In this paper we describe the main characteristics of NPM and illustrate the current state of affairs in three main areas: (a) the effectiveness of NPM reforms, (b) NPM's impact on planning and control in government entities, and (c) the implementation and use of accrual accounting methods in government. We use the responses of 105 (mostly Dutch) practitioners in government and non‐profit organizations. Most respondents recognize performance improvements, but only a minority attribute these improvements directly to NPM reforms. Improved planning and control systems are seen to have only a limited impact on the work of professionals, while accrual accounting is considered to have only limited potential to support political decision making.

This article analyzes shifts in the delivery mode of waste collection in Dutch municipalities between 1999 and 2014. In approximately half of these entities, shifts took place, with 60% toward outside production and 40% toward inside production. In recent years, the number of shifts dropped remarkably, and re-municipalization has become more important. In addition, the amount of municipalities with reverse privatization is larger than that of privatization. Based on a logit model, some evidence of an ideological motivation for changing the mode of production is found. Conservative liberals are in favor of changing, particularly toward the market and privatization, whereas social democrats, in particular, are against change. These results provide some evidence for the unemployment or scale argument for changing the mode as well. In addition, there is an indication that political fragmentation increases the ability to privatize.

This study investigates the influence of service, political, governance, and financial characteristics on municipalities' choices of four service delivery modes (in-house, inter-municipal cooperation, municipality-owned firm, and private firm)

New Public Management reforms are aimed at improving effectiveness and efficiency of performance by a great variety of different organisational, managerial and accounting reforms. In the last decade, a great number of the 572 Dutch municipalities have been implementing some NPM reforms, most notably decentralisation of responsibilities to lower organisational levels and restructuring of the budget and financial reports into a product based format. This study comprises a survey among 114 municipalities to assess the relationship between NPM reforms and municipalities’ decisions on costing and pricing of their services. As expected, decentralised municipalities monitor more strictly the degree in which costs are covered by revenues. Moreover, municipalities applying product budgeting systems use more sophisticated cost accounting methods in calculating full product costs of services. Given the fact that decentralisation may help municipalities to make operational managers more accountable for performance and that product budgeting systems enhance cost consciousness among municipal managers, we expect NPM measures to contribute to lower prices for services rendered to citizens. The results show that the two NPM measures do not have any relation with price setting for garbage collection. However, the NPM decentralisation measure is significantly related to higher prices for contracting marriages. In this paper we try to come up with some alternative explanations for these unexpected findings.

In the Netherlands, electronic service delivery has become an important issue in many municipalities. Using the Internet for service delivery is seen as an important element of e-government. Based on 2014-2016 panel data for all Dutch municipalities, we show that there is a large variety among the municipalities in the extent to which they offer their service delivery digitally. By exploring the factors that may explain the differences among the municipalities, some trends can be discerned. Most notably is the strong relationship of e-government adoption with demographic characteristics, such as population, population density and both older age and younger age groups. Remarkably, we did not find an influence of education and income. Finally, we did not observe a relation between municipal allocated costs and level of e-maturity, hereby leaving the question open if and how e-government can lead to cost reductions.