Public Sector Reform Essay

Thus far, it is apparent that there are no prescribed actions that a public administrator can take to stave off conflict amongst her constituency; conflict will occur, and all will look towards the public administrator to determine the resolution. In their book The New Public Service, Janet and Robert Denhardt outline several “practical lessons” for public administrators who serve in what they call the “new public service.” First, they suggest that the public administrator must “serve citizens, not customers;” she must focus on the values shared by the citizens as a whole, not the interests of individual customers. Second, “seek the public interest: Public administrators must contribute to building a collective, shared notion of public interest,” and then perform in a manner that is in collusion with this notion. It is important to note that some would argue this point, saying that while the public interest was an important factor in public administration, it is now “public value” that has moved to the

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

Carpenter, M. A., & Sanders, W. G. (2009). Strategic management: A dynamic perspective concepts and cases. (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.

Bryson, J. M. (2011). Strategic planning for public and nonprofit organizations: A guide to strengthening and sustaining organizational achievement: 4th ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Today the new public management (NPM) model is the leading worldview in the public sector. The political climate and ideology during the 1970s and 1980s served as an impetus to migrate away from the old public administration approach and implement new policies and procedures that would be of better service to the public interest and collective good as well as restore trust and value in the bureaucratic process. Thus, during the mid-1990s, the new public management worldview was realized to apply common practices used in the private sector to the public sector. The goal of this approach was to achieve the same level of efficiency found in the private sector and remove some of the redundancy, lack of transparency, and lack of accountability in bureaucratic government to better serve the public interest. David Osborne and Ted Gaebler’s Reinventing Government (1992) served as a catalytic novel in the progression of implementing private practices in the public sector. Under the NPM framework public administrators

Rawls et al (1975) have found that standards about to enter government sector were significantly more dominated and flexible. They had higher capacity for status and economic wealth. Many researches indicate that public managers experience significantly lower levels of satisfaction and motivation than do their counterparts in the business.

Strategic management will benefit your health care organization. Public health organizations operate in a dynamic environment that is turbulent and unpredictable. It is necessary for these organizations to be able to develop and implement plans to take advantage of their changing environment. Strategic planning is a management tool commonly used in an organization and has many benefits that can be applied to the healthcare and public health industries.  Strategic managers have been able to develop successful business plans by taking a proactive approach to the process (Kinsella, 2015).

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).”

Assume the selected agency is large but poorly performing in a highly visible public program which did not have performance measures for employees. The public program serves over two million citizens across the 52 states. Propose and provide a rationale for two change strategies to address the agency’s performance.

Rethinking government is the most revolutionary idea. it can govern in the true sense of the word, where the government wants every agency to immediately define its performance objective, quality objective, and their cost objective. This should be followed by the adoption of the formal processes of continuous improvement and benchmarking. All agencies and their policy, program, activity, should be confronted with these questions: “What is your mission?” “Is it still the right mission?”, “Is it still worth doing?” “If we were not already doing this, would we go into it now?” This questioning has been done often enough, in all kinds of organizations—businesses, hospitals, churches, and even local governments. Government should cut taxes and improve

In 1993, the United States Congress passed the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA), instructing that every federal agency develop a strategic plan with outcome-related goals and objectives; develop yearly performance plans with output- and outcome-related goals; and report yearly on progress toward attainment of these. “A Conceptual Framework and Practical Guide to Strategies of Management Reform” (2013), by professor Jeremy Hall

Like most public agencies, DPSS operates under the elite model of organizational structure. This structure dictates that formal rules and process are followed in order to reach the organization's goals. Therefore, in order to effectively contract out and maintain and effective organization, management must engage in the practice of well-known management principles (POSDCORB). Practicing the principles of planning, organizing, staffing, directing, coordinating, reporting, and budgeting, management can make sound decisions about the implementation and management of contracts. The effectiveness and efficiency in which the agency is run and the manner in which the contract is managed is grounded in the effective practice of these principles.

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.

It is said that the new public management reforms have made public sector organisations more calculable and accountable. First of all, it is important to define these terms. Calculable means the ability to measure and assess the worth of something. In our context, it often means putting monetary value on tangibles and intangibles. Accountable means being held responsible for actions taken and the ability to answer to those who are involved in the process. Accountability can be towards donors (upwards) or towards beneficiaries (downwards). In order to investigate this statement