Public and Private Management

Unlike many of the other writing assignments done thus far, this paper will be providing brief synopses for several essays on issues involved with the study of public management. Although it might be possible to state that the ideas and theories presented in these texts are either true or false, it will be the goal of this writing to take the simple approach and focus on the thoughts that are presented are still relevant in modern practice of public management. However, it is first important to point out that even today there is no aggregated view for weighing or measuring the success of public managers. This is because in part due to the various ways in which the agencies manage themselves, for example whether or not they chose to follow national performance review (NRP) response or a total quality management (TQM) method. Another problem is that often times today a management policy that has been set up and successfully tested for the private sector is either grafted to the, or imposed over the management policies of a public enterprise. The issue that this brings up is that, depending on the agency, that there is no clear idea on who the ‘customers’ are, nor what ‘product’ is that the public agency is trying to appease. Meanwhile, the management theories that are being imposed on to them, are based on a quantifiable examination as to rather they are successful or not. Simply put, there is no easy or standard way for researchers of the field of public administration to be able to clearly differentiate between the successful management styles of one public administrator to another. In fact, researching this problem is the very thing that our first author is calling for in his essay.

Graham T. Allison attempts with his article...

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...uted to be useful as a measurement against the values from the private sector. Instead, Moore suggests that research in a cost-effectiveness approach may be a solution to this problem (1995, p 553).

All of these essays end up with the same major issue concerning measuring the successful public management style, from one that is not successful. In one form or another both Moore and Moe have called for research in finding some standard in analyzing the public sector. In any analysis standard, the effects that politics has in its creation cannot be ignored. If as Woodrow Wilson claim is true, and the goal of these public administrators is to find the most cost-effective and the most efficient method to implement the political oriented policies; then why not come up with a measurement on the efficiency and cost-effectiveness to be used for passing judgment on them?