Introduction to business - Essay Example

While the first wave of public management reforms happened between 1979 and 1999, the turn of the millennia has shown increased reforms aimed at better servicing the public. The example of the way in which government employees are put into a culture of purpose, a social contract in which pay is only a part of the reward system, shows the way that reforms of the conservatism that hampered the system are being healed. The public management field is concerned with the areas of interest that are defined by the needs of the public.

In order to fully understand this field, it is important to have definitive understanding of what the word public means. According to Bovaird and Loffler (2009), public refers to “collective choice and activity” in which “it has the ultimate responsibility for constituting a society as a political community which has the capacity to make public choices” (p. 5). The concerns of the public are the concerns of creating a community in which the needs of the individual are addressed in such a way that they best benefit the needs of the community as a whole.

One of the prime concerns for public management is increasing the value of the money that is spent in serving the public, in creating the best possible result for the least amount of money in order to create the broadest number of services. In understanding the services of public management, it is beneficial to contrast it to the purposes of public administration and governance. Public administration is concerned with holding the budget, with administering the finances and how they are spent Governance is concerned with determining the structures through which decisions will be made and judging if those structures have been effectively followed.

Both of these types of control are determined a great deal by the way in which the public perceives the effectiveness of their application (Bovaird and Loffler 2009 p. 6). Public management is concerned with managing the needs of the public through efficient use of the funds that are available so that the most people see the best and greatest amount of benefit. An example of the difference is shown by Bovaird and Loffler (2009) through a simplified consideration. When considering the topic of clean streets, governance is concerned with the actions of the citizens in preventing further littering, while management will be concerned with how to improve street cleaning services (p. 9). While this is a very simplified version of the differences, those differences can be viewed through the lens of this example.

In the year 1999, Pollitt and Bouckaert wrote about the need for public management reforms. There are five areas of interest that define the reasons that reform was called for during this time. The examples of public management within Finland and Sweden could not be reached due to differences in the structure of the United Kingdom. The first difference that is remarked upon is that the U.K. reflects a deeper complexity of political governance. The second difference is within the per capita wealth of the country.

The third concept is within the capital growth within the country. The fourth is within the differences that can be appreciated general governance expenditure. The final aspect that must be considered when approaching reforms in order to reflect the nature of the U.K. social and political structure is in the wide variations in wage and price increases