Government Value Paradigms - Bureaucracy, New Public Management, and E-Government

There are different interpretations of which core values e-government build on and promote. Some scholars see egovernment as a direct follower to New Public Management (NPM), and as such supporting and promoting values and principles from the business sector. Others see e-government as a promoter of bureaucratic values supporting and promoting the values of traditional weberian ideal bureaucracy. The main issue in this paper is management strategy for public administration. Three examples of such management strategies are examined and compared: traditional bureaucracy, New Public Management and e-government. When investigating these strategies it is necessary to distinguish between strategy as idea and strategy in action. Core values of the management strategies are reconstructed and used as a lens through which a case study of e-government is analyzed. The implemented egovernment-solution comprise values from both NPM and bureaucracy. Neither bureaucracy nor NPM alone supply the core values for e-government as a practical management strategy. The paper concludes with a dialectical structure where Bureaucracy is the thesis, NPM the anti-thesis and e-government the practical synthesis.

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