Introduction
One of the key problems facing management
in the public sector is how to introduce
change in working practices when
measurable improvement is required but is hard to discern because of the nature of the
services provided. Thus, improving school performance, for example, cannot be taken
out of the context of the nature of the pupil,
home environment and socio-economic
condition without placing at risk the
credibility of any measure of improvement.
Perhaps as a consequence, working practices in the public sector have been the subject of some criticism for not being flexible and for
continuing with methods which appear, at
least to those with an outside perspective, to
be outmoded and ready for change. Indeed, the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, has
been quoted as referring to people in the
public sector, in general, as being ``rooted in the concept that if it's always been done this
way, it must always be done this way'' (Sunday Times, 1999). That there is no
surprise in hearing such a statement is not a result of such accusations being accepted, or
justified, but a reflection of a lack of
understanding of how public organisations
function when management is faced with
multiple objectives. If the answer to the question of effective and efficient public
sector management could be expressed as a
single, implementable statement then we
would have heard it a long time ago. The fact
that we have not is, of itself, a reflection of
the difficulties in encapsulating, in simplistic
terms, what it is management in the public
sector set out to achieve and, importantly, what management style is used.
In this paper, important components of
working practices are identified and
analysed in the context of management in the
public sector with examples drawn from the
UK National Health Service (NHS). In so
doing, a different perspective between the
components is proposed which makes use of
concepts of bureaucracy that act as
facilitators of goal matching between
individual and institution-wide
(organisational) decisions. To this end, an
analysis is presented of the human
dimension of effective working practices, the
dynamics of organisational change and
performance assessment as ways of shaping appropriate management styles.