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Effect of Endocrine System on Human Behaviour
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What is Agile Methodology and Its Game Changing Promise for the Digital Age
Introduction to the Agile Methodology These days, there’s much buzz around what is known as Agile Method of Working or the Agile Methodology as applied to all types of organizational processes and modes of working. While initially, Agile was introduced for the Software and Technology Development and Release cycles, it has now become a method […]
Intercultural Communication: The Hofstede Model
One of the most widely used frameworks for analyzing cultural differences is the model developed by the eminent cultural theorist, Geert Hofstede. In this model, the differences in culture between countries have been plotted along five dimensions, which can be used as the basis for predicting the cultural differences between different countries. The model was […]
The Process of Corporate Decision Making
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The expansion of public sector into industrial enterprises has been into practice for quite some time, a little over half a century now. The public sector organizations in order to function efficiently are borrowing heavily from the business knowledge, administration and process orientation of the private organizations. However, there still remains a considerable difference between these two administrative practices.
It would be interesting to learn about both similarities and differences between these two to arrive at a better understanding. Let us first understand the differences and see what the authors and subject matter experts have to say about it.
According to Paul H. Appleby the public administration is different from private administration in three important aspects, the first is the political character, secondly the breadth of scope, impact and consideration and public accountability. These differences seem very fundamental and very valid in the Iight of our own exploration of the subject in previous articles.
Josia Stamp went a step further and identified four aspects of difference of which the only one similar to that of Appleby’s is that of public accountability or public responsibility as Stamp identifies it. The other three are:
Herbert Simon cited very practical and easy to understand differences based on popular beliefs and imagination and therefore might seem more appealing. He said that public administration is bureaucratic while private administration is business like. Public administration is political while private administration is apolitical. And finally; the aspect most of us would swear by that public administration is characterized by red tape while the private administration is free of it.
The management Guru Peter Drucker sums up the difference in more comprehensive manner. He says that the very intuition which governs both kinds of administration is different from each other. While the public administration functions on service intuition the private administration follows the business intuition. They also have different purposes to serve, with different needs, values and objectives. Both of them make different kind of contribution to the society as well. The way the performance and results are measured is different in a public administration than that of private one.
Let us now understand the similarities between the two and see to what extent and in which areas are they similar. You would be surprised to know that there are many similarities between the ways in which a public and a private administration functions. The similarities are so much that some subject matter experts and authors like Henry Fayol, M P Follet, Lyndall Urvick do not treat them as different. Fayol said that all kinds of administration function on some general principle irrespective of them being public or private. The planning, organizing, commanding and controlling are similar for all administrations.
The above arguments and several other points suggested and illustrated by other authors as well clearly point out that there are more similarities between the two administrations than what we see and understand.
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