Public Management: Week 1 : 4 Approaches to P. Management

Public Management: Week 1 : 4 Approaches to P. Management

1. designing and operating public services

   • Why a focus on contested issues can shape our view of how to manage policy programs?
     • ...because those issues are instilled of political values which favour certain groups over others
   • Why do we need an explanatory perspective for what is normative field?
     • ...because causal explanations offer the conditions under which specific 'universal' tools or truths may work
   • Why bother with an abstract cultural theory go Grid/Group to understand practical problems?
     • ...because there is more than hierarchy in the public sector
     • ...each service has a particular mix of different world views/the same service can be run distinctively in different countries
     • ...it helps to understand the links between solutions as well as their limits and opportunities
   • Cultural theory as a guide to analyse contrasting solutions

2. administrative analysis to: analyse evidence of a problem, tools, approaches, theories, side effects, trade-offs, unintended consequences, political setting, solutions

3. Grid Group Theory

   • Hierarchist (High Grid, High Group)
     • High group: institutional structures dominate over self maximising; High Grid: rules govern the world, differentiated not flat organisations
     • control: inspection regime
     • management topics: indie responsibility over team-working, command and control from the top
     • blame: poor compliance with rules
     • achilles heel: too much trust in authority/expertise
   • egalitarian (Low Grid, high Group)
     • control and accountability by mutuality/peer review
       • horizontal perspective of policy design and evaluation
     • common management topics: co-production of services, team work, elections of leaders over appointment
     • Blame: abuse of power, system corruption
     • Achilles heel: free riding, unwillingness to accept higher authority
   • Individualism (low grid, low group)
     • bottom up view of problems
     • individuals and rulers try to maximise self-interest, sanctions and rewards
     • markets produce better results than hierarchical systems
     • common management topics: performance related pay, competitive provision of services and adoption of business practices
     • blame: wrong incentives
     • achilles heel: individual before collective benefit
   • Fatalist (High Grid, Low Group)
     • public cynicism about motives/honesty of public managers and politicians
       • blame: bad luck
       • achilles heel: unwillingness to plan ahead
     • common management topics: garbage-can model in decision making (kingdom's streams); no decision, nothing can be done; rotation schemes to avoid bribery
     • lottery as a control method

4. e.g.

5. e.g

6. literature: Hood, Wegrich