NPM and the Reform of the Civil Service System, Japan

Synonyms

Civil service reform; New Public Management; NPM; Performance-related-pay; PRP

Definition

NPM-type reforms started in late 1990s in Japan, and it facilitated civil service reform, especially introduction of performance-related-pay.

Introduction

The Japanese academics as well as practitioners began to utilize the term, NPM (New Public Management), in the second half of the 1990s. In the meantime, notably, both the United Kingdom and New Zealand started to implement a NPM-type reform at the national level in the 1980s. In making a good contrast, the same type of reform started at the local level in Japan most probably from the second half of the 1990s onwards. In particular, Mie Prefecture (equivalent to province and state) was the first to discuss “NPM-type Reform of Local Government” in the Japanese administrative environment. This becoming as an initial attempt, the NPM reform developed popular to the extent that the Administrative Reform Council in the central government...