Ubuntu on the New Public Service?

Abstract:

With the oil crisis at the beginning of the 70s, we saw the beginning of the end of the "golden years" of the bureaucratic model, in the following decade the model was already largely discredited, therefore, material and intellectual conditions led us to believe in and defend the superiority of the substitute model, New Public Management (NPM). However, scholars point out that NPM is nothing more than "pre-scientific beliefs" and Denhardt and Denhardt (2000) proposed the New Public Service (NPS) model which, among other aspects, aims to overcome the individualism and economism underlying NPM. However, the assumptions that shape the New Public Service propose the rescue of values that have been defended by Ubuntu for decades. The question is: what is Ubuntu, what are the assumptions of the new public service and what are its points of convergence. In ontological terms, this study adopts a subjectivist view and, epistemologically, it is anchored in post-colonialism. This is a case study associated with qualitative research that was technically based on literature review and discourse analysis. It was concluded that the proposals for the new public service converge with the foundations of Ubuntu and that, despite being epistemologies built on different sides of the borders, they can dialogue and complement each other.

Keywords:
Public Administration Theory; New Public Service; Post-Colonialism; Ubuntu