summary public management and administration owen e hughes 9781137560070

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summary public management and administration owen e hughes 9781137560070 Chapter 1 – An Era of Change Introduction Since the early 1980s, a raft of changes has occurred in public sector management in a number of countries, and it appears that more change is yet to come.A public administrator is someone who follows the rules to the letter and carries out instructions. On the other hand, a public manager is personally responsible for the achievement of results, Dissatisfaction with government A turning point may be 2008. The crisis called into question not only the management of government, but government itself, and even, in many countries, widespread dissatisfaction and disillusionment with politics and the political system.The year 2016 saw the Brexit; a rise in right-wing populism in Eastern Europe; authoritarianism in other countries; and the election of Donald Trump. Radical transformation was promised. It is a particularly difficult time to be a public manager and there is a likelihood of further difficulty to follow.From public administration to public management Whether the words 'management' and 'administration' are different from each other is an important part of the present argument. We argue they have conceptual differences, reflected if adding the word “public”.Administration involves following instructions and focuses on process, while management involves, first, the achievement of results, and second, personal responsibility by the manager for results being achieved.Management does include administration.Public management as a field of study Public management is a field of academic discourse, as are public administration, public policy and other related disciplines.Public administration  earlier form of both management and the academic study of the public sector. The theory dominant is the traditional model of public administration.Public management  approach to the running of government that regards the work performed as management rather than administration. Managerialism is essentially the same.New Public Management  Hood (1991). The term has not been useful. Used by those opposed to managerial change.Public policy  output of government; School emphasizing rationality and empirical methods.Governance  setting up the structures and institutional arrangements to enable an organization to be run.Public value  overall strategic purpose for public agencies to add value to the public.For now, the encompassing term is simply 'public management', that simply means the management that is carried out in the public sector.Public and private management Historically, the two sectors have borrowed from each other. Still, there are reasons why they are not alike.The question is whether these differences between them 1) enough to need a specific form of management; 2) to require the use of the traditional administrative model rather than a managerial model.1) The public sector is sufficiently different to need its own form of management. There may be advantages in adapting and using some practices, but the basic task is different.2) However, the second point does not follow. The traditional administrative model is not the only valid way of managing in the public sector.

DIFFERENCES IN THE SECTORS

1.Public sector decisions may be coercive (forced upon individuals).

2.Public sector’s accountability is more problematic, less certain and uneven.

3.A public manager must cope with an outside political agenda.

4.The public sector has inherent difficulties in measuring output. It lacks 'bottom-line' criteria.

5.5. The public sector's size and

diversity make co-ordination difficult. 3 / 4

summary public management and administration owen e hughes 9781137560070 Imperatives of public sector change The wave of reform was a response to perceived inefficiency, changes in economic theories and change in technology.The public sector in society The 70s and early 80s saw intellectual attacks on the size and capability of the sector. Major reforms followed the elections of Thatcher and Reagan.

There were three main aspects to the attack:

1.The scale was simply too large, government consumed too many resources. Government responded to some extent in developed countries.

2.Arguments about the scope of government. It was argued that governments were involved in too many activities. Privatization of became a widely accepted strategy. Cutting regulation has also been a popular mantra.

3.Attack on the methods of government, with bureaucracy becoming unpopular, regarded mediocre and inefficient.The attacks faded by the late 1990s.The GFC would have been much worse if not for the action taken by governments.Since 2015 there has been another wave of disillusionment, more irrational. Critical movements drawn from the far Right find adherents from the less educated, with the target being anyone seen as part of the elite.The role of economics In the 1970s, some Right-wing economists argued that governments were the economic problem and that markets were superior (neo – classical economics, drifting away from Keynesian theory).Public choice theory  Application of microeconomics to political and social areas. Generally, concludes that the 'best' outcome will involve a maximum role for market and a minimum for governments.Principal-agent theory  explains divergence between goals of managers (agents) in private firms and shareholders (principals) and how to incentive agents to work for principals’ goals.Transaction cost theory  transactions are without cost and specifies the circumstances in which a firm might prefer market-testing or contracting to in-house provision.Neo-classical and new institutional economics did not work when confronted by the reality of the GFC. Only government involvement could stop the crisis getting worse. What was left was government debt that led to more pressure into public sector’s reform. A set of correctives came in 2016.Technological change The theory of bureaucracy was a perfect fit for the then-available technology of a single document that is then passed up or down a hierarchical structure. What newer technology can do is to compress the levels of a hierarchy.An interesting time The debate over early public sector change was based on facts. The new anti-governmentalism is very

different: ideologies are more important than facts.

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