MANAGEMENT CHALLENGES

Management Challenges

Management Challenges

Management issues in Public sector

A public sector management approach to governance emphasizes people-centred developmental processes in organisations1. It is concerned largely with the human side of organisations, with such questions as leadership, training and development, team building, motivation, commitment, and so on. It also addresses macroorganisational questions, such as organisational structure and design, that define the settings within which individual and group behaviour take place (Townley 2001 pp. 303-310). Public sector management interventions tend to be conscious of process, preferring methods that encourage beneficiaries to be initiators of development, participants in the process of development, and carriers and transmitters of skills and knowledge, rather than passive recipients. This aspect of public sector management has much in common with certain accounts of human resource development (HRD). There is some confusion in theory and practice about the ways in which broad paradigms of public management can influence the nature of public sector management reform. In what follows the influence of the market-based paradigm is most evident in the discussion of civil service reform and accountability, where market-like mechanisms are employed in the interests of performance, and less attention appears to be given to human considerations (B.F 1994 pp.16-23). 

Intraorganisational Issues

Many public sector management interventions have been directed at civil service reform through downsizing, cost containment, and improvements in management skills and knowledge through training. The latter has been a traditional area of activity for bilateral donors in particular. However, the primacy of training is being challenged by hitherto relatively neglected avenues of organisational reform.

Civil Service Reform

Definitional problems bedevil many of the topics addressed in this paper. Defining the bailiwick of civil service reform is particularly difficult as, in some instances, it is taken to include most of the major functions and responsibilities of government, while in others its compass is limited to issues of remuneration, size (number of employees), performance appraisal, personnel recruitment, selection, placement, promotion, and related matters. Market-based approaches to civil service reform tend to focus on short-term cost-containment measures aimed primarily at payment and employment systems. It is this limited version of civil service reform that is discussed below. An example is the civil service reform programme in Ghana, which is supported by the World Bank's structural adjustment programme and (in 1989) consisted of five main components: personnel management, including a review of the legislative framework; pay and grading; management services strengthening; staff reduction; and training (de Merode, 1991; Robinson, 1989).  

Institution Building

Institution building is taken to include any activities or interventions within an organisation or within a system of organisations that are designed to make it better at doing what it is meant to do.6 Frequently this will entail enhancing the skills and knowledge of personnel in order to improve their performance on the job. It can also involve changing the structure of the organisation, its culture, the way it is managed and, in some cases, its strategic orientation. In the latter instance this might involve changing the way the organisation perceives itself and its mission by, say, making it more customer oriented or by making it more concerned about the quality and timeliness of the services it is supposed to render to the public. 

Leadership and Vision

Good leadership is essential in all organisations if they are to produce high quality goods and ...