Public Service Bureaucracy Research Articles

The Seven Factors of Production

The review of the Factors of Production is reported. The dynamics and response of globalization has rubbished the age long definition of factors of production. General management as entrenched in operations and production in the past centuries gave birth to non-responsive and dormant factors of production which dictated public service bureaucracy. Information and Time change were of no essence. Bureaucracy has been swept off the stage in the face of the emerging technology-driven global markets were competitiveness demands that the consumer/customer is king. In this era, Information and Time are considered of great essence to the success or failure of products/project delivery to the consumer. Consequent on the above, the review has revealed seven factors of Production which are relevant and sufficient to drive the global markets.

Rekomendasi Desain Operasi Pelayanan Publik Melalui Evaluasi Pemenuhan Harapan Masyarakat dan Pengukuran Kinerja (Membidik Pelayanan Publik Negara China)

Complaints communities in the developing countries, especially Indonesia to the public service are still extremely high. Perceived imbalances such as in: obscurity of time, cost and method of service; discrimination in services based on the relationships of friends, family, political affiliation, ethnic and even religious; chain length the more entrenched bureaucracy and bribery and extortion. This condition is a signaled for the government to seek strategic solutions to improve public services.
 This study aims to discover the design of public service operations in accordance with the expectations of society by measuring the performance of the public service. Recommended design is a design that lead to e-Government and reinventing goverment to give birth standard operating procedures (SOP) and minimum service standards (SPM) for public services in Indonesia, especially in the public service that is closest to the village community with Quality function deployment (QFD) in house of quality (HOQ) method.
 In the first phase of the study mapped 36 public expectations of public services, which are shown in this analysis that the public is not getting an appropriate and satisfying service, although does not show the high gap. On the other hand mapping the public response to the internet-based administration showed the unpreparedness of the people against the internet-based public services. The majority of respondents claimed to feel more comfortable and definitely served in the village office immediately met with the officers. Queue and the possibility of intervention or extortion is not a problem for society. In the second phase of this study will examine the true public service bureaucracy and the possibility of cutting the bureaucratic process that is more streamlined, clear, fast, and facilitate community. Last step is to benchmark the Chinese State as densely populated countries such as Indonesia, to make strategic steps and implementable in problem solving public dissatisfaction with public services and the number of maladministration.
 Keywords: fulfillment of community expectations, e-goverment, reinventing goverment, standard operating procedures, minimum service standards, good governance

Understanding and Exemplifying the Importance of Knowledge and Performance in the Public Service : Some Considerations for Business Schools and the Bureaucracy

This paper attempts to deal with the importance of knowledge and performance in the public service. It is a call to move from information to action. It explores how information about performance can be translated into improvements in public services and as to why this does not happen in practice. It is a call for practitioners of public administration and management and to academics to project and scrutinize these issues in their teaching programmes at the MBA level, within business schools. The paper draws heavily upon the work of Walshe, K; Harvey, G. and Jas, P the editors (2010: 1 – 32) in their book – Connecting knowledge and Performance in Public Services – From knowing to Doing. Essentially the preliminary chapters are summarized and where necessary the authors’ observations and experience are added for purposes of emphasis. This is a vital subject that requires understanding and application by both the academic and various levels of the public service bureaucracy. It is important to the so – called “Third World” development dynamics of governments and societies in transition, such as South Africa. The paper does not pretend to encapsulate all of the subtle nuances of a complex array of issues or for that matter pretend to deal with all of the issues that permeate this important, vexing, challenging and complex body of knowledge in terms of connecting knowledge and

Negotiating dilemmas in the practices of street‐level welfare work

Hjörne E, Juhila K, van Nijnatten C. Negotiating dilemmas in the practices of street‐level welfare workInt J Soc Welfare 2010: 19: 303–309 © 2010 The Author(s), Journal compilation © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and International Journal of Social Welfare.The theme of this mini‐symposium is based on the core ideas of two influential books published about 30 years ago, namely Michael Lipsky'sStreet‐Level Bureaucracy – Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services (1980) and Jeffrey Prottas'sPeople‐Processing – The Street‐Level Bureaucrat in Public Service Bureaucracies (1979). In these books, three dilemmas were identified that have great importance for welfare workers' position as mediators between institutions and citizens: autonomy versus control, responsiveness versus standardisation, and demand versus supply. In this editorial, we discuss these dilemmas with regard to the present context of street‐level welfare work, which is strongly influenced by managerialist policies (also called new public management). It is emphasised that in the era of managerialism, the dilemmas should be approached as empirical matters: how they are present, talked into being and negotiated in naturally occurring practices of street‐level welfare work, and with what consequences.

Whither the Welfare State? Professionalization, Bureaucracy, and the Market AlternativeStreet-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services. Michael LipskyPeople-Processing: The Street-Level Bureaucrat in Public Service Bureaucracies. Jeffrey Manditch ProttasThe Welfare Industry: Functionaries and Reprients in Public Aid. David Street , Georte T. Martin, Jr. , Laura KramerSocial Welfare: Why and How?. Noel Timms

Recent election returns suggest that welfare state may be on eve of profound change. A once stable base of popular support for social services has become quite unsteady. Disillusionment is genuine and widespread. Confidence in efficacy of governmental programs appears to be on wane, and many people see the as heart of problem. Market alternatives have risen in appeal. As accumulated discontents present welfare state with an uncertain future, there are a number of pressing questions scholars can address: Why is there such dissatisfaction with welfare state, especially with public bureaucracies and professionally directed staffs who provide assistance? Is welfare state vulnerable to demands for basic change, and, if so, what direction might change take? What about market alternatives specifically-are they politically attractive and socially desirable? The four books reviewed here tell us much that is helpful in responding to these questions. The books by Lipsky and Prottas dissect bureaucratic performance by social agencies, especially at lower levels of administration; and Lipsky in particular places that performance in broad social and political context. The study by Street, Martin, and Gordon examines bureaucratization and professionalization throughout welfare system and provides an overview that includes not only upper levels of policymaking and reform activity but pressure group context as well. The Timms book, a collection of essays by British writers, takes a broad social and philosophical perspective. In several essays it considers possible consequences of proposals from political Right to minimize public bureaucracy and rely heavily on private market and market incentives. While each book standing alone is a useful analysis, it is from reading four together that one gets keenest appreciation of ways in which social policy goes awry and why market alternatives are likely to compound current shortcomings.

People-Processing: The Street-Level Bureaucrat in Public Service Bureaucracies.

People-Processing: The Street-Level Bureaucrat in Public Service Bureaucracies.

The Power of the Street-Level Bureaucrat in Public Service Bureaucracies

The difficulties of controlling the daily behavior of low level bureaucrats has been widely appreciated by both administrators and academic students of bureaucracy. This article provides a theoretically oriented explanation for this fact. Building on the concept of "boundary actor," it places the source of the low level bureaucrat's power in his/ her unique role as mediator between the bureaucracy and its "street-level" environment. The bureaucracy's dependence on its street-level bureaucrats for the efficacious transla tion of its environmental inputs (citizens) into processable units (clients) provides the bureaucrat with the leverage to interfere in the organization's "enforcement sequence." By manipulating the information available to the organization about its clients, the street-level bureaucrat can limit the agency's ability to influence his/ her own behavior. The mechanisms and the political environment of this manipulatory activity are discussed in detail.

Organizational Contradictions in Public Bureaucracies: Toward a Marxian Theory of Organizations

An alternative approach to organizational theory is outlined, based on Marxian categories and propositions. The concepts of “productive force” and “social relations of production” are specified in terms of various organizational phenomena such as organizing activity vs. organization; historical contradictions between organizational control structures and new forms of organizing work activity (e.g., occupational and professional status groups vs. administrative rationalization and bureaucratization; bureaucratic and technocratic administration vs. self-organization of labor and workers' control); the contradictions between such organizational dimensions as labor-power and its manifestations in terms of skills and knowledge, the object of labor (complexity of task structure), the means of labor (technology), the division of labor, the control of labor (cost-accounting and hierarchical authority relations), and the organization of labor (e.g., either in terms of occupations and professions or unions, corporate management, state bureaucracies, or self-organization and workers' control). Organizational contradictions between functional as well as historical phases of the work process are described for work organizations, in general, and for public service bureaucracies and courts of law, in particular. For example, administrative and technical innovations designed to increase productivity tend to come into contradiction with strategies of established authority structures (e.g., of the professional judicial elite) designed to expand domain, thus impeding or nullifying various organizational reform efforts. The paper concludes with a more general discussion of Marxian method.

Bureaucratic Competence and Success in Dealing with Public Bureaucracies

Clients of public service bureaucracies differ in their degree of bureaucratic competence–all those abilities related to bureaucratic interactions (e.g., ability to complete forms). Literature on service bureaucracies is reviewed, focussing on clients' bureaucratic competence, and on the use of normal cases (worker sterotypes)–a mechanism which may ease the bureaucrat's day. The possible value of bureaucratic competence for the client who is negatively typed is suggested. Data collected in a welfare office in New York support the hypothesis that clients' bureaucratic competence has some influence on their success. It is provocative to find in this instance that welfare, rather than aiding victims of particularism, somewhat favors those high in bureaucratic competence. These data also revealed a large degree of discretion in eligibility determinations. Widespread lower-level discretion and the importance of bureaucratic competence may be understood in terms of “interest-group liberalism” or the Piven and Cloward explanation of the elasticity of the welfare rolls.

ORGANIZATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE EDUCATION SYSTEM

This paper examines characteristics of three main education sub‐systems: the policy formation system, the management or control system and the implementation system. In the policy formation system the main features are: intangibility of some education goals; lack of means‐ends continuum; inconsistency of goals; external dominance; the role of management and of teachers in education policy formation; value judgements; lack of feedback; heuristic processes; and incrementalism. Characteristics of the management system include: internal and external constraints; flat hierarchy; bases of authority; conflicting role demands; lack of colleague control; bureaucratic rules; size of staff; feminization; and management self‐image. Implementation system features are: organization of small symmetric sub‐units; organizational implications of goal conflict; compulsory attendance of clients; cognitive vs. emotive functions; resulting tensions and conflicts; sub‐cultures; clients' vulnerability; differential treatment of clients; obstacles to output measurement; and implication of measurement difficulties. The last section points out some implications of the analysis which seem to indicate similar and increasingly important developments in other public service bureaucracies. These include: diffuse and intangible goals; value sensitivity; high cost and external dominance; client service and client dependence; obstacles to output measurements; professionalization and feminization.