Classifying Government or Public Sector Agencies - Essay Example

Introduction This essay look towards understudying the methods used to classify government or public sector agencies. One method used is bureau-shaping typology, which arises from the bureau-shaping model. According to this model, it is the topology of the public sector agencies which determines the budgetary structure they possess. It is also the key to determine how rational utility maximizing bureaucrats will want to shape-up their agency’s organizational configurations. Another method used to classify government or public sector agencies is the tool-kit approach. According to this method, any government can be analyzed and described as a set of administrative tools. Such an analysis enables a person to determine the roles and activities of any type of government, through which it is possible to understand how to classify the government or public sector agency. The tool-kit method is based on the tool-kit model, which breaks down government functions into detectors and effectors. The NATOE scheme is used defined as crucial resources of government’s activities. Contribution of bureau shaping topology towards classification of government or public sector agencies The bureau shaping typology of agencies is based on the bureau-shaping model. According to this model, pubic sector agencies can be classified according to the type of budgetary structure they possess. Plans for expansion of a public sector agency, the initiatives that the agency undertakes and the make-up of the agency largely depends on the budget agendas of that agency. In order to determine how the bureau shaping topology provides towards classification of government or public sector agencies, let’s look at the following agency types: Delivery Agencies: In these agencies the budget structure is one of a large core budgets and they spend about 75% percent of their expenditure as labor expenses. Regulatory Agencies: These agencies also have large core budgets as the delivery agencies and are responsible for the regulation of social and economic activity. Transfer Agencies: These agencies have small core budgets and make payments towards subsidies or entitlements. Contract Agencies: These agencies have small core budgets and spend most of their income on business development (developing service specifications or capital projects for tendering, and letting contracts to private sector firms). Control Agencies: These agencies have small core and bureau budgets and their primary task is to provide funding to subordinate agencies and to supervise their spending and performance. It has been noted that delivery and regulatory government agencies are more favorably disposed to budget maximization, while other agencies are less enthusiastic about expansion and more in favor of a focus on policy development and the outsourcing of administrative tasks. The type of budget, (the budget can allot for capital expenditure or the budget can allot for expenditure on subsidies), determines the type of the public sector agency because the budget is dependent on the nature of work done by the agency. Introspect on how a mixed type public sector agency contributes towards the classification of that agency Most people feel that when a public sector agency becomes a mixed-type agency, then it will threaten the analytical core of the bureau-shaping typology. This does not really happen. Following is an analysis why mixed-type agencies do not change the nature of the bureau-shaping typology Micro-Structural Incentives - The mixed-type agencies do not depend on the existence of a homogenous bureaucratic utility function. It is the individual incentives of several different bureaucrats, which determines how much they are ready to allocate for spending. When there is a merger of agencies, it will not alter these incentives substantially, as long as the function of the new sub-divisions did not change. For example the merger of a transfer agency and a delivery agency, is not going to create an agency with a unified senior management. It is only going to create an agency , in which the senior bureaucrats who are the head of one division have different incentives/behavioral patterns than their counterparts in the agency’s other divisions Functional Dominance of Core Competences - The merger of two different agencies might balance the incentives of different elements of the agency, but there will be structural impediments in bringing abut a similarity of thinking between the two agencies involved in the merger. For example, the nature of the transfer agency will remain as such as will the nature of the regulatory agency even after both are merged. So, even if these agencies undertake complementary activities, they will remain the same and behave distinctly from each other. The above reasons clearly indicate that a mixed-type government agency does not contribute towards classification of the public sector agency. It can however cause problems in terms of the varied interests of the inter and intra-agency senior bureaucrats, but this in itself is not very significant to prevent the classification of the agency. A look into the toolkit approach on the mix of policy instruments According to the tool-kit approach, the basic activities of a government can be analyzed from the point of view of exercises. They can also be viewed as a combination of a limited set of instruments or “tools. Tool-Kit approach The Tool-Kit approach brings out the idea that the basic activities of a government can be analyzed as an exercise or the result of a combination of a limited set of instruments or “tools”. According to Hood in his work…. , government behavior is like a control system, which takes information from the outside world (the society) through detector tools and then tries to influence it through effector tools. In the above figure Hood’s understanding of the government behavior is represented using the tool-kit approach. Here the government is seen largely as a control system, which takes information from society, using detector tools and then tries to influence society through effector tools. The tool-kit approach also classifies government resources as Nodality, Authority, Treasure, Organization and Expertise. Nodality – The government is the central node of society and all information comes and goes through the government. Authority – This represents the government power to prohibit or regulate the activities of other social factors. Treasure – This refers to the government’s possession of money, lands and properties. Organization – This refers to human and material resources required to build up a bureaucratic apparatus. Expertise – This refers to the specialized resources possessed by the government. The figure above gives the complete list of resources and the effector and detector tools which are used on them to influence society by the government. The different resources can be used by different government agencies in different ways. The figure above depicts such usage. In the figure N stands for Nodality, A stands for Authority, T stands for Treasury, O stands for Organization and E stands for Expertise. Benefits of the tool-kit approach The Tool-Hit approach help in the understanding of the complexity of modern government operation as a combination of limited range of instruments. It brings out the alternative ways of handling a particular a job and is a yardstick for comparing agencies in terms of the tools that they employ. Drawbacks of the Tool-kit approach The limitation of the tool-kit approach is that it treats the government as a totality and it focuses on the government –society interface, neglecting the inside government structure. The different public sector categories are not exhaustive or do not appear to be mutually exclusive. The resources of Nodality, Authority, Treasure, Organization and Expertise can be used in different ways for the purposes of detecting and effecting. For example, if the government wants to know about the current unemployment rates, then the government can do this by their own information system or by buying survey results from private consulting companies, or by getting information from it’s use of its nation-wide department of labor agencies. The Tool-kit model helps in the understanding about how a particular government functions. It can be used to compare the government to other governments established on different constitutional regimes. The NATOE schemes enables use to understand the various public policies implemented by the government. Through the tool-kit approach we learn to look at the government as a tools and in ding this we can easily understand the roles and activities of any type of government The Ecological model contribution towards the classification of government or public sector agencies According to the ecological model there is the continuous process of birth of new forms and the death of the old ones. There is the survival of the fittest in society, while groups that are unsuited to their environment shrink and may eventually die out. This concept very much applies to the evolution of organizational forms as well. What has been noticed about government agencies is that they are stable and as a result they are able to survive for a long period of time. New agencies which are quite flexible face death. This is very evidently seen in the research done by Kaufman H. on public agencies in the USA in the period 1923-1973. It has been seen that as an organization becomes older it is able to more stable and able to develop better structures. They can have closer relationships with congress, clients, professional associations and the environment. Despite this nature, it has been seen that government agencies show little ability to adapt to changes in the environment, and often their function are seen to be duplicated and they are in need of finance for their activities. Government organizations are rarely subject to change. Does this mean they are immortal, and if so what would having an ‘immortal’ organization mean within the ecological framework? It means that either the organization is perfectly adapted to its environment, which is not fully possible because, environment is something that constantly changes or the organization nature is such that it does not change and remains the same. This will in turn lead to stagnation in the development of new, better adapted agencies. The immortal nature of a government organization does not indicate that their performance is perfect. Actually the results of public policies show that the strategies followed by governments to achieve economical or social goals have not always produced desirable outcomes. Unemployment levels continue high, likewise inequality and poverty and in general such policies do not completely accomplish expected results. However, the ecological model of evolution is taking place, which means that government agencies are not immortal in nature. Change is taking place in them but at a very slow pace, that the rate of change in the surrounding environment. The ecological models illustrate a biological approximation about how external conditions, specifically social conditions, affect birth rates, growth and extinction of organizations. Application of these models is useful when the organizations under analysis show inertia pressures and face uncertain environments that provoke change. Government organizations meet both conditions. Selection theory is one of the branches that ecological models study. According to this branch the change in the structure of organizations comes through the creation of new ones and the death of others while the incumbent organizations hardly present variations in both structures. Hence innovation processes occur early in the life of the organizations. Conclusion The essay analysis how the bureau-shaping typology and the tool-kit approach is useful in classifying government or public sector agencies. We also look into the ecological model’s contribution towards the classification of government or public sector agencies. According to the bureau shaping typology of public agencies, pubic sector agencies can be classified according to the type of budgetary structure they possess. Through this approach what was concluded was that delivery and regulatory government agencies were more inclined towards budget maximization, while other agencies are less enthusiastic about expansion. This method is useful in brining about a classification of public sector agencies. It’s limitation come about when two public sector agencies are combined to form the mixed agencies because mixed agencies presents a challenge to the bureau-shaping typology. In the tool-kit approach we can make use of a set of basic tools grasp on how to classify public sector agencies easily and we can use this method to compare one government with other governments established on different constitutional regimes. The limitations of this approach are that it looks at the picture of the government as a whole and does not refer to any particular level of government. This model only looks into the mechanics of government and on what government does to society, not on what government should do on the behalf of its people. According to the ecological model there is the continuous process of birth of new forms and the death of the old ones and this concept very much applies to the evolution of organizational forms as well. What has been noticed about government agencies is that they are stable and as a result they are able to survive for a long period of time. This does not mean that a government agency is immortal in nature because the ecological model of evolution is taking place and change is taking place in them but at a very slow pace, that the rate of change in the surrounding environment. The drawback of this approach is that it states that organizations which frequently reorganize are the ones which have lesser chances of survival. This however, is not true because there is evidences to show that change is happening even through it may happen at a slow pace and that organization which adopt changes are the ones which survive. References Dunleavy, P. (2005,) 'Explaining Organizational Variation'. Chapter 16 from 'Modern Political Science' draft. Dunleavy P. (1991) Democracy, Bureaucracy and Public Choice. London: Harvester-Wheatsheaf. Pp. 182-191. Hood C. (1983) The Tools of Government. London: Macmillan Read More