Role of Accountability in Public Sector - Case Study Example

? Role of Accountability in Public Sector: A Comparison with the Private Sector Introduction The way the public sector is managed has always been extremely different from the way the private sector is governed because public sector administration always takes a political perspective (Naidu, 2005). Executives in these two sectors have different sets of accountabilities and freedoms and therefore their work is geared towards different achievements. For instance, it has been seen that in the public sector, accountability (political accountability) is always extremely different from the accountability in the private sector. In the public sector, the executives such as ministers are accountable to the public through the parliament because they can be questioned by the parliament. While those in the private sector are not accountable to the general public they are accountable to their bosses and also to the shareholders. This means a different work ethos for the executives. For instance, a public executive will work in line of trying to maintain the boundaries of what is believed to be good governance. This is unlike the private sector executives who work not only to act within the parameters of the expectation of good governance but also in order to achieve results. This is what may differentiate the public executive from the private executive. In the private sector, executives are given a free arena in which to operate, but the results of their actions are highly monitored. This is unlike the public sector where what matters is not the results of work but the process. In other words, in the private sector, the end justified the means. If a CEO of a listed company uses controversial means to achieve the success, he is less likely to be questioned like one who sticks by the rules but delivers poor results. This is different in the private sector in which the officials are limited to strict rules of good governance and performance is never the big question. The way accountability is implemented in the private sector is makes it easier for these executives to be flexible in the way they operate (Steets, 2010). This difference means a number of things with regard to the way public officials operate (Edwards, 1995). For one, these officials are more likely to be able to maximise their skills and abilities could allow. This means that most public officials may not perform up to their abilities of competencies (Herbert, 1991). This is because the officials in the public sector will focus on acting according to the rules rather than on delivering results. Ministers for instance are not usually questioned about performance of their ministries but are usually questioned about any controversial issues in the ministry. Accountability in the public sector is not results-oriented but method oriented, and ministers need to be wary about how they address at issues (Fowler, 1997). For this reason, they are more likely to lax and let things go astray as long as this is within the expectations of good governance principles. Ministers are indirectly answerable to the public who are their employers in the sense that they elect them to parliament before they can be given the ministerial posts. This alone leaves a lot of stake on the table. To begin with, their actions are geared towards pleasing the public and therefore they want to seem to be doing the right thing. Unlike a private sector executive who is judged only on his or her output with regard to increasing the dividends, the minister is judged on so many fronts. This is because the public may not be rational in the way it will look at matters but will depend of popular opinion which is subject to propaganda. At the same time, the political arena is a truly competitive one and the minister may be under a lot of scrutiny from his or her competitors who by any chance may be eying the minster’s position. This political scrutiny is what May keep the minister on his toes and limit their ability to be creative in the way they carry out their mandate. In the long run, a public official may choose to be conservative even in situations where creativity and ingenuity would have yielded better results. It would take a minister or any public official a lot more guts to be creative and work in a way that will yield the best results (Maheshwari, 2002). Private sector however provides different challenges. However, this does not mean that the private sector executives are not pressured to work within a framework of expected parameters of requirements. On the other hand, compared to their public sector counterparts, they are highly much at liberty to deviate from the known course and be creative in the way they look at issues (Weintraub and Kumar, 1997). However, there are those issues that must be considered in the case of the private sector. Most businesses do not have strict constitutions, and this allows the executives in this sector to have a freeway in which to be creative and crafty. Public executives at the same time are limited to the constitutionality of their actions and in this case are at a corner where they are less able to be creative. The issue of political accountability will increase even more with the introduction of e-governance because civilians are now more able to monitor the public officials (Schmid, 2001). Focusing on good governance rather than results has a number of implications on the performance of the public sector (Hampshire, 0978). To begin with, these ministers will care less about performance and will care more about the way they conform to the rules and expectations of the public. What the minister will be seeking to achieve is to ensure that they have blocked all loopholes that may be used to discredit them in terms of their political career. This has affected the performance of the public sector in terms of service delivery thus ending up requiring the privatization of certain sectors. This has very importance effects on the performance of the public sector because the executives in this sector are more concerned with making sure that they secure their career by not jeopardizing their political accountability. In the private sector, executives such as CEOs of private firms have less competition and this mean that the executive does not have to play political games with competitors. The main concern that such a CEO may have is how the company will perform at the end of the end of the fiscal time. In this regard, it becomes highly evident that a private sector CEO and a public sector have different pressures and goals. The goal of the public sector CEO is to act within the rules so as to avoid attacks from those who are mandated to check him. For a private sector CEO, the pressure is to make sure that he has managed to deliver what the shareholders want at the end of the year, increased share value. This means that the private CEO is usually on the dock only at the end of the fiscal time when he has to report the performance of the company’s shares (Baron, 1979). The public CEO one the other hand is on the dock every day and is monitored daily in term of his decisions and what he does on a daily basis is looked at, and he is judged on that. This increased flexibility can be seen as a main contributor to increased performance in the public sector. In the public sector however, this flexibility is not available and executives in this sectors are limited in the way they operate. History of governance oriented accountability The notions of good governance came into light for the first time in the late 19th century (Martin, 2001). It started as a blueprint for managing relationships between donor countries and their beneficiaries. All of a sudden, this concept of managing these relationships started to be the dominant one. Beneficiaries of donations were expected to implement good governance in their government institutions in order to receive donor aid. These expectations changed the way countries were managed. During the same time, the practice of one country giving aid to poorer countries was just starting to take root. However, it became apparent that most of these countries were not able to manage financial and other forms of aid given to them because of corruption and poor governance (Martin, 2001). Most of the aid that would be given to these countries would end up into the pockets of the richest people in these countries, and the poor, who were the target of the aid, would never be able to get e help. In other words, the aid given to these nations was not achieving this primary goal. As a result, donor countries such as England (later to be part of EU) were very concerned and therefore started demanding for these countries to first implement good governance mechanisms in order to receive aid. This concept of good governance however did not take long before it started spilling back to the nations that designed it for other countries. Within countries like UK, public officials were also judged in terms of their good governance and therefore this marked the start of new politics. With time, it became that public sector executives had to also implement good governance in their offices. However, unlike the other instance where foreign government receiving aid would be threatened with sanctions and the refusal for aid, these public officials were would face being hauled out of office of they did not conform o good governance principles. When this approach of managing and checking public executives become the norm, this changed the rules of the game for executives, and they had to deal with scrutiny for parliament and also other issues that were pertinent to the way they worked. Regardless of the fact that public sector and private sector operates under different platforms and expectations, they also have a lot of similarities that they share. For instance, executives from both sectors are always under pressure from some form of authority. While the public sector executives are answerable to the public through the parliament, their private sector counterparts are answerable to the shareholders or to the owners of the enterprise they run. The pressure is different in terms of where it comes from, but both private sector and public sector executives have to deal pressure on their performance. They have to prove their worth in order to remain in their positions. Private sector executives have to prove their worth to the shareholders who demand good stock performance (Hampshire, 0978). On the other hand, public sectors executives have to prove their worth to the public through being good administrators and showing an impeccable respect for law and adherence to the principles of good governance. Whichever the case, each of the executives are highly checked and are affected by the expectations placed on them and their offices. For instance, public executives are always at pressure to please their electorate and in this case may focus on good governance principles so much as to be unable to look on the issues that really matters. As executives, CEOs are supposed to be creative and handy in the way they hale matters. Public CEOs may not have this flexibility with them because this would risk looking like they do not have good governance or that they are not conforming to good governance principles (White, 2005). This may be especially so in cases where the CEOs use controversial methods to achieve their results and also especially when things go wrong with these controversial methods. The formation of the EU in the European continent led to an even deeper need for the concept of good governance to be implemented (He?ritier, 2003). The European Union is a composite democracy which means it is a collection of independent democracies seeking to work together and achieve common goals. The fact these this is a conglomerate of democracies makes public governance even harder among the nations because each one of them have to exercise their sovereignty. In order for these countries within EU to practice their sovereignty and at the same time have to conform to general principles that are useful all of the members, the application of good membership is required for all members. Public officials in these countries have to observe good governance therefore, not only to meet the expectations of their local subjects but also the expectations of the other member countries. The complexity of the public sector and has led to most government and especially successful government like the UK government to cling closely to Diceyan and neo-Diceyan as a way to avoid confusion (Barberis, 1998). This principle suggests a close and tight conformation to the rule of law as a way to manage public affairs. However, in some cases, it has been seen to be a detriment to operations of some functions of public affairs in some countries. In countries like Singapore where is widely applied, it has received massive opposites from civil rights activists who claim that it does not support human rights implementations because it cuts out accountability. Conclusion A closer look at the way there has been a strain on the usability of the tenets of good governance indicates that lack of trust is the main reason that these principles were developed. The principles of good governance were not geared towards improving performance in the public sector but as a way to check public officials and make sure that they are not using their positions for their interests. While this is important in some cases, it would seem that in most cases, it is more counterproductive and that the people may be in a situation where they may need to have a better method of increasing performance in the public sector. The private sector is always better in terms of service delivery and performance because executives in this sector are always not checked in terms of how they operate but in terms of what they deliver at the end. In other words, these executives are judged in terms of how they deliver what they deliver and not in terms of how they deliver it. While political accountability is useful in checking public executives, it seems to be a hold-back in terms on of the way these public executives are held back by these principles. This may explain why there is a big difference in the way public sector performs and the way the private sector performs. To remove this difference, there would need to be developed a better way to managing the public sector and making sure that public officials are not held back by the method used to judge them i.e. political responsibility. Principles of good governance should also be looked at and any loop holes that make it harder for public officials to perform removed altogether. In this regard, they must be looked at in a way that is best and also increase the creativity of public executives, without giving them a leeway to act in their interest. Bibliography: Barberis, P.,1998. The New Public Management And A New Accountability. Public Administration Vol. 76 , 451–470. Baron, H.,1979. Public and Private. New York, NY: Hamilton. Edwards, D., 1995. Non-governmental Organizations: Performance and Accountability Beyond the Magic Beyond the Magic Bullet. New York, NY: Earthscan. Fowler, M., 1997. Analysis patterns: reusable object models. Boston, MA: Addison-Wesley Professional. Hampshire, S., 0978. Public and Private Morality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. He?ritier, A., 2003. Composite democracy in Europe: the role of transparency and access to information. Journal of European Public Policy , 815-830. 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