Reorganizing Government: A Debate
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The debate over the need to reorganize government and how best to accomplish that has been raging in academic and public administration circles for some time, but the debate has become a national and very public issue first because of the considerable dissatisfaction expressed in recent years on the part of much of the public with their public institutions and leaders and second because of the present effort by the Clinton Administration to do something about it. With the announcement early in September of Vice-President Gore's analysis of the issue and his recommendations for change, the debate is likely to become more heated in the months to come. One complaint has been that government is inefficient, especially when compared with the private sector where efficiency is linked to profits, while the public sector lacks incentives to spur managers to be efficient. Some feel that management techniques taken from the private sector would benefit the public sector, while others see the two sectors as so different that private-sector management techniques would not be transferable to the public sector in any meaningful way.PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SECTOR MANAGEMENT The major issues in public administration today include privatization, decentralization, choice, and incentives. Most of these issues have developed in response to changes in the economic, social, and legal framework for public administration at all levels of government and to a perception that the
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initiative and enterprise
Be open to inventiveness and novelty
Be efficient
Promote comfort and convenience
Dissent for the sake of the task
Invest for productive purposes
Be industrious
Be thrifty
Be optimistic
The second paradigm applies to the public sector, where different priorities reign:
Moral Syndrome B
Shun trading
Exert prowess
Be obedient and disciplined
Adhere to tradition
Respect hierarchy
Be loyal
Take vengeance
Deceive for the sake of the task
Make rich use of leisure
Be ostentatious
Dispense largesse
Be exclusive
Show fortitude
Be fatalistic
Treasure honor
The differences described here by Jacobs (1992, pp. 23-24) indicate differing views of the goal for the manager. In the private sector, optimization is the goal, while for the public sector, maintenance of the hierarchy and of power relations is the goal. Osborne and Gaebler (1992) point out that management in the two sectors moves at a different pace. Government is democratic and open and thus moves more slowly than business, where managers can make quick decisions behind closed doors. They come to the conclusion that government cannot be run like a business (p. 21). Jacobs's lists of moral positions shows
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2290
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)
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