From New Public Management to Digital Governance: A Bibliometric Analysis of Public Service Reform Research (2005 – 2025)

Public service reform has move beyond a narrow focus on administrative efficiency towards more collaborative, citizen-centred and digitally enabled forms of governance. Yet the literature has not clearly shown how these reform logics have evolved together, particularly whether New Public Management (NPM) has been replaced or continues to shape newer collaborative and digital approaches. This study addresses that gap through a bibliometric analysis of 9,679 English-language, peer-reviewed journal articles indexed in Scopus from 2005 to 2025. The final dataset was obtained after screening 26,201 records using stated inclusion and exclusion criteria and was analysed with VOSviewer. Publication output increased from 189 articles in 2005 to 671 in 2024, with 2025 representing a partial year. The United Kingdom was the leading contributing country (1,650 publications), followed by the United States (1,480). The International Journal of Public Administration was the most productive journal (334 articles), while Public Administration Review recorded the highest total citations among the listed journals (16,586). Keyword co-occurrence analysis identified NPM as the most frequent and strongly connected theoretical keyword (370 occurrences; total link strength 716). Five thematic clusters were identified: governance and accountability; human capital and capacity building; institutional frameworks; socioeconomic governance; and digital transformation and e-government. The publication pattern also reflects four broad developmental phases, while recent themes show a shift towards artificial intelligence, co-creation and digital transformation. Based on these findings, the study proposes an Evolution of Public Service Reform Framework comprising three overlapping dimensions—Institutional Reform, Human and Governance Capital, and Digital Transformation and Innovation. The framework contributes by showing reform as a cumulative process in which managerial, collaborative and digital logics coexist and interact rather than simply replacing one another.