Public and Private Management: Are They Fundamentally Alike in All Unimportant Respects? Graham T.

Allison challenges Wallace Sayres law Public and private management are fundamentally alike in all unimportant respects (Allison, 1980, p. 395). Today the basic categories of public management strategy, personnel management, financial management, and control are derived from a business context which has a defined organizational hierarchy. Allison questions whether the fit of this business hierarchy and its success can be translated and applied to the problems that confront public managers. Whether public or private, the common functions of management are not isolated and discrete, but rather interdependent components. The challenge is for managers to integrate all components so as to achieve results. The processes to achieve results are vastly different in the public vs. the private sector. Public managers have a shorter time perspective to achieve results, limited by the political calendar while private managers have a longer time perspective, governed by market developments, investment and organizational building. Public managers do not have the same longevity as private managers. Private managers have longer tenure in the same position and the same enterprise. Measurement of performance of the public manager is not finite and subject to varying degrees of interpretation by peers, constituents, and the public. Private managers have defined tests of performance financial return, market share, and innovation, which are often defined for a particular managerial position for a specific period of time. For public managers, there are challenges with executing because of hostilities between civil servants and political appointees. The private manager has much more authority to direct the employees of their organization. Public managers must place more emphasis on providing equity to different constituents sacrificing time and efficiency, while public managers focus their time and energy on achieving efficiency and competitive performance. Public managers are exposed to public scrutiny and forced to be more open and transparent in their processes. The private manager process is more internal to their organization and not subject to public review and influence. Public managers have to content with the influences and the opinions of the press and media, which tend to anticipate their decisions. For private managers, the press has a much smaller impact on their decisions. In response to a variety of pressures, public managers often need to mediate and seek coalitions of inside and outside groups to survive. For private managers, there is very little risk of contradiction, because of hierarchal structure for the execution of orders and decisions. Public managers are subject to oversight by legislative groups and/or judicial orders, which is not present in private business. Such oversight limits the freedom of public manager to achieve the most efficient results. Public managers are not driven by profit and return on investment motives. Private managers are measured on profit, market performance, market share, and these measures become their survival. The comparison of private managers and public managers presents some great differences in how results are measured and achieved for the two and Graham T. Allison question as to the applicability of business process and how it can be translated and applied to the problems that confront public managers is a very good one. Public administration will never function or perform like private business and the reason is that the functions of public administration are purposely and constitutionally spread among competing institutions of our government executive, two houses of Congress, and the courts. The constitutional goal was not to promote efficiency but to preclude the exercise of arbitrary power (Allison, 1980, p. 403).