(a) New Public Management has actually been a transitory state in evolution from traditional Public Administration to what is…

New Public Management as a Transitory State to New Public Governance

Traditional Public Administration (TPA), rooted in Weberian bureaucracy and Wilsonian dichotomy, prioritized procedural compliance and hierarchical stability. By the late 1970s, fiscal crises and state inefficiencies led Christopher Hood to formulate New Public Management (NPM), marked by doctrines of disaggregation, private-sector management practices, market competition, explicit performance standards, and cost discipline.

However, NPM proved to be a transitory phase rather than a durable paradigm. Its core limitation lay in excessive managerialism and the commercialization of public service. Agencification and marketization created institutional fragmentation (siloization), eroded equity, inflated transaction costs, and reduced the democratic citizen to a mere transactional 'customer'.

To correct these pathologies, Stephen Osborne and Kerry Brown conceptualized New Public Governance (NPG). Grounded in institutional network theory, NPG shifts the focus from NPM’s intra-organizational competition to inter-organizational collaborative governance. It conceptualizes the state not as a firm, but as a coordinator within a complex ecosystem, viewing citizens as co-producers of public value (Mark Moore). In India, this transition is evident as administrative practice moves away from narrow NPM-style service metrics (Sevottam framework) toward NPG-aligned collaborative ecosystems, such as the convergence model of the Aspirational Districts Programme and Mission Karmayogi’s emphasis on networked, competency-driven governance.

Mary Parker Follett: Pioneer of the Socio-Psychological Approach

Mary Parker Follett served as a vital bridge between classical administrative mechanics and modern behavioral theory by placing human psychology and social relationships at the center of organizational study. Rejecting the rigid command-and-control structures of classical theorists, Follett posited the 'group process' as the fundamental building block of administration.

Follett introduced seminal concepts that revolutionized organizational dynamics. She advocated 'power-with' (coactive, joint power) over 'power-over' (coercive domination) and framed conflict as a normal, energetic process to be resolved through 'integration', where conflicting desires are synthesized without compromise or defeat. Her doctrine of the 'law of the situation' and 'circular response' established that authority and communication are reciprocal, situational, and functional rather than strictly vertical.

These concepts directly laid the groundwork for subsequent organizational theorists. Follett’s group dynamics anticipated Elton Mayo’s Hawthorne studies on informal organization, while her concepts of authority and cooperation directly influenced Chester Barnard’s 'acceptance theory of authority'. Her humanistic vision prefigured Douglas McGregor’s Theory Y assumptions, and her view of the organization as an interconnected, situational whole anticipated open-systems and contingency theories.

Public-Private Partnerships and Organizational Entropy

Organizational entropy denotes the universal tendency of administrative systems toward decay, disorder, and functional obsolescence. Closed models (Weberian bureaucracy) suffer from internal entropy through rigid rule-orientation, procedural inertia, and goal displacement. Conversely, open models, while adaptive, face external entropy through environmental volatility, vulnerability to market fluctuations, and severe resource dependency.

Under the NPM framework, Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) challenge both forms of entropy by establishing a hybrid organizational model. PPPs mitigate closed-system entropy by dismantling bureaucratic monopolies, injecting private capital, operational agility, and technological innovation. Simultaneously, PPPs arrest open-system entropy by embedding unstable market transactions within formal public oversight, legal safeguards, and long-term relational contracting. Through structured risk-sharing, PPPs achieve a balance between market efficiency and democratic accountability.

In India, this hybrid mechanism is demonstrated by the National Highways Authority of India’s (NHAI) Hybrid Annuity Model (HAM), which insulates highway development from private revenue shocks while eliminating bureaucratic project delays. Similar entropy-reducing hybridity is visible in the execution of the Delhi Metro, the Mumbai-Pune Expressway, and the multi-stakeholder governance driving the Smart Cities Mission.

Ultimately, contemporary administrative evolution reflects a continuous quest to overcome systemic entropy—transitioning from rigid closed structures through humanistic insights and NPM’s hybrid contractualism, toward the resilient, collaborative networks of New Public Governance.