THE PERILS OF MANAGERIALISM: HAS NEW PUBLIC MANAGEMENT BROUGHT EFFICIENCY IN BOTSWANA PUBLIC SERVICE?

New Public Management (NPM) reforms have widely been promoted as a means of improving the performance of public sector organisations in both advanced and developing economies. However, the urgency of NPM-type of reforms has recently been rekindled by the global economic crisis, which put many countries under pressure to trim down public expenditure. Thus, NPM is presented as the main solutions to the manifold problems and challenges that bedevil governance of public services. Consistent with the theme in other countries, Botswana embarked on various NPM-types of reforms from the 1990s to date. This paper takes a critical look at the these reforms implemented in Botswana public service arguing that applying such a model in the public sector presents problems as the business environment markedly operates in a different context and faces unique dynamics and challenges compared to the public sector. Despite the fact that Botswana has been one of the leading African countries to embrace the new management practices to enhance public service productivity, no marked improvement has been realized. Mainly due to the manner in which transformation was implemented and how it negatively affected the morale of public service workers. The paper concludes that NPM-type of reforms needs to be adapted to suit environmental demands of developing countries, especially as they still struggle with fulfilling their fiduciary role of provision of basic services to the populace and employment creation.