The Impacts of Managerialism on Human Service in Hong Kong - Essay Example

The Impacts of Manageralism on Human Service in Hong Kong In his journal, Tropman argued that Hong Kong needs good management due to a number of reasons, which include the rising expectations and increased competition as well as shrinking budget. According to the journal, good management refers to a set of beliefs and practices whereby people assumes better management can resolve a large of social and economic problems. In the quest for good and improved performance in the public sector, Hong Kong institutions introduced some fashionable terms such as increasing competitiveness, excellence, efficiency, and accountability (Chan, 2008). The public sector adopted different strategies like quality audit, strategic management, quality assurance, internal audit, and performance pledges linking performance with outputs in order to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of working institutions in Hong Kong. The principle objective of this paper is to examine critically the impacts of good management on human service in Hong Kong. For the past few years, the management system on human service in Hong Kong underwent unprecedented transitions due to the challenges presented by the worldwide tides of human resource management and market trends (Chu, Tsui, & Yan, 2009). Analytical suggestions depict that, these transitions have negatively affected the quality of human service management and given rise to the increasing consumerism as well as intense institutional competition. Worst of all, these changes have led to diluted sense of commitment and purpose of employees towards their working ideas. With this sense, management on human service and marketing trends has presented advent opportunities for organizations to use these experiences and encounters to demonstrate how they can turn crises and threats in this sector to positive opportunities for development and growth. With reference to this journal, Hong Kong institutions can use good management positive perspectives to increase choices and opportunities to motivate human service, increase employee efficiency, enhance performance, generate additional resources for experimentation and innovation (United Nations, 2005). It should be borne in mind that, as people must be cautious about the negative impacts of management on human service in Hong Kong, they must also conceive this as an opportunity to strengthen organizational capabilities of human service in order to revitalize the core values of good management and strive for social justice and betterment. A review of education and market reform in Hong Kong From year 2009 to 2010, the government of Hong Kong had presented a review of implementing a new system of senior secondary education. This section will give a review of educational and social service organizations reforms and discuss issues arising from good management approach incorporated in the reform. The growing impact of globalization affected educational development worldwide. Due to the need to maintain the countries’ competitiveness in the global marketplace, governments around the globe starts reviewing their systems of education and policies and initiated different educational reforms in order to enhance the global capacity of their countries’ manpower and thus improve their competitiveness. Such reforms affected Hong Kong’s educational system due to economic rationalism and management (Chu, Tsui, & Yan, 2009). The economic rationalism focused on promoting productivity and growth of the economy and pursued greater efficiency as well as development of a competitive production culture. On the other hand, managerial approach focused on objectives of achieving maximum efficiency in educational reform by creating impacts of change that required the government of Hong Kong to bear the costs of good management within the education sector. What bound the primary concern of the public service in the past was quantity in securing enough school places or beds in hospitals for catering the growing social needs. The concern for quality human service such as education and trade is growing in Hong Kong. Since 1990, there has been intense search for quality productivity in Hong Kong. As constraints in public expenditure increase, today, the public management is greatly concerning itself with ways that can reduce cost or at least prevent it from growing further. These concerns are inevitably changing the nature of government from service providers to service regulators, thus increasing the focus on means of regulating the quality of public services. The Hong Kong government is always asking about the three Es: economy, efficiency, and effectiveness in the provision of these public services (Chan, 2008). The economy outlines the cost of inputs used. Efficiency describes the cost of producing the outputs and effectiveness defines the results of production. Due to need for efficiency, effectiveness brought about easy and logical concern for quality, which in turn raised the issue of how to measure performance. Management on human service in Hong Kong transformed due to rise of consumerism and postmodernism. Consumerism dictated that consumers have a right to express how they view services and their opinions and their knowledge has value and validity (Tsui, 2006). Postmodernism depicted the belief that, truth does not exist in objective sense and people do not discover truth, they create it. Together, these issues complicated social service organizational reform and shaped ways in which the government managed public organizations. The education reform in Hong Kong commenced comprehensive review of the system between years 1997 and 2000. The then Chief Executive of Hong Kong education Mr. Tung initiated a reform document that focused on whether the standards of Hong Kong education kept up with the improvements of educational standards of its competing countries. Additionally, it focused on whether the education reforms contained in the document ensured future economic competitiveness. The proposed review of Hong Kong’s academic structure, curricula, and assessment mechanisms that are happing today accompanied by these reports along with a number of consultation papers give a clear significance of moving away from achieving quantitative targets to qualitative improvements (Tsui & Cheung, 2004). The government, in an attempt to improve quality, it incorporated quasi market mechanisms into the sector of social service organization management strategies. It is observable that, these social service organization reform reports had managerial strategies of human service focus on quality assurance, value addition, incentives, measurable performance, standards, cost effectiveness, and competitiveness among other qualitative factors. These were impacts of good management on human service in Hong Kong. In addition, the government often mentioned key terms such as autonomy, professional, self-evaluation, and participation. The call for choice, diversity, and allowing schools to develop their own characteristics made analysts understands that this was a step towards a “market oriented approach in terms of educational governance. At this point, social service organization policies focused on emphasizing on quest for efficiency, quality, and effectiveness. Introduction of implemented compulsory nine years of senior secondary education from 1978 led to emergency and prominence of quality and effectiveness themes in school education discourse in Hong Kong (United Nations, 2005). Apart from enhancing basic knowledge, the reformed education had proposed a whole person approach in senior education by holding the belief that it was necessary for students to grow experience in organizational, vocational, academic, and social services. Moreover, it also proposed a whole person approach on sports and aesthetics. With the view of reducing the pressure brought about by public examinations, the report proposed that, students should sit for only one public examination after a period of twelve years of universal basic education. There were recommendations to do away with the streaming between the humanities, arts, and natural science classes whereby it was upon the students to choose when promoting to senior secondary school. These major changes in education led to explosive growth of knowledge, developed a knowledge-based economy, raised advent information technology, and led to unprecedented changes in the Hong Kong management on human service (Currie, Peterson, & Monk, 2006). With reference to the journal, Hong Kong’s cultural economic, social, and cultural developments depend highly on whether the population can arise to challenges posed and make the most out of the opportunities ahead. In order to sustain development in Hong Kong as an international city in spite of rapid development and economic restructuring in the Mainland China, citizens need to adapt and create independent thinking and life long learning capabilities. The managerial approach The ideas of good management and Mcdonaldization influenced deeply the emphasis of control and measurement in the social service organization reform of market and production on human service management system. Good management on human service entails of means in which public sector agencies would increase their efficiency in service provision. With reference to the requirements of the curriculum, new senior secondary students had to attain Other Learning experiences apart from the four core and twenty elective subjects. The teachers, in addition to their core and elective subjects teaching duties, are responsible for organizing these other learning experiences and building up of student learning profile for their students (Brown, McLafferty, & Moon, 2009). This area involved a large amount of other administrative duties such as controlling, measuring, and capturing students learning experiences. The learning experiences comprised of moral and civic education, intellectual development, community service, aesthetic development, and physical development among others whereby teachers had to organize them. All these achievements aided to the impacts of good management on human service in Hong Kong. Through implementation of managerialism on human service in Hong Kong, the organized responsible managers encouraged employees to establish an employee working profile in which they could track and reflect on whole person development. This document was useful since it enabled employees to demonstrate personal competence and quality to the employees’ future employers as well as future application of tertiary institution, for those interested in furthering their professions. Employees’ reflection on these experiences enhanced their working capability since, in order to work effectively, employees needed to undergo self-reflection thinking process (Zak, 2008). The self-reflection process involved employees recording their own thoughts, writing a blog or journal, designing, and power point presentation among other activities. These processes enable the managers to responsibly appraise their employees’ performance and provide feedback to the employees in other working experiences. Due to rising expectations, the government of Hong Kong implemented the quality assurance process that incorporated quality assurance inspection, school self-evaluation, and social service organization assessment by different committees in order to improve the quality of education and social service. Because of increased competitions, the government proposed annual reports that would show the performance of a school and a company individually, and then provide recommendations for any required improvements (Christensen & Laagered, 2011). These recommendations also required schools and companies to develop and prepare annual plans, which they would implement for corrective actions. However, these practices and responsibilities that had teachers and managers bear the increased administrative work, being a member of committees and leading the other learning activities affected their teaching and managerial duties and depleted their chances of meeting students and employees respectively. In turn, it resulted to the impeding need to have good management on human service in Hong Kong. Due to shrinking budgets, the government of Hong Kong brought in market principles and new ideas regarding good management in order to respond to the uncertain global economic restructuring. These new ideas and principles aimed at improving the economic returns, accountability, standards, and efficiency of the country’s educational and social service organization systems. On that note, it should be borne in mind that, Hong Kong became part of China in 1997 (Walker & Briggs, 2010). Furthermore, welfare replacement trend by other competitive nations led to transformation of the Hong Kong government whereby it shifted from maximizing general welfare to maximizing returns on investment. This brought greater and improved management on human service among the public sector. Because of good management on human service, today, the public sector is about management of scarce public resources not delivering public values. The rise in the tidal wave of good management on human service transformed the way Hong Kong Government managed the social service organization reform (Currie, Peterson, & Monk, 2006). In order to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the public service delivery, the government of Hong Kong is seeking to introduce new ways of improving and maximizing on productivity, which is comparable to that of the private sector. Some of the proposed initiatives included organizational based management, benchmarking, and control systems as well as performance measurement. The company management initiative expects that, with intense and increased transparency of company operations and broadened participation from the community in the management of the organizations, sharing of experiences would improve company’s performance. As a matter of course, the government is setting trading and education policies that are emphasizing on the quest for quality, effectiveness, and efficiency and employing the principle of good management is enhancing competitiveness in providing quality productivity in order to meet the increasing market demand (Chenoweth & McAuliffe, 2005). The company-based management is discharging legacy of the new rights ideology in which the Hong Kong is committing itself to breaking government companies’ monopoly and introducing choice, competition, and measurable results in social service organization. It is evident that due to increased competition and rising expectations, the government of Hong Kong is inevitably transforming into primary evaluation. It is evaluating whether employees and stakeholders are really benefiting from the reformed organizational system (Christensen & Laagered, 2011). On the other end, it is creating excessive workload and pressure on the side of managers in order to attain the maximum training standards indicating that the emerged managerial approach is changing the way companies manage themselves. This is due to introduction of strategic plans, mission statements, proper appraisal systems, cost monitoring systems, and promotion of public relations in most of the companies. Before introduction of these strategic plans, the existing social service organization systems required managers to complete more paperwork and administrative tasks rather than devoting more time with their employees (Monk & Tan, 2004). However, when the government of Hong Kong introduced good management on human service, it changed the decisions regarding institutional and school curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment, which in turn pre-empted managers and teachers concerns. This indicates why this journal asserted that Hong Kong needed good management on human service. In spite of the shrinking budget, some people argued that, quality organizational protocols could only relate to the adoption of good managerial practices, which have clear targets and plans, strong management direction, and proper appraisal systems (Siu & Ku, 2008). Due to improved human management, the newly set forms of managing firms started implementing a scheme that had quality indicators of measuring firm output, process, profile, and context. The set performance measurements aimed at allowing comparison between institutions for the purpose of continuous improvements and practice sharing. These benefits attained by performance indicators became some of the impacts of good human management that Hong Kong schools, companies, and other organizations achieved (Monk & Tan, 2004). Nevertheless, the extension of these performance indicators is what dominated the whole journal since they did not measure up to the expectations of both employees and company administrators. Not yet seeing benefits, according to the journal, some people observed triggered competition among institutions. Teachers and company administrators were busy fighting and battling with competition and hence spending inadequate time with their students and employees. As a result, the journal's writer sought to put into writing that, due to increased competition, Hong Kong needed good management on human service since there was upsurge of poor managing standards (Scott, 2010). More to that, the increased stress of quality assurance via both external and internal mechanisms such as self-evaluation and company based management by the quality assurance inspection unit to review company performance added pressure to the social service organization reform measures. Following this hustle, the organizational administrators felt pressured thus diminishing their managerial performance. This resulted to deteriorated output and as such, this journal sought to shine light on these vices. Because of increased global competitiveness, the government of Hong Kong started using market principles to organize its managerial systems and utilize managerial ideology to administer new reforms and systems. Given the introduction of postmodernism and global experiences, the government had to do little, as the market would take care of the rest. With this sense, good management on human service benefited social service workers since it allowed social service organizations to have a certain degree of flexibility and autonomy that implemented working experiences (Bell & Stevenson, 2006). The classic ideal type of government brought about by good management on human service in Hong Kong led to a process of deconstruction, which in turn resulted to emerging forms of governance that brought both people and government into policymaking process aimed at transferring control to the organization bodies. It led to adoption of reduced roles for the government as the sole provider of public services. The impacts of good management on human service lessened the degree of government intervention during institutional reform since there was increased practice of organization management autonomy and market oriented principles that made organizations become managerial and bureaucratic in nature. New social service organizational reform required managers to organize, plan, and implement the working activities and capture the experience of employees in the employee working profile (Deem, Hilliard, & Reed, 2007). This social service organizational reform required managers to carry out all this within the control of quality assurance process, which focused on quality standard and efficiency. The control over the managing profession gave rise to a stress on procedures at the expense of organizational values and purpose. The government of Hong Kong put more emphasis on managerial efficiency rather than the objectives and goals of production. It was difficult for managers to complete evaluating the quantified employees since they even had no time to see them. Given these adversities, the writer of the journal felt that there was need for managerialism, which he equated to good management on human service in Hong Kong since good management was the only tool that would promote effective production, teaching, and learning. Good management on human service indicated that organizational and educational leaders and managers should focus on specifically institutional aspects of their work as opposed to increased burdens. As companies were increasingly becoming more conscious about performance and output, there was a dislocation between the culture of management and the pedagogic discourse culture (Pollit & Bouckeraet, 2004). Nonetheless, the impacts of good management made managers understand that stakeholders were no longer stakeholders but rather their clients. Companies became more sensitive to market needs and courses and at the same time transformed their rapport into market driven practical which stressed on applied value of quality management. Equated to good management on human service, it made institutions design strategic cores that encompassed options from which clients could choose rather as opposed to a fixed set of subjects and measurement started focusing more on efficiency and performance indicators as opposed to the extrinsic value of management (Chenoweth & McAuliffe, 2005). In addition, it shifted focus on collegiality to management, which increased mission statements, appraisal, system outputs, and strategic planning among other impacts. With intense focus on partnership, public relations, control, and qualitative decision-making, institutions adopted market principles, which in return introduced choice and competition (Barry, 2010). Nevertheless, as the journal writer observed that, the myth of education would not bring Hong Kong multi-purpose solution that could solve a number of society problems such as unemployment and poverty; he made it clear that this country needed good management on human service. Note that, education unlike other commodities is a public good and a human service hence promoting quality education would not be without cost. The pursuit of effectiveness and efficiency in education through quantification and control measurement over human autonomy resulted to dehumanization and alienation of education practitioners. The journal writer witnessed that the practicality and quality of the change project may exist in practitioners and that is why he advocated for good management on human service in Hong Kong in his journal (Shah, 2005). The implementation of organizational reform was hasty and thus imposed a complex and massive task on institutions resulting to tremendous social and human costs. Social service is merely not a management or technical issue and the government of Hong Kong should not overlook the complexity of social service organizational reform. In summary, the impacts and consequences of adopting managerialism on human service in Hong Kong were worthy of this paper’s serious consideration before the actual implementation. More decentralized and relaxed models of management on human service replaced the traditional models of public sector command and control that contributed to realizing more impacts. The structure of governance became horizontal, as the mode of governance moved from top down conception where it emphasized on interactions among different groups in the society (Hall, 2008). Due to good management, Hong Kong achieved strategies of social equality, which included equal access and usage of resources as provided by the government, and equality of outcome where the recipients equal results from the social service. The impacts of good management on human service enabled Hong Kong provides equal opportunities of accessing quality service via subsidized management. This is because, the provision of social service bases on meritocracy and ability to perform as opposed to status, family background, or social ties. References Barry, B. (2010). Universities in Translation: The Mental Labor of Globalization. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Bell, L. & Stevenson, H. (2006). Education Policy: Process, Themes And Impact. Routledge: Taylor & Francis. Brown, T., McLafferty, S. & Moon, G. (2009). A Companion to Health and Medical Geography. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. Chan, C., et al. (2008). “A virtual learning environment for part-time MASW students: An evaluation of the WebCT”. Journal of Teaching in Social Work, 28(1/2), 87-100. Chenoweth, L. & McAuliffe, D. (2005). The Road to Social Work and Human Service Practice: an Introductory Text. Andover: Cengage Learning Australia. 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