PUBLIC MANAGEMANT AND ADMINISTRATION AN INTRODUCTION SECOND EDITION - OWEN E. HUGHES - MACMILLAN PRESS
1998, PAGES 280, PRICE $ 29.95“A strength of the book is admirable clarity of its arguments. Indeed, this is one of the best written books of its kind that I have come across.Nor dose it suffer from limitations of country-specific studies, treating the Newer Public Management module as an international phenomenon.”…
- Chris Painter, Teaching Public Administration.
1.The Public Administration has dominated throughout the industrial world for most of the twentieth century, changing to a flexible, marked based form of public management. Due to the governments of Western countries, try to respond to the challenges of technological change, globalization and international competitiveness the Public sectors of these countries have undergone major changes since the mid of 1980’s. This book provides an introduction and assessment of the theories and principles of the new public management, compares and contrasts these with the traditional model of public administration.
2.At the beginning the author has argued that administration is a narrower and more limited function than management and, in consequence, changing from public administration to public management means a major change of theory and function. He has quoted the Oxford Dictionary definitions for administration as ‘an act of administering’,’ to manage the affairs of ‘or’ to direct or superintend the execution, while management is: ‘to conduct, to control the course of affairs by one’s own action, to take charge of’. Further he has elaborated the Latin origins of the two words also show significant differences. Administration comes from minor then ministrare, meaning: ‘to serve and govern’. Management comes from manus, meaning ‘to control by hand’.
3.The book concentrates on the broad sweep of international developments rather than concentrating on individual national case studies which could obscure key issues in a mass of unnecessary details. As such a new chapter has been added to discuss the problems of public management in developing countries and whether new public management can be as successful there as in more developed countries.
4.This book contains eleven chapters where it describes an era of change, the traditional model of public administration, new public management, the role of government, public enterprise, public policy and policy analysis, strategic management, managing internal/external components, public management in developing countries and politics and the administration. Eventhough there are eleven chapters the contents of this book has been classified in to four parts according to their applicability. The first part describes the theories of traditional public administration and new public management in chapters 1 to 3 while the second part considers the changing role of government, behind the change in management in chapters 4 to 6. The third chapter comprises more detail specific aspects of new public management – strategic planning and management, managing internal/external constituencies, as well as management in developing countries in chapters 7 to 10. The final part considers the political accountability and the limitations and problems of the new approach in last two chapters 11 and 12.
5.The author has further concerned with long term strategy for the expansion of public management. The strategic management element considers the organization in its external environment and attempts to move away from routine management task to consider, in a systematic way, long term consideration on the very future of the organization.
6.The rigid, bureaucratic form of public administration, which dominated for most of the 20th century, has been replaced by a flexible, market based form of public management. The aim of publishing this book was reiterated and it has been argued that the traditional model has so many weaknesses that it no longer deserves to be the model prescribing the relationship between governments, the public services and the private sector. For a variety of reasons, a new model of public management has replaced the traditional model of public administration.
7.The price of the soft cover of this book is reasonable as $ 29.95 the author Owen E. Hughes, a Professor of Public Sector Management, Monash University, Australia has presented this book, to the academic followers of public and private sectors, as well as in the political arena.
MPPC PERERA
Flight Lieutenant.
Sri Lanka Air Force.
