Compare methods

	New Public Management Assessment	Institutional Capacity Assessment
Field	Public Administration	Public Administration
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1991	2008
Originator	Christopher Hood	UNDP / World Bank capacity-development practice
Type	Analytical assessment framework	Diagnostic assessment framework
Seminal source	Hood, C. (1991). A Public Management for All Seasons? Public Administration, 69(1), 3–19.	United Nations Development Programme. Capacity Assessment Methodology and supporting practice notes. UNDP.
Aliases	NPM Assessment, Managerialism Assessment, Public Management Reform Analysis, Hood NPM Doctrine Analysis	Capacity Assessment Framework, Organisational Capacity Assessment, Institutional Capacity Diagnostic, Public-Sector Capacity Appraisal
Related	4	4
Summary	New Public Management (NPM) assessment evaluates how far a public organisation or system has adopted the cluster of managerial reform doctrines that swept the public sector from the 1980s — and with what effects. Christopher Hood's 1991 article A Public Management for All Seasons? gave NPM its name and identified its core doctrines: hands-on professional management, explicit performance standards, output controls, disaggregation into units, competition, private-sector management styles, and discipline in resource use. The assessment scores adoption of these doctrines, evaluates their effects, and appraises the trade-offs against enduring public-service values such as equity and accountability.	Institutional capacity assessment is a structured diagnostic that gauges the ability of public-sector organisations and systems to perform their functions, deliver services and sustain results over time. Drawing on frameworks such as the UNDP Capacity Assessment Methodology and World Bank capacity-development practice, it examines capacity at multiple levels — the enabling environment, the organisation, and individuals — across functional dimensions like leadership, accountability, resources and skills. Capacities are rated against defined criteria, gaps between desired and actual capacity are identified, and the findings drive targeted capacity-development responses. It complements outcome-level measures such as the Worldwide Governance Indicators.