Competency, bureaucracy and public management reform: A comparative analysis
Make sure I read before completing essay, very relevant!
Also last seminar presentation (governance, NPM)
Compare Public Management Reform in the UK with Singapore. What does the comparison tell you about the factors that shape public management in each country?
Introduction
Governments around the world are moving from outmoded tradition towards managerial modernity in attempt to get their public sector organisations to run better. A key issue on a countries public agenda in society is education to ensure sufficient knowledge is attained for their citizens, more specifically, the next generation. The emphasis on education is evident because it provides
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Today they remain a great power with leading economic, cultural, military, scientific and political influence. International trade is not as big as Singapore’s as a proportion of GDP, but like Singapore, they are highly exposed to global forces, especially with the importance of the capital as a global financial centre. Like Singapore, the UK has a parliamentary system but it is a full democracy where there is more competition to govern meaning pressure groups can influence policy change more than in Singapore.
UK is not quite the multicultural state like Singapore, but it still has a large proportion of foreign born residents where it experienced rapid immigration from the 1990’s.
Over the last thirty years, public spending from the conservatives was much higher in comparison to the Labour government. Thatcher’s government wanted to minimise Public Sector Borrowing which in turn, led to a tighter fiscal policy. As a result the conservative government reduced public spending from 47.3% of GDP to 38.8% of GDP from 1984-1987. In Education, public spending dropped from 5.41% of GDP in 1980 to 4.14% of GDP in 1990, however, between 1986, the proportion of the total budget spent on Education increased from 10.7%, 11.4%, 11.8%, 12.2%, and 12.2% in every year respectively until 1991. This reiterates the greater emphasis put on education by the conservatives during them years, hence the
Progress was also made in the area of education as 6000 new schools and 11 new universities were constructed and many more were expanded. However their was a big debate about the merits of comprehensive and grammar schools. The Conservatives, who supported grammar schools for most of their time in office finally gave into the inevitable fact that comprehensive education did offer certain advantages that grammar schools did not. The time that the Conservatives spent preventing county councils from introducing comprehensive systems was therefore counter-productive and a waste of time.
The management of an organization plays an integral part in determining the direction and performance of the organization. The manner in which the management of an organization is handled has a profound effect on the organization. The success of an organization is dependent upon a flexible and skilled management and workforce. The management of an organization is responsible for shaping up the organizational behavior and ultimately the culture within the organization. Public management faces a multiple of challenges and opportunities, how the management deals with these issues translates to efficiency in management. The personal judgments and skills of public managers can make a significant impact in public management. If
Major's governments ostensibly continued this policy, although public spending rose from 38¾% of money GDP in Nigel Lawson's last budget to 44¾% in Kenneth Clarke's first. The PSBR rose similarly from a surplus of 1½% GDP in fiscal 1989 to a deficit of 7¾% in fiscal 1993 .
Kernaghan, K. 2000. The Post-Bureaucratic Organization and Public Services Values. Interational Review of Administrative Sciences 66. 2000, pp. 92-93.
After various changes to the economic tax and interest rate, CPHP have conducted and compiled research into current public spending. The results show that there has been a dramatic reduction in the level of public spending in the UK.
Britain is well known for having a ‘multicultural society’, which began as a result of the government introduce immigration opportunities after WWII in order to combat labour shortages. The different ethnicities that have since migrated to Britain with the EU expansion and from India, Pakistan etc prefer/generally tend to live together in small communities which can make integration into British society difficult.
Immigration became a significant part of society in the post-war period, it redefined the public’s perception regarding culture and attitudes in society. Despite this, it is worth noting that immigration was not a new phenomenon in 1945. Britain had welcomed refugees in the past, notably the Irish who became one of the largest groups throughout the 20th century. Many Europeans also sought refuge in Britain, for example German refugees who fled to Britain in 1930 ; Peter Fryer notes on the existing black community in Britain since the 16th century. However, the level of immigration after 1945 was enough to redefine British culture and created an exclusive national identity by where ‘Britishness’ is now recognised through the colour of your skin. Race as a concept has also transformed, with culture being a major element in British society. Politics has also had a major influence, with the introduction of immigration laws bringing equality among Britain’s citizens, although this could highlight the opinions of the public with the need for legislation to be introduced. The economy thrived with immigration, noting on the Windrush which allowed the empty gaps in employment to be filled. However, despite the progress that has been made due to immigration, the reaction of the people wasn’t always as positive, subsequently leading to racial tensions and a lack of respect among the people for immigration. These aspects are very significant when discussing the development of
Since 1983 public education has been an issue in America. The system has been constantly changing every year with reforms. This constant change has been driven by the American people’s perception that education has declined and something should be done about it. First there was an increased emphasis on basic skills, making school years longer and more graduation requirements. Second, many began focusing on increasing teachers professionalism. Third, they began restructuring many things such as how the schools were organized and how the school day was structured etc. Now today the most of the American people believe that not enough money is given to public schooling. They associate academic improvement with the money the school is funded.
Whilst analysing the scale of immigration since the 1960’s and transformation of London into a multi-ethnic city, many historians would agree with the
On a macro level, public administration and business management are similar in their overall functions. “At the broadest level, some organizational theorists contend that administration is administration whatever its setting, and that the problems of organizing people, leading them and supplying them with resources to do their jobs are always the same (Kettl, 2012, p. 38).” In his paper, “Public and Private Management: Are They Fundamentally Alike in All Unimportant Respects?,” Graham T. Allison explains that in comparing public and administration and business management, “it is possible to identify a set of general management functions (Allison, 2012, p. 4).” Regardless of their end goal, each administration must form strategies by setting goals, priorities and creating procedures. Public and private organizations must manage internal components by organizing staff, defining job responsibilities, hiring and managing personnel and creating budgets. Furthermore, they must manage external constituencies such as other agencies, the press and public (Allison, 2012, p. 5). His observations stem from Wallace Sayre’s famous words, “public and private management are fundamentally alike in all unimportant respects (DiIlulio, 1993).”
For the last 20 years, Sweden has been implementing the New Public Management reforms and its efforts have been considered as successful (Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2004). Bjorklund, Clark, Edin, Fredricksson, and Krueger (2006) argue that the first attempt for the reforms in education was in 1989, where the Swedish Government implemented their decentralization of their public education. This reform transferred responsibilities from the state to the municipalities. They describe that the local authorities were given full financial responsibilities for the primary and secondary education by the central government.
The society is moving towards a large-scale economy and there is an exceptional increase of free trade and exchange all around the world. This fact has brought vast opportunities to build up newer policies, wide-range political programs and methodologies in the field of public administration. I would like to contribute to this challenging environment after completing the necessary education. My intention is to supply well-rounded ideas which would possibly contribute to public administration in my home country. I am determined to provide meaningful and finest solutions to diverse problems of public administration. Consequently, my goal is to successfully complete master of public administration and serve society as a high quality public official.
In the following paragraphs, I will explain the dominant theory in public administration practice and elaborate on the major theoretical assumptions of the Old Public Administration. As stated in the question, the world has transformed through globalization, information technology, and devolution of authority since the latter part of the last century. The dominant theory in public administration has been replaced from the traditional rule-based, authority-driven processes of the Old Public Administration with market-based, competition-driven tactics in the New Public Management, beginning in the 1980s (Kettl, 2000, p. 3). This was an effort to privatize government and streamline public administration to maximize efficiency and productivity. Heavily relying on market mechanisms to guide public programs, public administrators in the New Public Management are encouraged to “steer, not row,” meaning they should not bear the burden of delivering services, but instead define programs that others will carry out, through contracting or other means (Denhardt & Denhardt, 2011, p. 13). Core values of the New Public Management include using private sector and business approaches to the public sector, squeezing as many services as possible from smaller revenues, market style incentives, providing customers more choices, and focusing on outputs and outcomes instead of mainly processes.
Before compare the two different models TPA and NPM, I will illustrate what is the