Administration
A managerial definition of public administration proclaims that it is the executive function of government or a management specialty applied in public systems (Shafritz and Russell, 1997, pp. 19–23). Although public sector management is distinguished from private-sector management, in many ways the two systems share a surprisingly broad area of similarities (Rainey, 1990).
For many years, differences stemmed from the nature of services each sector used to provide, from diverse structures and functions, but mainly from discrepancies in the environment. In a comparative view, changing the environment, moving among cultures and nationalities infuses an additional element of difference between public and private systems. Management is subject to differences in culture, values, and incorporation of change, technology, and ideas in a specific society. The change is, however, also asynchronously determined. From a historical point of view, we used to see much less use of management in public administration at least until the late 1970s. When the environment of public systems started to change more rapidly, public organizations had to change (again) as well. At least some of this change stemmed, undoubtedly, from the experience of others. The systematic study of such experiences, records of success and failure of management initiatives, and their implementation for a specific society were used by others in their effort to improve public services and policies.
One example that will be developed later in this chapter is the international- ization of knowledge and the trend of policy transfer and emulation in a global world (Levi-Faur and Vigoda-Gadot, 2004).
What makes managerial and organizational knowledge so important for comparative public administration of the modern era? Looking back to the twentieth century, modern societies have become more complex,flexible, and dynamic. Cultural, industrial, technological, economic, and political environments of organizations have undergone rapid transformations that are still in progress. These transformations took various shapes and con- sumed different effort, time, and resources in various countries. A handful of examples of such changes and reforms in policy and management will be offered in Chapters 9 to 12. The general idea, however, is that public and private organizations had to adjust and respond to changes in the environ- ment to safeguard their interests and existence. However, the nature of their adjustment differed. The public sector had to comply with political
restraints enforced by ideological aspirations of the people and of politi- cians as representatives of the people. At the same time the private sector had to adjust and respond to the challenge of markets and free economy (Osborne and Gaebler, 1992). In many ways, the starting point for public organizations to adjust to environmental changes was more limited than that of private organizations. While the former were restrained by the political system, the latter were liberated by the icon of free markets and global economies. Moreover, the role of governments in each society, and the meaning of the “public” for policy makers, varied from country to country (Vigoda, 2000; Vigoda-Gadot and Cohen, 2004; Vigoda-Gadot, Shoham, and Schwabsky, 2010). The prime example is the deep gap between the countries of the old continent (Europe) and the United States in the New World with regard to the meaning of the welfare state and the extent of responsibility of governments for their citizens.
A comparative look into development and change in those and in other parts of the world testifies, however, to quite similar processes of urgent calls for rethinking and reinventing government, especially since the 1970s. In recent decades, managerial tools developed by scholars and scientists in business administration became popular and effective in managing gov- ernment agencies, in a scope and magnitude not experienced in the past.
Conventional wisdom globally accepted a classic assumption regarding the relatively stable and unshakable structure of public organizations. Drawing on the Weberian approach, hardly anyone in any of the world’s developed and modern nations disputed the need for large bureaucracies in democ- racies. But bureaucracies differ (Heady, 2001), and one major element of difference is how managerial and organizational knowledge and experience is used (Vigoda-Gadot, Shoham, Ruvio, and Schwabsky, 2008). In other words, whereas the mode in which bureaucracies function varies by culture, they are quite similar in how they are structured. That is, academics and practitioners dealing with the challenges and barriers of modern public administration agree that any nation, regardless of time, culture, and political ideology, must rely upon large and strong bureaucracies. A weighty bureauc- racy has emerged simultaneously with the extension of governments’respon- sibilities and with citizens’ expectations for more and better services (Vigoda-Gadot, Mizrahi, Miller-Mor, and Tevet, 2008). Even today the consen- sus is that governments in democracies and beyond must use large bureaucra- cies as a vehicle for responding to citizens’growing needs and demands.
The winds of change came relatively late in the previous century. After the Second World War people had higher expectations of their govern- ments that were faced with practical economic and political problems of the
expanding welfare states. Comparative studies have shown a worrying decline in government’s economic stability as evidenced by rising budget deficits on the one hand, and of public sector efficiency on the other (see, for instance, Rainey, 1990; Peters, 1996). From Britain to France, across Germany, Italy, Scandinavia, and other European countries, to North America, Australia, and into Asia a sound call had emerged in the 1980s for reforming governments’capacities to manage public goods and better respond to citizens’growing needs. This wave of change was also felt quite significantly from the late 1980s on in Eastern Europe and Latin America, and in various parts of Asia. The emergence of new public management (NPM) ideas suggested that governments can and should use knowledge of the markets to improve public services. Each nation and culture used the (new) managerial knowledge differently (Vigoda-Gadot and Meiri, 2008).
Looking into managerial reforms in many Western societies testifies to the unique slants for each culture (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2011). Basic assump- tions about the validity of generic and culture-blind prescriptions for better running of government were questioned. Thefirst challenge was to justify the centrality of management ideas in public administration and policy, not merely as a technical tool for public managers but also as a model and sector prototype of policy making.
Management in the public sector matters also because citizens’demands increase and because these demands are different from country to country (Vigoda-Gadot, 2007; Vigoda-Gadot and Mizrahi, 2008). A British citizen differs from a French citizen, who differs from citizens in other European countries, in Asian countries, in the Arab world, in Eastern Europe, in Latin America, and in North America. In each of these world regions governments should use management tools differently, taking into account the sensitivity of people, the ambitions of minorities, the geopolitical varia- bles, and the socioeconomic variants of the population. In other words, the changing ladder of values and priorities of citizens determines the type of managerial remedy to social ills, as suggested by government and public administration agencies. Notwithstanding, and from a comparative point of view, the one similarity among nations is the growing standards of perform- ance expected from (democratic) governments. These are more numerous today than at any time in the past, and are expected to grow in the years to come. Performance, as perceived by people and in scientific studies, is associated with many indicators such as quality of management, professional- ism, motivation, good citizenship, leadership, ethics, and even emotions and moral behavior of public servants in each nation (Vigoda, 2002c; Vigoda-Gadot and Meisler, 2010; Vigoda and Golembiewski, 2001; Vigoda-Gadot, 2007;
Vigoda-Gadot and Drory, 2006). Perhaps this perception has guided some recent developments in public administration thinking, making it client oriented and more businesslike. Scholars frequently define these shifts as the principal change in public administration and its transition into a revised field of study namedpublic management.