The effectiveness of public managers - Essay Example

The effectiveness of public managers Power is the ability of an individual or a group to have ity over another individual or a group in terms of economic, social and political aspects. In leadership, power is categorized into official and personal power. Under official power, there is coercive, legitimate, and reward power, while under personal power there is support, expert and referent power. Coercive power is a type of power when leaders impose threats upon the recipients in order to make them comply with the authority. Threats of losing a job or getting demotion, for instance, will make the employees work hard. Legitimate power applies to an individual using his or her status in an organization to impose his authority to the recipients. This power requires that all the individuals occupying various offices in an organization must exercise their power regardless of their personal characteristics since the organizations usually recognize the hierarchical positions. Reward power entails the allocation of direct or indirect, materials or psychological reimbursement. Support power is based on the ability to stimulate the involvement of all members within and out of the organization regardless of their age and status to participate in organizational matters. Expert power is the type of power based on one’s experience and proficiency in the job and the association. Referent power is based on the ability of an individual to relate well with others through communication, embracing trust, care and intimacy to others within the organization. The chief executives and legislatures have several powers over the agencies. These powers involve the fact that they have the power to respond to the democratic institution. They achieve this by creating the equilibrium between the laws while recognizing the democratic needs of the citizens. They have the authority to hold public forums in which the citizens can openly share the problems affecting them. In such forums, the citizens are allowed to give their suggestions, and it is upon the administrators to act on them or to ignore them on the basis of the laws. The public administrators are required to implement the laws and act as an example to the citizens. In order to embrace responsive administration, it is the duty of the public administrators to ensure that they create a suitable environment. This enables them to come up with suitable power structures, organizational design, and the laying of suitable strategies that will strengthen the need for democratic standards within and without the organization. Public administrators have the power to acknowledge the organizational structure and come up with ways that will guarantee an independent society. It is a requirement for the public administrators to be accountable for their respective duties, but they have the powers to ignore the requirements of the society and their representatives. Good governance is achieved when the public administrators are able to visualize and properly interpret the interests of the citizens and ensure that the issues are timely addressed. This leads to the promotion of ethical governance that leads to democracy. Public administrators have the authority to ensure that all the public servants provide good services to the citizens without misusing the public resources. The public administrators have the powers to ensure that all the public servants are effective in their areas of specialization and to ensure that they display morally acceptable actions. Public administrators have a responsibility to control the societal resources, so it is their duty to ensure that these resources are used effectively in meeting the needs of the society. In order to achieve the results, the administrators must ensure that there is efficiency and equity among the public servants in the organization. In terms of morality, the public administrators deal with the issue of morality by ensuring that the public offices are ethically used. Public administrators play a vital role in the decision-making process and they have the authority to abolish some bad activities that might lead to outcomes that are bad for the public. Public administration is challenging but the administrators can use their authority in overcoming the challenges. The administrators can come up with strategies that will allow them working in diffuse and sophisticated systems. This is achieved when the administrators interact with the citizens. The citizens have accorded a lot of respect to the administrators, so they will be able to collect enough data from them that will ensure the effective operation of the organization. Public administrators control the organizations’ structure, so they will use their power to ensure that the organization operates within the set restrictions. The administrators have the power to incorporate their ideas in a decision-making process. They are free to act in support of an idea presented by someone else by being open-minded and by reducing their strictness on certain issues. The power enables them to adjust to the prevailing conditions and offer comprehensive explanations concerning the new situation. This is effectively achieved by balancing between power, ethics and professional standards. 2. Why are ethics important to public administration and governance in general? More importantly, what exactly is and is not ethical behavior within public administration? Do “gray areas” exist regarding public ethics? Where? Why? In light of problems at all levels of government, why should we be concerned with the behavior of public administrators in their official duties? Ethical behavior within the public administration is very vital since it enables the public servants to promote ethical leadership by embracing impartiality that will lead to the systematic justice advocating for equity in employment. Whenever the civil servants exercise ethical leadership, they will be able to comply with the law, especially the administrative law that requires them to have a culture in the decision-making. This will enable the administrators to express their fairness, transparency, and accountability in their legislative work. An ethical behavior enables the leaders to embrace fair administration by allowing information sharing among the administrators and society, thus leading to the involvement of the society in the decision-making process to boost justice and accountability. The bad behavior within the public administration is when the leaders execute some policies without consulting the public and forcing them to comply with the policies; bad administrative behavior leads to a lack of transparency in the civil service and corruption. In public ethics, gray areas occur in the area of responsiveness and professionalism. The political leaders have failed to put equilibrium between the reaction to public issues and their occupation. Basing on the prevailing situation in the public service, there is no difference between the executive power and the legislature. This makes it hard to determine the role of the president as the final administrator and the public service in ensuring the democracy, fair administration of public programs, and in proper advice resulting in effective decision-making. This can only be achieved by ensuring a high degree of autonomy within the public service by giving a proper outline of the duties and responsibilities of all the departments in the public service. This will lead to ethical administration. Results versus practice is another gray area in that the public ethics. The decentralization of control of several core financial and human resources has enabled the leaders to be accountable for their performance. Results and practice must go hand in hand since the separation of the two might lead to an adverse effect. The public service should not value the public administration on the basis of results alone; they should also consider the ethical procedures employed by the administrators in order to attain the results. The procedures include transparency, reliability, practical equality, and impartiality just to mention a few; failure to do so makes it hard to evaluate the involved practices. The best way of dealing with these issues to guarantee ethical administration is by empowering the leaders to strengthen the importance of justice and transparency; this they can do by offering private and public support to ethical administration in the public service and sensitivity to the executive members to ensure that they properly exercise their powers. Involvement of the community in government affairs in relation to the responsibility of the public service is another gray area. Community involvement in government affairs is very vital since it is an indicator of ethical administration. This enables the members of the community to understand their rights and responsibilities as citizens, thus aiding in an increase in openness and effective decision-making leading to better governance. The public service involves many individuals in public administration. The uniqueness of the public service is that the administrators must be able to present the interests of various groups while taking part in political issues affecting the government. It is vital for the public service to keep in touch with the eternal groups, an aspect that has posed a challenge to the public administration. This is very dangerous to the government since it makes the public service look like it is competing with other administrative departments in advising the government, although the competition exists in order to increase the aggressiveness of the advisors of the public service. The uniqueness of the characteristics of the public service might lead to interference with the necessary ethical standards, so it is vital for the government to identify the unique role and provide the necessary advice to the public service for a better appraisal. The area of administration communication also poses a challenge in public ethics. Due to technological changes, the governments, and public service organizations are using advanced communication techniques to improve the management. In order to achieve ethical governance they should respond to change while bearing in mind the public, partisan concerns. Governments that have failed to do so have always received their revenge in the ballot box. In order to avoid such blunders the public service must be careful to ensure that they lay strategies while bearing in mind the public concerns and are cost effective. It might be hard but they are able to elaborate on the definition of good practice in areas like market research, stakeholder discussions and public crusades. It is important to be concerned about the behavior of public administrators in their official duties because they are representatives of the society who should embrace ethical behaviors for the public to emulate. The public expects their needs to be met through public administrators, so the leaders are supposed to focus on public concerns. The manner in which the public administrators conduct themselves while undertaking the public duties is very important since these administrators have the powers to influence the public. Whenever the public servants behave badly before the public, the public will respond by acting negatively. If a government official, for instance, asserts negative issues about the government to the public, he or she will be inciting the public to repel against the government. This behavior will lead to national clashes that will result in great economic, social and political losses and will affect the development of a nation. On the other hand, the leaders who display ethical behavior in their duties usually improve the loyalty of the public to the administration, thus enabling them to work hard to meet government expectations. In order to prevent the occurrence of negative instances within the nation, it is always important to observe the behavior of the public administrators and address it before it turns sour. This implies that for better governance, the public administrators must always behave ethically. 3. A central conflict in Public Administration is the requirement for government to be as efficient and cost-effective as possible, while at the same time strive to treat citizens, particularly those less fortunate economically, as equitably (fairly) as possible in the application of government resources and benefits. With this in mind, choose either productiveness or righteousness. Which is, in your opinion, ultimately the more important to Public Administration – efficiency or fairness? The effectiveness of the public sector depends on the ability of the administrators to do their work properly. When the administrators embrace effective job performance, they will be able to acquire results that will satisfy certain constraints. Public administrators who are effective in their job performance will be able to get the necessary outcomes. This will enable them to work hard to achieve the set objectives while considering the organizational strategies, dealings, and conditions. It is vital for public servants to be effective in their jobs as it implies that they will be able to do the right things regardless of the prevailing incidents. Effectiveness requires that the administrators be assigned the right jobs to be done properly; they should be able to overcome obstacles and work within the limits. This will lead to high productivity in the public sector. The major argument in Public Administration has been the need for the government to be efficient and cost-effective, while emphasizing on equal allocation of government resources and benefits as well as fair treatment of the citizens, particularly those who are economically unstable. Based on the above argument, according to my opinion, effectiveness is the most important aspect in public administration. This is because an effective administration system is usually result-oriented and will always set up strategies beneficial to the public. When the administration system sets goals that must be attained within a given time, the stakeholders will work hard to attain the goals; whenever they fail, they will be accountable for their failures. An effective administration system will create competition in and out of the system. This will be achieved through research and information sharing on better governance through participation in international conferences that will enable them to learn new administration techniques. International interactions will result in high productivity that will lead to economic development, thus promoting the public order and welfare. Economic development creates harmony in social affairs. The social aspect of the society will enable the government to work hard to boost it in order to ensure that there is constant development in the economic and social aspects. A good society will emerge from the existing social, human relationships since the government will be able to meet the social economical requirements of the public. Some members of the public will gain the powers to take part in managing the public. When there is harmony within the society, people will readily turn away from bad behaviors and behave ethically. This will aid in the promotion of national peace, love, and unity among the nationals that are vital to the public. The effectiveness of the public administration is dependent on several factors. First, an effective public administrator must have technical skills. This will enable him or her to have the power over his or her professional area of work within the organization. He or she will be able to follow the correct procedures and apply the right techniques in performing his or her specific job. Technical skills are vital in proper analysis of policies where the administrator will be able to make a refined quantitative analysis of what must be done at a particular time and the method of performance. Proper application of technical skills allows the public administrators to participate in governmental relationships. These relations include budget analysis and the carrying out of training for the management team. Technical skills are also necessary in the determination of salaries for public servants and ensuring equal distribution of employment opportunities through labor discussions and analysis of the systems. This implies that if the government is able to employ public administrators with sufficient technical skills, it will be able to achieve better governance that boosts national development. Human skill is another vital factor that determines the effectiveness of public administration. This is because public administration entails interactions with people. In order to achieve effective results, the administrator will involve people in all the supportive activities. This will enables the administrators to be keen with their actions, since they will be able to understand the consequences of their actions to others. Appropriate human skills act as guides in understanding others, in information sharing and effective service provision. This boosts the loyalty of the subordinates, since they will be inspired by the leaders. Possession of effective human skills will lead to the reinforcement of the interactions between legislators, elected and nominated executives, and citizens, thus leading to eradication of conflicts. It is vital for public administrators to develop their human skills, since this acts as a tie that binds people in supportive activities leading to better governance. Conceptual ability leads to effectiveness since it enables the public administrators to foresee the representation and internalization of decisions, and the relationship between people in terms of time and space. Conceptual ability is very vital since it aids in the creation of a link between the public service organizations and the people. This enables the administrators to acknowledge their personal responsibilities to the organization and the responsibilities of the organization in meeting the set goals. The individual and government relationship leads to the creation of a link that points out the requirements of various groups and the public. This enables the administrators in decision-making basing on the prevailing conditions. Effective governance ensures that the public administrator possesses the conceptual skills that are necessary in the determination of the important policies that can effectively offer a solution to a prevailing problem. In order to execute the public programs, public administrators will be able to conceptualize the factors that will guarantee national success. The idea of having conceptual skills will only work if the administrators implement the ideas that they conceive; it will lead to effective administration. It is the duty of the administrators to have the conceptual skills and use them to assist the government in devising the appropriate strategies leading to national development. ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ Read More