The Proverbs of New Public Management

The movement for an evidence-based practice of medicine seeks to systematically examine and challenge current practices in that professional field. This article uses the same philosophy to examine an extensive research agenda by Laurence J. O'Toole and Kenneth J. Meier and apply it to public management. Using the New Public Management as a foil, the article examines 10 extant proverbs of public management. The assessment shows the weak support for many such nostrums of public management and illustrates how systematic, theoretically designed quantitative research can inform the practice of public management.