Developing an effective management approach in public sector

Dr Jamal Khan :
FOR some time, more precisely since the end of the Second World War in 1945 and the advent of decolonisation in Africa, Asia and Latin America, it has become increasingly evident that organisational/managerial capability is a sine qua non for effective socioeconomic development. In the absence or deficiency of a sustained attempt to restructure the management system of the new developing countries, the visions of independence-makers, reformers, nationalists, socialists and the people have little hope of being realised. In the early stages of the freedom and nationalist movement, the general, although uncritical, assumption was that colonial neglect and misrule were primarily responsible for the backwardness of smaller low-income countries and that the substitution of nationalist elites for colonial control and containment regimes was all that was necessary in order to transform these countries into capable and productive societies, better able to generate and deliver outputs to the indigenous people. Populism, optimism and achievement orientation were believed to be all that were really necessary. In the 1950 and the 1960s, economic activities and social programmes reflected an enthusiasm and audacity that brooked few limitations on what could be done. Better leaders and people were spurred by a driving impatience to right injustice, improve the life quality of ordinary people, get on with developing the economy, build a new country and a new nation, and to show the world what postcolonial independence could do. Attention was focused on what was possible and what the available resources would permit. Of course, the progress made in each developing country during this time rested, essentially, on a country’s leadership capability and competence.
The experience of the neo-colonial orthodoxy since the 1970s and the 1980s has now persuaded most political/policy authorities and international agencies that the early expectation about how easily social change could be effected was utopian and that without the supportive management capability meaningful pro-people social change was virtually impossible, even assuming a sufficiency of financial and material resources. It has now become clear that it is not easy to transplant institutions/organisations and operational culture and procedures which have worked elsewhere without some willingness and ability on the part of the host society to adapt and indigenise those organisations and practices. While the challenge of finding the right managerial skill to cope with the need to generate and deliver outputs to the more aware and demanding customers is a general one, it is particularly critical in developing countries where the public sector has to assume greater responsibility for socioeconomic transformation.
The reasons for increased public sector involvement in economic, social and political change are as myriad as the kind of development actually under way. In many places, the public sector is the only significant catalyst willing to assume responsibility for transformation. In others, public management mobilises necessary professional, technical and entrepreneurial resources available in a society. In still other places, the primary involvement of the public sector in social and economic development may be a manifestation of ideological commitment. What is noteworthy is that in every type of situation – both historical and contemporary – the creation of social capital is a matter that requires the application of political, policy and managerial capacity. How much a given public sector can achieve in a setting is determined by the nature of the leadership quality and organisational talent available.
Despite the importance of management capability in programme implementation, the extension of public sector activities in the wider socioeconomic realm is checked by organisational realities and managerial inadequacies. But in spite of the fragility of management organisations, developing-country political authorities often have no alternative but to extend public sector activities. On the one hand, rapid development requires that governments undertake many activities and direct many operations that might be left to the private sector in industrialised countries. On the other, the paucity of managerial skills and competence in the public sector makes it challenging to carry out too many or too elaborate public sector programmes. Such ongoing difficulties suggest the existence of limits to the extension of public activity.
After the humbling experience of the neoclassical orthodoxy during the 1980s, international agencies have been drawing attention to the critical link between management capability and project management. There was, for instance, a time when new development projects – resource development, crops, industries, education, healthcare – were considered only in terms of economic and technical feasibility. In this day and time, management capability, too, has come to be regarded as an important criterion for project appraisal and management.
Recognising that human resource insufficiency is a major constraint on plan fulfilment, many public sectors have put in place training programmes in a variety of fields. Yet, proportionately more resources are being devoted to technical training than management training. The upshot of all this: little or no understanding that at the upper level of management, managerial capability – and not technical capacity – is the dominant consideration for leadership; a growing imbalance between technical inputs and managerial inputs in development planning; and conflict between technical and generalist personnel.
A common constraint in developing countries – skill shortage and unevenness in technical fields – can be overcome by training more personnel or hiring expatriates temporarily. What is more intractable is maintaining a public sector system which permits trained personnel to be integrated and utilized. Often due to diffuse and weak practices, many employees tend to work far below the required capacity. A trained employee may even be wrongly placed in the system and finds that he cannot count on support from his co-workers. He also discovers that many have settled for underproductive and performance-indifferent routines. Such trained employees quickly become frustrated and cynical and eventually leave. The use and control of specialists is an ongoing challenge in management. There are, for instance, more and more specialists who tend to know more and more about less and less and, therefore, less and less about the totality of any situation, with the unintended consequence that the function of introspection, appraisal, foresight and value is fast disappearing from management. The excessive fragmentation of the public sector and the dysfunctional consequences of such fragmentation have been underway for some time. With high fragmentation come too many pigeonholes and blind alleys. As a result, almost every employee is obliged to proceed up narrow corridors. Often, the corridors come to abrupt ends from which it is difficult to escape. Much talent and capability get lost and frustrated within these narrow confines.
An urgent need today in management is improved coordination and harmonisation. But coordination is not easy to achieve. To illustrate, effective coordination involves communication and cooperation. Without a culture of cooperation – a willingness to work together toward an agreed objective – no lasting coordination is possible. In turn, cooperation presupposes effective communication – a capacity to speak the same language and share a common culture. Again, a great deal of communication could take place if senior personnel could meet and chat daily about what they are doing, what is going on, keeping employees informed, speaking the same language, and helping develop informal but quite effective consensus of views.
Coordination is expensive in terms of time, money and effort. Whether or not coordination works depends on how the personnel are, how prepared and committed they are, how skilfully coordination is conducted, how compatible the personnel are, how skilful the coordinator is, and so forth. Coordination, however, has high opportunity costs. Coordination has high costs in staff time, is liable to many meetings, staff sitting through discussions which do not concern them, listening to presentations and discussions passively without internalising or owning the substance, failing to make decisions, hiding from responsibility behind a group consensus and agreeing on technically-poor responses.
Over the last several decades, there has been an increase in the number and complexity of the public sector-led development projects. But such increase has not been matched by internal managerial/operational improvements and personnel quality and commitment. As a result, the public sector has found itself unable to cope with the projects’ managerial, analytical, operational and evaluative needs. Some of the underlying causes comprise lapses in control and coordination, personnel training and motivation and structural and staffing weaknesses.
The speedy and effective execution of policies, programmes and projects requires the ability to use modern management techniques and standard operating procedures. But inefficiencies are pervasive in respect of performance, organisation, system, procedure, personnel, human resource utilisation, employee training and personal development. The sector has been losing able employees periodically, it is not always able to attract and retain competitive personnel, the senior employees have not been able to motivate younger employees, or it has not succeeded in translating policies and plans into enforceable action.
Over time, in numerous countries including Bangladesh, attempts have been made at improving public management by means of organisational unification, integration and rationalisation, i.e. systematisation was brought to testing, recruitment, training, analysis, payroll and establishment function. One is not sure if expected results followed these reforms. Attempts were made to ensure that the system develops its own self-criticism and forward drive. Again, the results are inconclusive. In immunising the management system from political intervention, the system is virtually immune from social pressures and customer demands for change. Resistance to change became entrenched. Reforms – such as reviewing tasks, identifying new skills and personnel, motivation-based management training, more creative human resource development and management and strategic deployment of personnel and talents – have been articulated and planned, but subsequent evidence does not indicate if such reforms have come to pass. Organisations tend to be mechanistic, concentrate energy on personnel and skill training rather than on programme and system development, and central staffs tend to distance themselves from the line personnel. In fact, a central agency like the human resource management ministry or the finance ministry itself does not invariably possess employees with the requisite skills and experience. The result is the task of promoting management development does not get done. This lapse tends to snowball into all operating agencies.
(Dr Jamal Khan was professor of public sector management at the University of the West Indies. [email protected].)
 (To be continued)