Managing for results: lessons from public management reform in Malaysia

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse Malaysia's shift towards results‐based management in two key areas of the public service: budgeting and human resource management. More specifically, it shows how and to what extent the values of results‐based management have been incorporated in the Malaysian public sector and describes their constraints and challenges.Design/methodology/approach – The paper adopts a combination of descriptive and analytical methods and is mainly based on secondary sources of data and information. While it provides a systematic and comprehensive review of recent reform initiatives, it also focuses on the discrepancies between policies and practices in terms of actual implementation.Findings – Although Malaysia has followed the global trend by introducing results‐based management in public governance, evidence shows that the implementation of the new approach is far from satisfactory. The paper argues that while personnel management and budgetary reforms have helped overco...

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