New Public Management and Politicization: A Case of Senior Civil Servants in Malaysia

摘要

The paper provides an analysis of the impacts of the reform initiatives in the civil service have had to the country's administration. It shows how and to what extent the values of management-based reforms have been impacted on the government machinery and in particular, the senior civil servants in particular. The paper used the combination of descriptive and analytical methods of which data were obtained from both secondary sources and primary source of interviews. Despite the fact that Malaysia has kept itself abreast with the global trend through the introduction of the public management-oriented administration, evidences have shown that the implementation is far from being satisfactory. The paper argues that the implementation of managerial reforms have blurred the political-administrative interface which has subsequently led to politicization. As such, the paper attempts to enrich the limited knowledge by analyzing some opinions from the senior management figures i.e. Director Generals (DGs). Study on the impacts of the reforms towards the senior civil servants is relatively new in Malaysia and hence, the scarcity of respective literatures. The findings of the paper are very significant for all researchers in similar areas, even more so for policy makers and the civil servants.