New Public Management and Organizational Regulation: The Liberal Bureaucracy

This article sets out to question the impact of new public management (npm) reforms on the functioning of public organizations. This investigation uses the concept of organizational regulation as a basis. We assume that the introduction of npm principles and tools results in the constitution of a new type of regulation that we refer to as ‘liberal bureaucracy’. We describe the main characteristics based on qualitative empirical research carried out in four federal administrative departments in Canada and Switzerland. We conclude with a comparison of the data gathered with certain facts relating to the functioning of private sector organizations and highlight the striking similarities in this field.