Public vs. Private Flashcards
The Diminishing Publicness of Public Service under the Current Mode of Governance
M. Shamsul Haque (2001)
Obstacles to publicness of public service include its accumulation of excessive public service, including its accumulation of excessive power, lack of accountability and representation, indifference towards public needs and demands, official secrecy and inacessibility, and role in depoliticizing the public sphere. Public service has undergone a business like transformation, especially under the influence of current global context characterized by the triumph of market forces and the reorientation of state policies toward deregulation, privatization, and liberalization. The causes of these reforms has been to overcome inefficiencies, reduce monopoly, minimize budget deficits, relax trade protection, streamline public expenditure, withdraw subsidy, generate revenue, improve service quality, and increase customer (citizen) satisfaction.
The Diminishing Publicness of Public Service under the Current Mode of Governance
M. Shamsul Haque (2001)
The specific criteria to measure publicness: (1) the degree of public-private distinction (2) composition of service recipients - a greater number or broader scope of service recipients implies a higher degree of publicness (3) the nature of the role it plays in society - its broader and more intensive role represents its wider societal impacts, and thus greater publicness (4) the extent to which it is publicly accountable (5) public trust in the credibility, leadership, and responsiveness of public service to serve the people.
The Publicness Puzzle in Organizational Theory
Bozeman and Bretscheider (1994)
RQ: How are public and private organizations different? Limited progress on this matter in the failure to develop theories that link the internal and external structures and components of public organizations. Elemental components of organizations as levels of bureaucratization, composition of output, mission diversity and environmental interactions, and boundary spanning. Core approach to publicness: implies there are essential differences between public and private organizations and those differences are elegantly captured in a simple distinction based on legal type (private owned v. public owned). Dimensional approach is that publicness is not a single, discrete attribute, rather organizations are more or less public on the extent to which externally imposed political authority affects them. Both dimensions are not mutually exclusive, but are instead useful and complementary.
Similarities and Differences Between the Organizational Values of the Public and Private Sector
Van Der Wal, De Graaf, and Lasthuizen (2008)
Compare value orientations in public and private sector organizations drawing on public and business administration. Most important public sector values: accountability, lawfulness, incorruptibility, expertise, reliability, effectiveness, impartiality, and efficiency. Most important public sector values: profitability, accountability, reliability, effectiveness, expertise, efficiency, honesty, and innovativeness.
Strategic Management in Public and Private Organizations
Peter Ring and James Perry (1985)
Ring and Perry argue that with changes in context, a unique set of managerial constraints arises. Constraints are defined as fixed conditions (structural or procedural) that ten to exist for some period of time to which an organization and its management must adapt. Basic distinctions between public and private organizations include: constitutions vs. corporate charter, Civil Service reform, and public organizations are much more open to the external environment. A constraining ‘negative’ force “bureaucracy” is frequently at odds with a positive force, the high ideals associated with public service. Differences include policy ambiguity, openness of govt, attentive publics, time (problem), and shaky coalitions. Required skills of public managers in strategic management: maintaining flexibility, bridging competing worlds, wielding influence, not authority, and managing discontinuity.
Public, Private, Not-for-Profit
K.J. Euske (2003)
Private sector organization exercises ultimate control over the organization. Public executive is faced with multiple stakeholders who have varying degrees of control or impact on the decision-making of the checks and balances built into the public sector. Economic efficiency is core to the operation of private sector organizations. Public organizations are focused on equity rather than efficiency (Allison). NFP focuses on efficiency as a metric that can lead to economies of scale that can lead to improving the quality of services provided.
What Does it Mean to say Public Administration?
Luton (1996)
Luton asserts that PA has not adequately addressed the implications of privatization and privatism for the administration of services to and for the public. The interdependence between gov’t and business and the insertion of private sector mechanisms into public administration pose a serious predicament for public administration - one that PA theorists need to consider carefully. As Kettl (1993) has pointed out, every significant governmental initiative since WWII has depended on private sector implementation. Market mechanisms are not designed to facilitate distribution of public goods or services, so the overextension of the private sector into public matters means that public goods and services are improperly allocated, their availability is restricted, and thus are only available to a particular subset of the public and the public aspect of our existence diminishes. Privatization might help public services be distributed more efficiently, but that does not necessarily promote the public interest. PA attempts to promote the public interest in the context of political and policy pronouncements, under the constraining influences of elections and law.
What Does it Mean to say Public Administration?
Luton (1996)
What is PA? The theory of pluralism contends that public policy making is determined through the competition among interests in the marketplace of policy ideas. PA takes place in a market dynamic where the arrived at decision is expected to be the result of interests pressuring administrators and attempting to persuade them to adopt a policy that optimizes the distribution of interest accommodation reach a kind of policy Pareto optimum. PA is among those institutions authorized to coerce in order to achieve a public policy purposes; is politically authorized, funded by the enforced collection of taxes; and, policies are for a polity not an individual.
