Public Sector Management

Introduction

It has been argued that public and private organizations should be separated as they have great differences between lots of dimensions (Allison, 1979; Antonsen and Jorgensen, 1997; Bozeman, 1987; Ring and Perry, 1995). Scholars have tried to explain these different elements through a variety of dimensions such as organizational goals, organizational structures, personnel, motivation, job satisfaction etc. Some of the scholars believe that public and private organizations have great different, while others do not. Boyne (2002) found from various literatures that the evidence showing that private and public management are different is not sufficient and clear supported enough. This essay will critically evaluate the differences of private and public sector management by taking Boyne’s (2002) paper as the starting point.

Firstly, this essay will introduce different definitions from a variety of literatures. These different definitions of public and private organizations will help to distinguish public and private organizations from different dimensions, showing that scholars who investigate into different activities of public and private organizations will gain different definitions. In the second part, the differences and similarities of goals of public and private organizations will be explained. This part will help to understand why the goals of public and private organizations are different and therefore the differences of managers in different organizations. Thirdly, two dimensions of organizational structures which have attracted the scholars in private and public organizations will be illustrated. Scholars showed different opinions on bureaucracy and formalization or red-tape. Fourth, the differences of personnel procedure between public and private organizations will be evaluated. Elements like managers, employees, ownership etc will be used to argue about the differences and similarities of public and private organizations. Fifth is the...