Mich Michie project 2
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520-lesson.docx520 lesson
Topics to be covered include:
· New Public Service
· The Future of Public Administration
In this final week of the class, we are discussing the future theoretical foundation of public administration. Since the 1990s, public administration has followed the tenets of New Public Management (NPM). It seems that over the past decade or so, public administration has veered away from NPM toward New Public Service (NPS).
New Public Service
In recent years, the practice of public administration has been guided largely by the New Public Service (NPS), which advocates that fairness, equity, responsiveness, and empowerment are as important as efficiency and effectiveness when making public policy. According to Denhardt (2000), the basic premises of NPS as applied to government administration can be summarized as follows:
Commitment to values
Public administrators should be committed to values. This includes a commitment to an organization’s mission, values, goals, and objectives, which are used to develop an organization’s culture.
Professionalism, integrity, service, and quality
The most important values are professionalism, integrity, service, and quality. These values should be espoused by an organization’s leadership, which takes responsibility for establishing the organization’s tone at the top and using this to set the direction and culture for the organization.
Tone at the top determines the type of organizational culture that will prevail in an organization, including the ethical atmosphere that the organization’s leadership creates in the workplace. The tone will trickle-down to the rest of the organization’s employees. If the tone at the top makes values such as ethics, professionalism, integrity, service, and quality a priority, employees will be more likely to espouse those same morals. But if the leaders do not make such values a priority, employees also may place less emphasis on these values.
Focus on the culture of the organization
Focus on public service
Public administrators should focus on public service, giving priority for service to both clients of the particular government agency, as well as citizens in general. This service should include high standards of accountability, with a continual focus on quality. This service should include attention to both personalized services as well as technical details.
Promoting community and cooperation
Public administrators should strive to develop an organizational culture that promotes a sense of community internally combined with a sense of cooperation with the organization’s external environment.
Practicing leadership that empowers subordinates
Public administrators should practice leadership that empowers subordinates and shares leadership responsibilities with them. This includes encouraging everyone in an organization to be actively involved in an organization’s activities and focused on efforts to improve the organization’s productivity and quality of services.
Practicing self-leadership
Whenever possible, each public administrator working in an organization should practice self-leadership , which refers to being self-aware, understanding one’s own personality—including strengths, weaknesses, emotions, and behavior—and using this self-awareness to be influential, communicating well with others and interacting appropriately to achieve goals and objectives.
Practicing pragmatic incrementalism
Public administrators should practice pragmatic incrementalism, which means that when changes are needed, public administrators should consider and pursue a variety of options in their efforts to guide an organization in the appropriate direction. With this approach, change is regarded as a natural and necessary part of any organization’s life, something to be embraced rather than opposed. However, change also should be approached humanely and with creativity to ensure that it produces minimal disruption and stress for an organization’s employees, clients, and others who interact with the organization.
Commitment to public service
Public administrators should be committed to public service. This includes ensuring that every public administrator working in a government agency understands public service and its importance to their work. As part of this, public administrators should understand the concept of democratic governance and the role that government organizations and agencies have in the democratic governance process.
To review, as explained in Lesson 2, public service refers to the work that is done in government as well as work performed in service organizations, such as homeless shelters. Generally, public service involves work that is performed with the goal of helping people as opposed to earning a profit.
Democratic governance refers to a system of government whereby all of the government’s organizations and agencies use democratic approaches and processes for all operations, both internally as well as in interactions with other organizations and citizens.
Make ethics a priority
Ethics should be a priority for every public administrator, and leaders should ensure that the organizational culture promotes high ethical standards that encourage everyone in a government organization or agency to strive to make themselves and their office a model of integrity.
Focus on serving
The government should focus on serving, not steer, and rather than treating those served by the government as customers, they should be regarded as citizens. In this regard, public administrators have a dual role, as they are citizens as well as government employees.
Promote citizenship and community involvement
Government and public administrators should promote citizenship and community involvement. As part of this, citizens should be encouraged to focus on the public interest and what they, as citizens, can do to improve their communities. This includes active involvement in government, sharing in self-government by being knowledgeable about public affairs and government activities, and participating in government through activities such as voting and attending public forums.
Provide quality services
Public administrators should strive to provide quality services, which includes being efficient and effective in their work.
The keydifference between NPM and NPS lies in their focus. NPM focuses on economic concepts and encourages the maximization of self-interest. NPS focuses on the public interest and public service, with public administrators actively engaging with the citizens they serve.
The Future of Public Administration
In recent years, governments at all levels have been forced to provide services with fewer resources than they had available in previous years. When deciding how to spend scarce resources, governments at all levels must focus on the citizens they serve and seek innovative ways to serve the public interest and meet citizens’ needs and expectations.
As part of this, sustainability has become an important goal. When expending scarce resources, governments are expected to manage assets efficiently and effectively to ensure infrastructure is durable and that government work affecting the environment and other community attributes, including cultural concerns like museums, has long-term benefits.
Scholars, such as Meier and O’Toole (2006), argue that public administration is vital to ensure that government operations and programs function satisfactorily. This includes explaining government policies and procedures to citizens, as well as to elected officials who may not have experience and expertise in the management of government operations.
As part of this process, according to Meier and O’Toole (2006), public administrators have a principal role in connecting bureaucracy to democracy and ensuring that government functions in a way that promotes democracy. This includes continuing to strive for transparency in their work, seeking to be accountable to the citizens they serve and practicing good ethics while doing more work with fewer resources.
Conclusion
The study of public administration is important to help prepare men and women who will work as public administrators. In their efforts to provide government goods and services to citizens in a fair and equitable manner, public administrators have an important responsibility to ensure that citizens are well served while protecting the public interest and democracy. Though the theories and focus have changed slightly over the decades, public administration remains a vital part of government operations.
References
Denhardt, R. B. (2000, 2015). Theories of Public Organization, Third Edition. Orlando, Florida: Harcourt Brace and Company.
