a courteous and fair manner as one of the primary tasks of the bureaucracy is to provide a good service for the society.
Such an evident appears from the number of consumers’ complaints on the performance of the service, which is not congruent with the expectation of the consumers. The number of complaints received by all service units of PDAM (water utility company) in the municipality of Makassar in 2007 is 1,597 complaints. The same condition applies in many other PDAM in Indonesia, such as in Banda Aceh, where the performance of the employees of PDAM Tirta Doroy Banda Aceh received much criticism. According to Bahmi (2001), the public in the urban areas thinks that the PDAM employees are lacking discipline in working. Meanwhile, Kompas reported that the performance of the PDAM Delta Tirta in Sidoarjo is also decreasing, as evident from the worsening quality and flow of water to the consumers.

-