The Characteristics of Public and Private Sectors
The crisis of public leadership is Public Management involves the dealing with and controlling of the needs and the interests of a large group of people which often involves a whole community or the country. On the other hand the private sector involves the management of the narrower needs of an individual or a group of people. The public and private sector have different goals and motives and are governed by different kinds of principles (Crosby and Bryson 2018). The actions or the procedures of the two different groups are totally different from each other and are thus governed by different laws, rules, traditions and structural bureaucratic checks and balances (Blair et al. 2014). The following story on the death of baby peter clearly explains the callous attitude and way of working of the so called best child care and protection centers in United Kingdom. In spite of the continuous visits of the people from the center, they were just unable to catch any kind of misdoings against the child (Van der Voet Kuipers and Groeneveld 2016). Though Sharon Stone tries to save herself from the critics, the anger of the nation over her along with the organization she worked for is quite well justified. The absence of a proper care and an effective working structure is responsible for such kind of pathetic deaths. The leadership thus stands out to be a total failure in this particular case (Crosby and Bryson 2018).
The different organizations have their own characteristics. The goals of private and public sector management are totally different from each other (Ashikali and Groeneveld 2015). The public sector is more focused on looking after the general public. On the other hand, the main goal of the private sector concerns is to establish new markets and enable the creation of profit (Ashikali and Groeneveld 2015). The public sector agencies are able to cope up with organizational crisis but the private sector organizations on the other hand are unable to address the crisis and thus cease to continue. There are striking differences in the way the employees are hired in the organization- On the other hand according to; Crosby and Bryson (2018) the selection process of the employees in a private sector is much more fast than that of the recruitment process in the public sector. This is mainly because it takes a large time for a post in an organization to be eligible for vacancy. According to, Crosby and Bryson (2018) the public organizations face unique accountability- The government organizations are often subject to specific kind of scrutiny that prevents the organization from any kind of financial frauds. On the other hand the absence of any such similar scrutiny in the private limited organizations makes them less accountable (McCaffery 2018). The private sector organizations are generally controlled by the shareholders and the board of directors.
As said by, McCaffery (2018) the public leadership can be described as the role where a person holds a particular public office and involves himself in the service and the guidance of the community as a whole. An example for this can be cited as the Prime Minister or a person occupying a post of similar nature and power (Van der Voet Kuipers and Groeneveld 2016). Public leadership can thus be described as the collective leadership where the public bodies and the different public limited agencies collaborate in the achievement of a shared vision that is generally based on the shared aims and the values and distributes this with the help of the each of the organization in an organized and compact manner (McCaffery 2018).
Discussion of the Leadership
(Hayes 2016) says that there are a large number of complex social problems that are generally not solved by the single organizations or the sectors. These type of problems are generally addressed by the multi organizational and different cross sectorial efforts that involves the people across the different boundaries of the globe to discover and innovate different kind of sustainable solutions (Pee and Kankanhalli 2016). The collective dimensions of leadership are thus generally points to viewing the leadership as a particular phenomenon that implicates all the different members of a particular community or the members of a selected group. The exploration of the collective dimensions of leadership can reveal a number of different types of leadership forms. They are as follows;
- From Individual traits to styles and behaviors-Leadership theories in popular culture provides weight to the leader and acts as the primary source of leadership (Van der Voet Kuipers and Groeneveld 2016). The leader centered models helps to identify the personal qualities as the predictors of effective leadership like that of emotional maturity and the capability to provide power motivation (Pee and Kankanhalli 2016).
- From relationships to systems and Emergent processes-The theories that provide priority to the collective dimensions of leadership generally rely on a number of different assumptions. The source of the leadership is located at a level up from the individual or the relationship where the individuals operate (Arnaboldi Lapsley and Steccolini 2015). The distributed leadership theory generally describes leadership as decoupled from the formal positions of authority and distributed across the organization.
- From styles to relationships- Pee and Kankanhalli (2016) says that in reaction, relationship centered and follower-centered perspectives broaden the concentration of interest to the dimensions like the quality of the leader-follower relationship itself (Crosby and Bryson 2018).
However, Arnaboldi Lapsley and Steccolini (2015) the collective leadership theory is in total contrast to the case of Sharon Shoesmith. The absence of a collective leadership has clearly led to the absence of a thorough management in the child care center. The absence of a thorough administration has led to the casual approach of the visitors to Bay Peter’s home and has thus led to the pathetic and terrible death of the child.
Leadership and management are two different things and both of them have their own style. Leadership refers to the ability of an individual to motivate, influence and making others capable towards the effectiveness and success of the organization (Arnaboldi Lapsley and Steccolini 2015). On contrary management refers to the direction and control of a group of one or more people or entities for the purpose of coordinating and the harmonization of the different types of the group towards the accomplishment of a goal. The leadership style is basically people oriented while management style is task oriented. On the other hand the focus of leadership is to lead the people while management deals in managing the work of the organization (Blair et al. 2014).
Leadership is often seen as a process by which the person generally influences others to accomplish an objective and directs the company in a proper and efficient way (Kearney 2018). In the particular case of Sharon Shoesmith, the center for the children care has failed to manage the case of Baby Peter. The director has failed to influence the people in the organization and thus the organization has failed to achieve the basic goal of protecting and taking care of the abused children (Hayes 2016).
The trait approach theory describes the leadership as the idea that the great leaders are born with some given abilities. However this does not suits in each and every case as different studies which have tried to narrow down the specific personality traits that generally make up a proper and efficient leader (Kearney 2018). In case of the given example though Sharon Shoesmith was thought to be an efficient leader she failed to live up to her expectations. Transformational Leadership is generally defined as the leadership approach that causes different changes in the people and the social systems (Ashikali and Groeneveld 2015). Transformational leadership enhances the motivation, morale and the performance of the different employees through a number of different mechanisms. In the following case a transformational leadership is needed to change the current management and make it more responsible. Kearney (2018) has described Transformational Leadership Theory in his own way by saying that it involves the creation of high performance workforce. It is generally found at each and every levels of leadership that may be found at all the different levels of the organization including teams, departments, divisions as well as organizations as a whole (McCaffery 2018). These kinds of leaders in the organization are visionary and inspiring along with a risk taking attitude (Blair et al. 2014). Thus transformational leadership must be implemented in the organization to ensure proper running of the company.
Leadership and Management Styles
The gradual introduction of a contemporary society, the western public sector began to set off a new rising of a new public sector administration which generally changed the paradigm of the field of public administration (Blair et al. 2014). The new public governance is generally defined as a theoretical paradigm that adapted to the contemporary government public administration. The main elements of the new set of governance are as follows;
- Government must take the help of the customers and not the bureaucracy
- Government service objective is always customer
- The government must treat market as a guidance
- Competition must be put into different services
- Decentralization of the Government
According to, Blair et al. (2014) the example of the case of Baby Peter can be one of the best that clearly highlights the example of the total organizational failure of the public sector management. The public sector governance has totally failed in this particular case. The characteristics of public sector management show the diverse, multiple character of a public sector organization (Crosby and Bryson 2018). However, the child care center under the Government failed to identify any impending danger even after a number of visits and also by having the knowledge that the baby was in the custody of a serious child offender (Kearney 2018). The management of the public sector organization in this particular case and especially the leader of the organization Sharon Stone displayed an unprofessional behavior and took little interest in the following case (Kearney 2018). The following case can also be attributed to be a failure from the part of the government as lack of regular monitoring over the involved child care center led to the incident. The government should have been more careful in selecting the leader and also the management of the organization as such sensitive areas needs strict supervision and regulations (Blair et al. 2014). Therefore the absence of a strict jurisdiction is clearly evident that can be said to be the cause of Baby Peter’s death.
There have been numerous scandals involving the different kinds of public officials around the world. Most of the scandals were as a result of deteriorating ethical behavior of the public officers who were found to be directly involved or partially involved in cases of serious malpractices (Hayes 2016). The different incidents that happens as a result of such problems thus raises the demand for the strengthening of the public sector ethics, integrity, transparency and making the public sector organizations more and more accountable in nature (Crosby and Bryson 2018). The case of Baby Peter is a striking example of the failure of public sector governance where the child died in spite of 3 different hospital visits and 60 visits from that of the officials from the child care centers. It was really shocking as to how these officials and even the doctors were never aware of such grave signs of abuses (Kearney 2018). Sharon Shoe smith who describes the incident to be one of the worst in her career was herself a failure as she along with the others in the child care centre of the Public institution failed to recognize the abuse of the child and was equally responsible for not taking the child in their custody (Blair et al. 2014). The accountability and the professionalism of the centre were clearly exposed to the world. The absence of proper leadership skills amongst Sharon Shoe smith was evident in the way she defended her role in the death of the child (Hayes 2016).
Conclusion
Ethics in the public sector is generally a much broad topic that is usually considered as a branch of political ethics. The following ethics is based on the values and the morals of the organization. The ethics is generally defined as the entirety of the rules and providing the others with the equal opportunities as well as following the right steps. In the case of Sharon Shoesmith the ethics has been entirely discarded as her organization totally failed to assess the plight of Baby Peter and failed to check the entire wrongdoings of the caregivers of the child. The following can be easily cited as an entire breach of ethics. The main challenges of the public sector management lie in the presence of the volatile world that aims to disrupt the smooth flow of the organization in the market. Apart from this the application of technology and the changing perceptions of the customers are a real challenge for the organizations to overcome. In the Baby Peter case the child care center has totally failed to carry on the regular task and in addition the following organization has also failed to live upto the expectations of the customers in the following case.
References
Arnaboldi, M., Lapsley, I. and Steccolini, I., 2015. Performance management in the public sector: The ultimate challenge. Financial Accountability & Management, 31(1), pp.1-22.
Ashikali, T. and Groeneveld, S., 2015. Diversity management in public organizations and its effect on employees’ affective commitment: The role of transformational leadership and the inclusiveness of the organizational culture. Review of Public Personnel Administration, 35(2), pp.146-168.
Blair, P.S., Sidebotham, P., Pease, A. and Fleming, P.J., 2014. Bed-sharing in the absence of hazardous circumstances: is there a risk of sudden infant death syndrome? An analysis from two case-control studies conducted in the UK. PLoS One, 9(9), p.e107799.
Crosby, B.C. and Bryson, J.M., 2018. Why leadership of public leadership research matters: and what to do about it. Public Management Review, 20(9), pp.1265-1286.
Hayes, D., 2016. Children’s social care inquiry bids to influence policy and practice.
Kearney, R., 2018. Public sector performance: management, motivation, and measurement. Routledge.
McCaffery, P., 2018. The higher education manager’s handbook: effective leadership and management in universities and colleges. Routledge.
Pee, L.G. and Kankanhalli, A., 2016. Interactions among factors influencing knowledge management in public-sector organizations: A resource-based view. Government Information Quarterly, 33(1), pp.188-199.
Van der Voet, J., Kuipers, B.S. and Groeneveld, S., 2016. Implementing change in public organizations: The relationship between leadership and affective commitment to change in a public sector context. Public Management Review, 18(6), pp.842-865.
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