The principles discussed by Appleby, Rainey and Steinbauer, and Scott, center around the differences between governmental and private institutions and their advantages and disadvantages. As such, it truly seems that Appleby is correct in his observation that the main difference between the two is the government’s very wide scope of influence when compared with a private entity’s limited area of interest. This observation is also expressed by Appleby when he says that “Government is different because it must take into account of all the desires, needsof 140,000,000 people” (Appleby, 2007, p. 123). Indeed, this is very much different from private enterprises and institutions that have a few thousands employees at the most.
It is also interesting that Appleby discusses a principle that successful businessmen that come from business-successful parents are more competent for public service than those who became rich on their own effort, due to a “special attitude of public responsibility” (Appleby, 2007, p. 120). This may also be because these people are more exposed to the wider worries of the group that they belong. This is also true according to my own observation, that elected and appointed officials, and even corporate leaders, are more competent when they have the public’s wellbeing in mind. There are many cases that prove this, such as Enron and other scams, that intentionally cheated the public so that the leaders can gain much wealth, even by unethical means.
On the other hand, there are also examples of good government organizations given by the reading materials, such as the Social Security Administration, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the Centers for Disease Control (Rainey & Steinbauer, 1999, p. 4-6). However, it is my observation that the success of these groups center around a specific goal or aim, like the Gulf War and proper storage of files. Hence, this means that organizational success is more likely to be met when the group’s or a person’s goals are not very wide in scope. In this context, this may be the reason why politicians, both here in America and in my native land, seem to have success in their projects when these are aimed at smaller goals, such as road widening projects, keeping the safety of a specific place, and imposing liquor bans in some places. This same level of success seems harder to achieve when the project is aimed at a larger scope, such as maintaining peace over the entire state of city or improving the road and rail networks of an entire country.
Perhaps the bigger organizations fail to meet their goals because there is a tendency to center their actions “around rules even to the point where primary concern with conformity to the rules interferes with the achievement of the purpose of the organization” (Scott, 2001, p. 22-23), even to the extent of resulting to ritualism and traditionalism. This principle is according to Columbia University in the late 1940’s. I observe that this attitude of too much following of rules that it results to failure is common in larger government organizations, but less in smaller ones such as the smaller projects mentioned in the earlier paragraph. Thus, it is very possible for the government to be very traditional in solving the problems of the society, so much so that president and leaders tend to simply follow the examples of earlier leaders in solving the problems. Thus, this also explains why leaders of smaller groups are more successful in solving problems than the leaders of larger ones.
What must leaders of bigger organizations acquire so that they can be as effective as those from smaller organizations?
Are there examples in history where non-traditionalism of Presidents had been effective in solving the big problem of his or her nation?
References
Appleby, P. (2007). Classics of Public Administration, 6th ed. Shafritz, J., & Hyde, A. (Eds.) USA: Thomson & Wadsworth. Print.
Rainey, H, & Steinbauer, P. (1999). Galloping elephants: Developing elements of a theory of effective government organizations. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 1, 1-32.
Scott, W.R. (2001). Institutions and Organizations, 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc. Print.
