Public Administration Policy and Education in the Workplace - Research Paper Example

 Necessity for a comprehensive understanding of what public administration entails the need to understand, what the duties of a public servant are and what the requirements of for such a job are. Today customized education program on public administration are available in the universities across the world because it has been well realized that specialized skills are necessary in order to serve the public, which is a conglomeration of diverse culture with varying prioritized values. However, the paper does not focus on the dissimilar needs of cultural groups, but rather on the division of labor among the employees who are from different generations and driven by different needs and beliefs including ego patterns and concern for financial sufficiency. The outlook that challenges in work increases one’s level of satisfaction is definitely something I would have to agree with based on personal experience. Although I have never been an administrator, I have been a manager. When I was promoted to become a manager, I remember enjoying the challenges that faced me and I felt good about having more responsibility. There are also elements of a Public Administrator’s job tasks, such as autonomy, diversity, and complexity that correspond to the characteristics of job satisfaction. In this paper, I will try to look at public administration policy in terms of its relation with division of labor. Smyer and Pitt-Catsouphes (2007) have a good observation on this issue. According to them one of the primary thing that motivates them to work in the late age is their reflection on their life span—a good bit of time have already passed and a little is still left and accordingly their meaning of work undergoes changes. The above writers also note that in this of cutting age competition, the distinguishing line between work, education and leisure have blurred. While there was a sequential order among education, work and retirement or leisure, now “women and men are engaging in education, work, and leisure at different points (and often simultaneously) across the life span, and responding to family and to other demands in various ways” (Smyer and Pitt-Catsouphes, 2007, p. 24). As this kind of trend is setting in, it has become normative for considering these things into the work of public administration since the governmental wings like public service commissions are part of the broad public administration system. Chang and Hsu (2009) observe, “motivating employees and enhancing their attitude toward work are topics of interest for both employers and human resources professionals” (Chang and Hsu, 2009, p. 721). Not only age plays an important role but also there are other crucial issues like nature of work, requirements of the work, workload, working hours, stress on work, payment and employment system of a nation. Therefore, the education system that empowers individuals to the jobs of public service must include a discipline designed on labor division in society in its curricula. The sociology class has been quite helpful to me in this regard as it acts as an eye-opener to these challenges and facets of profession. There is a certain distinction between public administration and politics. The former relates to the executive responsibilities of government. The work of a public administrator is more of a managerial and technocratic nature. It focuses primarily on planning, directing, coordinating and organizing. It is generally taken for granted that a public servant is to follow procedure and a politician is to exercise power but instances are not rare where the roles are seen in reverse order. Even public servants are increasingly taking up the jobs of politicians and ministers are influencing the public servants. But these considerations cannot be dealt with in this paper and a good starting point can be the division of labor between public institution and private institutions and also between citizens and public servants. Another notable feature of the present civil society is the public-private partnership. As the present conceptualization of civil society has assumed a different meaning that what was in the nineteenth century, it has become an equation of social structure in terms of power. Increasingly there are claims for different facilities from servants who are citizens of a democratic country. Recent “public administration literature has given substantial attention to this legitimacy crisis” because of this irresolvable relation between public administration and democracy (Raadschelders, 2003, p. 98). The government experiences a dilemma in such a situation where it has to maintain the democratic principles and ensure production at the same time. This helps me to infer that the public administration needs to prepare policies that can protect public interests. One of the public demands that are increasingly being felt in the recent time is the inclination to work for lesser time than they are required to. Reynolds reports that even in the twenty-first century, Americans are unable to “obtain the work hours, they would prefer and the mismatches between the preferred and actual work ours appear to have serious consequences” (Reynolds, 2003, p. 1171). Moreover, the distribution of working hours is often indiscernible because the spectrum of different working hours hides the actual working hour. Reynolds argues that preference of working hours is a subjective matter and that is why employees are at variance. While some like to work for fewer hours, others are interested to work more for larger payments and fringe benefits. Being a mother, I would have thought the opposite of the findings. I only want to work part-time, and I have a family. I can now see the relation and relevance of this data from the perspective of a manager/administrator. I also think that the analysis of working hours should be carried on the level of individual rather from the aggregate data. The reason for this mismatch in the working hour, as observed by Reynolds is the power struggle between the workers and the organization because “worker preferences and employer expectations have grown apart” (Reynolds, 2003, p. 1177). Another reason for wanting to work for more hours might be desire for autonomy and power over the work place. “The division of labor is in part a question of how to monopolize a field of work, take control of it and to exclude other expertise” (Alili and Brante, 2007, p. 288 What Rogers finds is quite contrary to this desire for power and autonomy. As he writes, the United States is facing lack of substitute teachers and these are not possible to meet simply. The potential reasons include lower pay, lack of benefit for substitute teachers and compulsory training for teachers. The United States administration has taken a model, which Rogers calls ‘time transfer’. It means shifting the work hours from one group of workers to another and also emphasizes on the shifting of engagement like meetings and other school administrative activities to vacation time thereby securing maximum work of the employees. One of the grounds on which this recruitment of substitute teachers is conducted is because it allows the employee to balance her work and family. After a survey and intervention, certain solutions were conceptualized, which were good enough. First solution was internal substitution, which allowed the substitute teachers to take over their colleagues’ classes. It benefited them as they were paid based on the numbers of class taken. Another outstanding solution was the utilization of non-school hours—moving planning, meetings and training programs to weekends, holidays and summer months. It becomes clear, how important is skill for public administration in handling these issues. In any program framed to empower individuals to take up responsibilities in public administrations must be capable of teaching strategies to deal with the labor division problem in society.   For a proper disposal of responsibility, division of labor is indispensable. Since the first task of public administration is the building of organizational structure, the importance on agency became more apparent. After the division of labor have been made, it is necessary to build a system of coordination among the various departments. According to Gulick, division of labor is very important because, “people differ in knowledge and skills, and because the amount of time any one person can contribute to the solution of large-scale problems is limited” (Denhardt and Denhardt, 2008, p.168). This structure of authority also demands a director or executive in control of the administration and coordination. The Denhardts too, points out the limitations of horizontal divisions of labor within a democracy (Denhardt and Denhardt, 2008, p. 170). At a certain level, not only the distinction between mid-level managers and top-level managers become obscure, but also the managers exercise unfair controls. Leslie A Perlow (1998) observes, “managers control the hours of employees work, and therefore the temporal boundary between employees’ work and life outside of work” (Perlow, 1998, p. 328). This control is not even uniform at every level but the focus of control varies. While at the lower hierarchical level experience more personal surveillance, or ‘behavior control’, while people at higher hierarchical levels experience more measurement of outputs, or ‘output control’” (Perlow, 1998, p. 329). Traffic officers take this kind of unjust attitude too. Schellenberg notes, “when under pressure to write more tickets, officers were stricter with male, minority, and lower-class drivers than female, white, and middle-class drivers (Schellenberg, 2010, p. 3). Managers are also answerable to the senior executives for the ‘performance of the knowledge workers’. Since the mangers are not able to determine the output of the knowledge workers, they take the working time to be the only determiner of creativity and productivity. However, to instantiate the matter, it can be observed that in United States, this model of hierarchy does not work because America allows control from outside the formal hierarchy (Milakovich and Gordon, 2008, p. 201). He also points out that managers even call ‘sunrise’ meetings and personal request for attending meetings, which is virtually a variant of order. In order to change the situation, the long-hours working managers are to be convinced that their prolonged commitment to their job does not essentially lead to more production. Another important task is to help employees with strategies to cope with family-job balancing problem because this problem is generally considered a problem of the individual (Perlow, 1998, p. 355). In another survey conducted by Perlow, it may be observed that the excessive work pressure creates a ‘time femine’ among the software engineers (Perlow, 1999, p. 57). The surveyor defines the concept of ‘time femine’ as a feeling of having too much work to do in comparative little time. In the survey, Perlow found that this kind of pressure is hardly beneficial to the engineers, since they distinguish between ‘real engineering’ and ‘everything else’ (Perlow, 1999, p. 64). While by the former they meant using scientific principles and creativity, the later meant other works like interactions. According to Kivimaki and Vanhala, team unity can predict the performance of employers.  A study carried by them, shows that the intention to leave job reflects poor performance. They observe, “team climate manifested as clarity of and commitment to objectives, participation, task orientation, and support for innovation have been linked to several positive outcomes at work” (Kivimaki and Vanhala, 2007, p. 2)  Morale is another factor that influences the volume of output largely. Weakleim and Frenkel (2010) observe that there are three factors that are related to morale and influences production. These are the mature of relationship in the work place, whether low morale is contingent on other factors and how this low morale effects production. I think it is true that if the workers have good faith and respect for their work and employer, the production is bound to be higher. According to the above-mentioned writers, “morale may facilitate agreement between workers and management, making it easier to introduce productivity-enhancing changes” (Weakleim and Frenkel, 2010, p. 354). But utilizing the vacation or leisure hours, workers can increase productivity. But Maume (2004) discerns that there is a clear discrepancy in the way vacations are utilized by man and women. This discrepancy is a result of the gender role assigned to man and women. While, men would like to engage in work in holidays, women would be required to tend to family and children (Maume, 2004, p. 163).  Therefore, is not always about payment, but also about the convenience and family obligations. Having decided to work as a public administrator and as a part timer I also find the relevance of striking a balance between the leisure and working hours. It is being felt increasingly that while public administration is predominantly focused on the managerial works, it is more important to recognize the “ideas that legitimize the structure and functioning of government” (Peters and Pierre, 2003, p.164). Public administration policy and education therefore take a better-rounded view to understand all the complexity that a proper operation of the society demands. In a society where agriculture and industry coexist, two different types of policies for people belonging to different strata. For instance, the tax sanctioned on the business owners cannot be levied on the farmers. This is a conscious segmentation within the social order. Quite surprisingly, equal pay for equal work is also a kind of well-conceptualized structured inequality. According to Frederickson (2010), “segmented equality is critically important for public policy and administration because virtually every public service id delivered on a segment basis” (Frederickson, 2010, p. 56) The survey done for the purpose of this paper and my Sociology class help me therefore to understand the different angles in which various individuals approach an work and the expected challenges in the professional life of an administrator where long working hours and qualifications are major constraints in the path of stability. This study will therefore help me prepare better for my career against the background of my role in the family.                      References Aili, C and Brante, G (June 2007) Qualifying teacher work: everyday work as basis for the autonomy of the teaching profession, Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice, Vol. 13, No. 3, 287–306, Routledge  Chang, C and P Hsu (2009) The Psychological Contract of the Temporary Employee in the Public Sector in Taiwan, SOCIAL BEHAVIOR AND PERSONALITY, Vol-37, No-6, 721-727 Denhardt R B and J V Denhardt, (2008) Public Administration: an action orientation, Cengage Learning Frederickson G (2010) Social equity and public administration, M E Sharpe Publications Kivimaki M and A Vanhala and others, (2007) Team climate, intention to leave and turnover among hospital employees: Prospective cohort study, BMC Health Services Research, Vol-7, 170-178. Milakovich M E and G J Gordon (2008) Public administration in America, Cengage Learning Maume D J (2006) Gender Differences in Taking Vacation Time, Work and Occupations, Vol-33, NO-2, 161-190 Perlow L. A. (1998) Boundary control: The social ordering of work and family time in high-tech corporation, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol-3, No-2, 328-357, Cornell University Press   Perlow L A, (Mar 1999); The time famine: Toward a sociology of work time, Administrative Science Quarterly; 44, 1, 57-81 Peters B G and J Pierre (2003), Handbook of public administration, London: SAGE R EYNOLD J (2003) You Can't Always Get the Hours You Want: Mismatches between Actual and Preferred Work Hours in the U.S., Social Forces, Vol-81, No. 4, pp-1171-1199, The University of North Carolina Press  Raadschelders C N (2003) Government: a public administration perspective, M E Sharpe publications  ROGERS, J K, (2001) There's No Substitute: The Politics of Time Transfer in the Teaching Profession, Work and Occupations, Vol-28, No-1, 64-90 ,SAGE  Smyer M A and M Pitt-Catsouphes (2007) The Meanings of Work for Older Workers Generations; Vol-31, No-1, 23-30. Schelenberg K (2010) Factors Influencing How Police Officers Sanction Traffic Violators Weakliem D L and S J. Frenkel (2006) Morale and Workplace Performance, Work and Occupations, Vol-33, NO-3, 335-361 Read More