Roles of Administrators in Public Management - Essay Example

This essay defines the scope of public management while segregating it from private management in the absence of case study analysis in thefield of public management system. It discusses the similarities and differences between public administration and private administration. Similarities include organizing and staffing, directing personnel and the personnel management system, and managing performance. It discuses differences in general while pinpointing the fact that both domains can perform well when administration is in right hands. Staffing is one of the differentiators between both types of administrations, as private administrators can command their will freely in the staff management. Change management, on the other hand, is not easy to handle regarding policy shifts in public administration. Employees create a number of hurdles. The private sector uses the tools of profit and loss smartly to enhance performance. Coming to preferences, budget is very critical in public administration. There are procedural similarities, but cost planning is given higher importance in private management. Compare and Contrast the Roles of Administrators in the Public and Private Sectors Definition of Public Administration The core elements of public administration are policy management, resource management, and program management. These functions of public management are defined by the Interagency Study Committee on Policy Management Assistance. According to Mushkin’s Report, public management also includes personnel management, workforce planning, shared bargaining and union-management relations, appraisal of production and execution, organization, financial control, and examining study, program, and control audit. Regarding case studies, the public domain is in the learning stage only while analysis of case studies is one of the leading methods to manage functions in the private sector (Allison Jr., 2006). Similarities Between Public and Private Administration The general management functions, as summarized in the acronym POSDCORB, are similar: planning, organizing, staffing, directing, coordinating, reporting, and budgeting. All these functions are not necessarily connected and related (Allison Jr., 2006). Organizing and Staffing Organizing and staffing are integral functions to control internally. The manager creates structures and processes for shared functions. Staffing goes side by side by appointing the right individuals in the related job, both in public and private administration (Allison Jr., 2006). Directing Personnel and the Personnel Management System The strength of an organization, whether public or private, is reflected through the expertise and awareness of its workforce. It is the function of the personnel management system to recruit, finalize, train, reward, and punish the staff by showing the pink slip to a human resource. Such human resource functions, similar in both sectors, help an organization in achieving its aims by taking particular instructions from management (Allison Jr., 2006). Managing Performance Different management information systems such as operations and capital budgets, accounts, reports, and statistical systems, performance evaluation and product approximation help managers in both sectors in decision-making and in valuing growth in the realization of aims (Allison Jr., 2006). Differences Between Public and Private Administration Some labels could be similar in both public and private administration, but the meaning is different. Talking about the differences in the internal segments of administration in the private sector, it is the topmost critical task of a chief executive officer to make a judicious selection of employees. Both private and public sector organizations can work remarkably when responsibilities are shouldered by right people (Allison Jr., 2006). The pathways of executives of both sectors in staffing are different. Private sector administrators can lock plants, shift leading managers, hire and fire at will. On the other hand, policy changes are not easy to materialize in public administration. Employees in a public sector undertaking do not clear the path for changes to take place. They thwart administration efforts. Private administration is clean from such roadblocks. Issues are raised in the Congressional meetings on any changes planned. Closing down a unit or shifting roles of functionaries is a good reason to move the Congress. Employees against any such move even go to the press, seeking redress of their issues. Even financial leverage to the government department can not convince the workforce not to oppose it. Such attitude of the workforce can delay the execution of critical programs. On the contrary, in private business, the CEOs need to consider judiciously before assigning a role to someone because the possibility of not doing it is very scant in private administration (Allison Jr., 2006). The private sector allows the use of such tools as profit and market share for the sake of performance enhancement so that lower level managers could be convinced to perform according to specific models. In the private sector, cost appraisal allows comparison of various plants within AMC, and comparison of AMC’s production, procurement, and even administration are possible, which is not so in public sector undertakings (Allison Jr., 2006). Different Preferences The state departments’ preferences are compared and contrasted with those of the private sector. As per the outcomes of the National Study of Business Strategy and Workforce Development, a 2006 survey of for-profit and not-for-profit organizations, budgeting was also a matter of priority in the list of preferences in public agencies under the section of cost leadership (Brown et al., 2009). The transparency level in government budgeting is higher than in the private sector. According to Hughes (2003), financial management in the public domain is related to financial functions of the budget, which are similar to accounting. It requires making of balance sheets of all government functions, as it happens in the private sector. It includes, first of all, an approximation of all public expenditures in the purview of the budget sector and, subsequently, functioning as a legislative tool of answerability and monitoring in the financial matters of the government. The first budgetary function is total calculation of approximations of receipts and expenses. The second one is a critical segment of the system of answerability. Government budgetary income and expenditure are presented to the public for analysis. The primary elements of government budgeting are formulation, authorization, and appraisal through legislation; any expenditure or taxation steps need to be fully legal (Hughes, 2003). Coming to priorities, these are different in the public sector and the private sector, particularly reducing personnel cost is a matter of greater concern in the private sector than the public one. In the matter of human resource management, both give equal importance to it. In the private sector, employers’ identified preference to management of workforce is 88.9%, while public agencies give 95.3% priority to workforce management, as per the States as Employers of Choice Survey. Incidentally, one of the leading aims of the Survey was to help in measuring the reaction to the aging employees and help in planning to find the answer to the problem of aging employees (Brown et al., 2009). Cost leadership earned 89.8% respondent agencies’ preference as a very critical matter in public administration, while the private sector ranking of cost leadership was 87.2%. In the matter of cost cutting, respondents’ preference rating was 57.4% against 62.8% in the private sector (Brown et al., 2009). A number of preference rankings are similar in both the public and private sectors. Both identified aging workforce as a challenge as well as an opportunity to fulfill the deficiency by prioritizing it ahead of other organizational aims. Both sectors showed their willingness to provide flexible timing to the old employees, seeing it as an opportunity to reduce cost by retaining skilled and retired workforce. References Allison Jr., G.T. (2006). Public and private management: Are they fundamentally alike in all unimportant respects? What is public administration? Retrieved from http://cstl-cla.semo.edu/walling/Public%20Private%20Mgt.pdf. Brown. M., Wong, M., & McNamara, T. (2009). Comparing the priorities of state agencies and the private sector. State and private sector priorities. (State Issue Brief 02). Retrieved from http://www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/research_sites/agingandwork/pdf/publications/SIB02_Agencies.pdf. Hughes, O. E. (2003). Public management and administration: An introduction (3rd ed.). Palgrave MacMillan. Retrieved from http://downloads.pavroz.ru/files/publicmandadm.pdf. Read More