Features Of Traditional Government Administration

Under the NPM umbrella, public sector has also been experiencing a shift to greater competition. The need to remove monopoly of service delivery and create contestability, through privatization, public tendering, and term contracts, justifies the adoption of competition principle (Dunleavy 1994; Hood 1991). Insisting to do bureaucratic provision on public services instead of contracting them out, knowing that private sector can deliver them better, it is believed would only force governments to lose comparative advantages on price, efficiency, and effectiveness (Dunleavy 1994. p.49). This way, governments are able to fulfil their responsibility in providing services and the financing, while simultaneously stimulate greater competition among providers under market dynamics. However, it is hard to instigate public service ethos in private parties. Therefore, the capacity of private entities to act consistently with the public interest is greatly questioned in this scenario. Are concerns such as public health and safety, environment sustainability, and social equity likely to be sacrificed underneath market mechanisms? When power is shared with organizations which have business objectives apart from government’s goals, the fundamental issue is how to detect which missions they are carrying out. Many public services being delivered by third parties are targeted for vulnerable sections of the community which can pose a higher risk of potential abuse, neglect, exploitation, and

Osborne and Gaebler argue that the American bureaucratic model was created and developed during the economic depression and two World Wars, which was appropriate and worked superbly. At that time, people wanted security, stability, fairness, and equity from government. The government put more emphasis on stability rather than quality. But today, the American public wants increased quality and choice of goods and services, flexible and adaptable institution that empower citizens rather than serving them. Therefore, there are three major weaknesses of bureaucracy which are not in accordance with the current condition: the bureaucratic model was rigidly hierarchical, focused on regulating the process, and far away from flexibility and creativity.

In Woodrow Wilson’s article “The Study of Administration”, Wilson arguments for a strong and effective public administration were based around two points. First, the fact that the governmental system had expanded greatly from when it first started and as a result had become more complex and had many more parts to it. Second, to split government between politics and administration, as there should not be politics in administration, instead let those who wish to be involved in politics concentrate on politics and those with expertise in the field administer the policies. The case study “The Blast in Centralia No.5: A Mine Disaster No One Stopped”, showed that a bureaucracy that is weak has the same affect on its constituents as no bureaucracy at all. As a result, after reading those two articles, I feel that there is a need for a strong and effective public administration system.

All of us like miners in Centralia No. 5, rely throughout our lives on the immovable juggernaut of impersonal administrative systems” (Stillman 30). It seems that most people as a whole have absent mindedly become too dependent on something as abstract and complicated as public administration. It seems to be public administration and its official’s responsibility to handle any concern in the community as well as make everything flow smoothly.

Kernaghan, K. 2000. The Post-Bureaucratic Organization and Public Services Values. Interational Review of Administrative Sciences 66. 2000, pp. 92-93.

critiques is that the new forms reflect not the “end” of bureaucracy but a complex,

The author uses a wide range of expert opinion such as Dr Chan, Gary Radler and Kevin Stone etc. ‘‘By no means can you say universally that government organisations have more complex cases and certainly not on a ratio of four

Administrative scientists identified public administration as a tool or technique to use to produce the most efficient or effective result. The public interest is way of grabbing the attention of various group interest into society. In public admin privatization refers to transfer of any government function to the private sector-including governmental functions like revenue collection and law enforcement.

While public administration and business management share similar administrative duties, they differ in their fundamentals and execution. Traditional public administration principles created a sharp difference between public and business

Though business-like mechanisms can create a more efficient and potentially innovated government, government and business should be run differently, since they are inherently different in their conceptual values. Appleby explains some of these differences. He argues that no one can serve the public as it should be served unless he or she has a public-interest attitude with certain special characteristics. In addition, business has much narrower extent, while public officials are more broadly stimulated, with a breadth of view and a public-interest attitude. Government is complex as well as vastly interdependent with many other nonprofit and private organizations. Also, the government is subject to public scrutiny and public outcry. According to Denhardt and Denhardt, government acts, in concert with private and nonprofit groups and organizations, to seek solutions to the problems that communities face. In the process, the role of government is transformed from one of controlling to one of agenda setting, bringing the proper players to the table, facilitating, negotiating, or brokering solutions to public problems—often through coalitions of public, private, and nonprofit agencies. Finally, government is different from business

There two main means of providing and producing public services in the United States at the different levels of government. The first mode is knows as in-house production by direct government workforce and contracting out to the private sector, which we refer to as privatization.

The classical approach to public administration was focused on finding the best way to perform and manage tasks. This classical approach to Public Administration is often associated with Weber, Wilson, Taylor, and Gulick. Under the classical approach was four areas of focus which was the Bureaucratic, Scientific, Administrative, and Managerial approach. Each area represented the four main theorists that the classical approach was associated with. Max Weber's bureaucratic approach focused on the rational-legal model which viewed bureaucracy from a rational view and argued that bureaucracy is the most efficient and rational way in which one can organize the human activity and that hierarchies are necessary to maintain

The need for financial stringency in public organizations due to budgetary pressures and tax resistance coupled with the need to Managing /balancing budget deficits and provide quality services with a reduction in revenue has always been a major challenge for public organizations. The need to save money and at the same time provide quality services, had forced government agencies to privatize and contract out. Recently, there is greater involvement of the private and nonprofit sector in public service delivery. More and more government functions in service delivery are now carried out by private and nonprofit organization. This is one part attributed to the belief that private organizations can provide services more efficiently and effectively than government operated services. And the other is the fact that it is cost effective and takes a lesser time frame. These two process are indeed unarguably beneficial to the government and private sector as well as the beneficiaries, but they can be also very daunting accompanied with huge challenges especially when not executed in the rightful manner. The case of the crummy contractor by Rainey depicts such a complex situation , where the process of contracting out was poorly conducted. The case highlights the demand for privatization and contracting-out and most importantly some of the challenges of privatization and contracting in government organization. it goes on further to identify some crucial pointed to be

Governmental policies and politics play a critical role in the realization of change in a public agency since the policies are developed and implemented at various levels (Dukeshire & Thurlow, 2002). Since these policies may range from formal regulations and legislation to informal guidelines in an agency, understanding them is important in the achievement of change in a public agency. A Public agency basically functions based on the established policies and politics in the government. Therefore, the accomplishment of the change in a public agency requires an increased understanding of the politics and policies of government.

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.