Innovations in the Federal Government During the Post-new Public Management Era

Abstract The main goal of this paper is to analyze whether innovations in the federal government follow public management trends, especially in the post-New Public Management (NPM) era. The article, based on exploratory descriptive research, investigates the most frequent trends in terms of principles and guidelines, their evolution in time and the relationship among the trends, and the thematic area of the innovations. To accomplish the goal, we initially conducted a comprehensive literature review to map the post-NPM trends. Next, we used content analysis to verify these initiatives based on the Federal Award of Public Management Innovation (FAPMI) from 2007 to 2015. The empirical findings confirm that more than 90% of these initiatives have at least one post-NPM principle/directive. The recurrent initiatives are collaboration/partnership, coordination/control, and participation/engagement with minor differences between the FAPMI runners-up and winners. A comparison of the trends according to innovation type, depicted by their thematic areas, revealed an overall heterogeneity among these trends. The most frequent type - new arrangement - is highly related to collaboration and partnership, while internal ends initiatives have less common post-NPM principles/directives, such as strengthening bureaucracy and leadership.