BUREAUCRACY AND POST BUREAUCRACY AT THE SAME TIME:

TOWARDS AN AGENDA FOR ARGENTINE PUBLIC MANAGEMENT

Andrés G. Vinelli*
Documento 19 Junio de 1999

*
Harvard University and Centro de Estudios para el Desarrollo Institucional, Fundación Gobierno y Sociedad.
 CONTENTS

SUMARIO EJECUTIVO EN ESPAÑOL ...................................................................................................3

INTRODUCTION.........................................................................................................................................9

DEFINITIONS OF PUBLIC MANAGEMENT..................................................................................10

A BROAD DEFINITION OF PUBLIC MANAGEMENT .....................................................................................11
TOWARDS A NARROW DEFINITION OF PUBLIC MANAGEMENT ..................................................................17
Structure-Based Public Management ..................................................................................................19
Actor-Based Public Management ........................................................................................................19
Structure vs. Actor ...............................................................................................................................20
BUREAUCRACY AND POST BUREAUCRACY ..................................................................................21
PROBLEMS WITH BUREAUCRACY ..............................................................................................................24
AN EXAMPLE ABOUT BUREAUCRACY AND POST BUREAUCRACY: CORRUPTION CONTROL ......................25
THREE EXAMPLES OF WAYS TO FOSTER ACCOUNTABILITY ......................................................................26
The Budget...........................................................................................................................................26
External Markets .................................................................................................................................27
Information Technology ......................................................................................................................28
DO YOU PREFER BUREAUCRACY OR POST BUREAUCRACY? YES!............................................................29

PUBLIC MANAGEMENT IN ARGENTINA: TOWARDS AN AGENDA ..........................................31

FINE TUNING ROLES AND LIMITS OF GOVERNMENT..................................................................................31
MANAGING THE PROCESS AND THE FALLACY OF POLICY-IMPLEMENTATION DICHOTOMY .......................32
TOWARDS AN ACTOR-CENTERED APPROACH ...........................................................................................36

BIBLIOGRAPHY .......................................................................................................................................38

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Sumario Ejecutivo en Español

Este trabajo elabora cuatro ideas que constituyen ejes centrales de definición para el
fortalecimiento del gerenciamiento de organizaciones del sector público argentino en los
próximos años. Estas cuatro ideas esenciales están asociadas a las siguientes preguntas:

1. En qué consiste la disciplina llamada public management? En que medida contribuye a la

misma la literatura de administración de empresas?
2. Cuál es el eje central de la disciplina? En qué medida un enfoque de arreglos
institucionales puede ser complementado por uno centrado en el actor (es decir, en el
administrador público argentino)?
3. Qué es el paradigma burocrático y en qué medida esta establecido y/o agotado en el sector
público argentino?
4. En qué medida se puede separar la decisión de política pública (policy making) de la
administración de la misma?

Estas cuatro preguntas resultan centrales para un enfoque serio de reforma del sector público
en nuestro país.

Cuál es el eje central de la disciplina llamada public management?

Primero cabe hacer una revisión bibliográfica de las principales obras del public management.
La idea es definir el campo por enumeración. La elección de las obras relevantes fue en base
a conversaciones con expertos en el tema, pero esta influenciada por el tinte de la institución
académica a la que pertenezco.

Existen distintas perspectivas que informan la disciplina, por ejemplo:

• El derecho administrativo,
• Los clásicos de la escuela llamada administracion pública,

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• Los trabajos de la escuela llamada nuevo management pública,
• La literatura económica,
• Etc.

El paper explica en que medida cada una de estas perspectivas se superpone con el public
management.

Existen a su vez varias funciones que han ocupado a la literatura:

• Gerenciamiento de operaciones,
• Recursos humanos y cambio cultural,
• Gerenciamiento del cambio
• Medición de resultados,
• Etc.

Un debate actual es en qué medida la literatura originada en (y pensada para) el

gerenciamiento de organizaciones de negocios en el sector privado, es relevante al
gerenciamiento de organizaciones del sector público. Las areas adonde más contribuye son:

• Liderazgo y gerenciamiento general,

• Gerenciamiento de operaciones,
• Recursos humanos y cambio cultural, y
• Gerenciamiento del cambio.

Cuál es el eje central de la disciplina? En qué medida un enfoque de arreglos

institucionales puede ser complementado por uno centrado en el actor?

Una vez enumeradas las principales contribuciones, la pregunta natural es: cuál es el eje
central de la disciplina?

4
Hay opiniones encontradas en el mercado de ideas, y pueden ser resumidas en dos enfoques
contrapuestos:

El Public Management Basado en las Estructuras…

• Se concentra en las estructuras e instituciones distintivas del sector público.

• Public Management es ciencia y arte, pero debe enfatizar la ciencia.
• Favorece el uso de teorías y modelos.
• Uso intensivo del enfoque de elección racional.
• En general enfoque deductivo.
• Lamenta el estudio de “personajes presuntamente heroicos” y el uso de prescripciones
genéricas para la acción surgidas de sus éxitos.
• Defensor más Prominente: Lawrence Lynn (1996)

El Public Management centrado en el Actor…

• Se concentra en managers concretos, la forma en que operan, y en darles recomendaciones

operativas acera de cómo mejorar su rendimiento.
• Public Management es ciencia, pero también ingeniería.
• Utiliza diferentes aportes teóricos, especialmente casos.
• En general enfoque inductivo.
• Lamenta la falta de utilidad de las grandes teorías para los gerentes que enfrentan
problemas cotidianos y concretos.
• Defensor más Prominente: Moore (1995)

Mi opinión es que si bien los dos enfoques son valiosos, el segundo enfoque tiene más
potencial. Por que? Es una cuestión de ventaja comparativa…

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• Otras disciplinas (economía y ciencias políticas, sobre todo en sus enfoques neo
institucionalistas) ya tienen herramientas poderosas para analizar problemas desde una
perspectiva institucional y de elección racional.
• Y, al mismo tiempo, no hay ninguna disciplina (aparte del propio public management) que
dé consejo operativo al gerente público.
• Nadie discute que este tipo de guía operativa existe y es útil para el gerenciamiento del
sector privado. Por que no en el sector público también? En el sector público hay tanta o
más necesidad.
• Pero: hay muchos problemas que sí necesitan de un enfoque sistémico, dado que un
enfoque centrado en el actor no los resuelve.

El enfoque sistémico es claramente el más utilizado en nuestro país, sobre todo en la primera
reforma del estado y probablemente en la segunda.

Ahora hay que centrarse en que las organizaciones resultantes de un estado con funciones más
limitadas funcionen mejor.

Las personas en posiciones gerenciales no tienen referencias conceptuales claras ni útiles. La

literatura del sector privado es útil pero puede ser muy engañosa también. Hay que desarrollar
un cuerpo de conocimiento que constituya una doctrina gerencial. Debe ser operacionalizable
fácilmente.

Hay que complementar una estructura nueva de incentivos (menos perversa), con una nueva
concepción estratégica y revalorizada de la función pública. Enfatizar los valores, y una
actitud mas proactiva y estratégica. Aumentar la discrecionalidad, reducir el numero de
controles, y al mismo tiempo aumentar la calidad de los mismos.

Qué es el paradigma burocrático y en qué medida esta establecido y/o agotado

en el sector público argentino?

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La referencia es Weber. Es la idea de organización como maquinaria impersonal, jerárquica,
que produce resultados uniformes. La mayoría de las organizaciones estatales en la mayoría
de los países han sido estructuradas en base a este paradigma. (Lo mismo que las
organizaciones privadas durante mucho tiempo).

Pero uno de los problemas fundamentales del paradigma es que supone un mandato claro e
inequívoco. Han surgido varias ideas que pueden constituir un paradigma alternativo, post
burocrático. Pero hay diversidad en este paradigma: estado mínimo, desregulación del
gobierno, y reinventing government.

Estados Unidos introdujo un sistema burocrático hace aproximadamente un siglo atrás.

Argentina nunca lo terminó de hacer, dado que hay muchas patologías que indican que el
producto ofrecido no es uniforme, la maquinaria no es impersonal, etc.

El desafío central de los próximos años: establecer un sistema que sea a la vez burocrático y
post burocrático. Es decir, desarticular el particularismo y el clientelismo, y al mismo tiempo
utilizar métodos gerenciales más modernos y flexibles.

En qué medida se puede separar la decisión de política pública (policy making)

de la administración de la misma?

Una de las propiedades de muchos procesos de organizaciones públicas es que las

características del proceso de producción determinan gran parte de la calidad del producto
mismo.

Algunos temas relacionados al proceso:

• Acceso por parte de sociedad civil y grupos de interés.
• Corrupción.
• Equidad en el proceso de decisiones.

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Otro tema relacionado al proceso es en qué medida se puede separar la decisión de políticas
públicas con su implementación:

• En la burocracia clásica hay una división entre pensar y hacer. Ejemplo: Wilson (1887)
• Post Burocracia: no. La separación esta desacreditada en la literatura de gerenciamiento
estratégico (ejemplo: Minzberg)
• La separación implica un mandato claro. Pero en realidad el mandatoes ambiguo,
problemático y a veces contradictorio. Entonces hay que interpretar.
• Además hay un problema de multiplicidad de tareas (multitasking)
• Como hemos dicho, el proceso es importante en sí mismo.
• Contratos muy difíciles de ser escritos, y las acciones son difíciles de ser observadas y
verificadas.
• Es necesario más empowerment, no menos.
• Un ejemplo claro de marcha atrás en esta separación tajante es Nueva Zelanda.

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Introduction

This paper discusses four questions that are important in order to strengthen the management
of Argentine public organizations in the next years. These central questions are:

1. What is the discipline called public management? To what extent does the business
management literature contribute to public management?
2. Want is (and what should be) the central concern of this discipline? To what extent can a
structure approach be complemented by one centered in the actor (that is, in the argentine
public manager)?
3. What is the bureaucratic paradigm and to what extent is it established or perished in
Argentine public sector?
4. To what extent is it possible to separate policy making and policy administration?

Answering these four questions is important in order to accomplish the following tasks:

♦ The development of a body of research about public sector organizations that truly takes
into account the particularities of both the public sector institutions and the argentine
context.
♦ The training of public managers that behave in an ethical, value-producing and innovative
fashion.
♦ The serious reform and redesign of public sector organizations in order to foster efficiency,
accountability and innovation.

The first two questions, that is, those about the discipline of public management, are discussed
in the section about Definitions of Public Management. The question about the bureaucratic
paradigm is discussed in the section about Bureaucratic vs. Post Bureaucratic Paradigms with
Comments About Corruption. The last section discusses the question about the possible

9
separation between policy making and administration, and also discusses other topics relevant
an agenda for Argentine public management.

Definitions of Public Management

In the animal kingdom, the rule is, eat or be eaten;

in the human kingdom, define or be defined.
Szasz, Thomas. 1973. The Second Sin, “Language”1

The world of ideas concerning the public sector is in crisis. There is a lack of agreement on
the proper role of the state in modern society, a crisis in the prestige of public service, a wide
skepticism about what can the government effectively accomplish.

There also seems to be a belief that the fields of public administration and public management
are in crisis. There is an ongoing debate on what the field of public management should study
(i.e., what is the field of public management?), what questions does it attempt to answer, what
is the proper way to build and increase the body of knowledge of the discipline. There are also
questions on where devolution and public service reorganization in procurement, personnel,
etc. fit in changes of the discipline.

The first part of this section attempts to identify what the field of public management is, and
what the field of public management should be. The proposed method in this search for
definition is the following: the paper reviews some of the most important bibliography on
public management, in order to define by enumeration what the field is. In the first part of the
paper we review different components of the field and the closely related disciplines, in order
to come up with a broad enumeration of what constitutes public management. I will assess the
contributions of each one of them, paying special attention to the literature of business
management. This broad enumeration will certainly err in the side of inclusion, but I am sure
that is a good start.

1
The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations. 1993. Columbia University Press

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Once we have a broad collection of components, I will try to specify in a more precise manner
what the field of public management is or maybe what it should be. In order to narrow down
what the field should be I will contrast two alternative views of what the field is, and evaluate
the merits and weaknesses of each. I will also discuss briefly the role or changing paradigms
in the field of public management.

A Broad Definition of Public Management

In this section we will overview different contributions to the field of public management.
Because of the immense quantity and the multiplicity of approaches in each of the different
sub-fields and related disciplines, this quest may prove cyclopean. I decided, however, to
narrow down the list of readings in each discipline or field to some of the very basic (or one
may say, classic) works in each one, and outline what I interpret as the main contributions to
the understanding of public management. The list of contributions is not ordered by
importance, chronology, or any other pattern. (The relative importance of each field of
discipline is the subject of a whole debate on its own).

The literature on leadership and management, both in the public and private fields, constitutes
a rich source of reference for public management. This broad literature includes the
description of management duties, tasks and responsibilities, the elucidation of the role and
nature of leadership, and the differences between leadership and management. The field also
includes some “classics” of the literature of business management, that contribute with
powerful insights about the dynamics of change, innovation and competition. While it is
useful to profit from the writings on business management, it is always essential to keep in
mind the literature that precisely differentiates the nature and practice of public and business
management. Differences include issues like the political environment, intensive scrutiny
from the media, different degree of control over resources, and cultural factors.

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Perhaps the most direct contribution comes from the classic works on public administration.
This literature establishes a well-articulated theory on what is the role of public managers in
ensuring the democratic accountability of the institutions they manage. This literature is so
rich that includes operational guidance on what to do in order to achieve a mandate in an
effective and efficient way, and also includes empirical accounts on what public managers
actually do, and the workings of program implementation.

The field of administrative law is central to understanding the powers, duties and limits that
public managers have; it stipulates a normative framework of how decision making processes
in the public sphere should guarantee fairness and equity. It helps to define the important
process of rule making, and its implications for constitutional and democratic values. It
specifies the constraints to administrative discretion and the basis for accountability of public
servants; administrative law has also a great influence on the implementation of programs.

Recent developments of what has been called “the new public management” constitute
important sources of ideas and theories. This literature addresses varied and sometimes
contradictory demands over the public sector concerning increased flexibility, adaptability and
innovation, regulatory and administrative reforms, devolution and privatization. It also
addresses the problem of imperfect mandates and the blurring boundaries between the public
and private spheres. The writings about other developed and developing countries that have
undertaken administrative reforms are also an important contribution of experiences and
lessons.

The writings on political management and public sector marketing contribute with useful
descriptions of the political environments in which public managers work, and discuss the
duties and challenges deriving from changes in the political environment. These writings also
give operational advise on how to amass the necessary political support to implement
programs, and how to market the public sector to external constituencies and customers.

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The issues of performance measurement and accountability are also important to public
management: some authors contend that the lack of good performance yardsticks is one of the
central causes for the commonly perceived notion that the public sector performs poorly in
comparison with the private sector. The search for accountability systems that focus on
outcomes, not inputs (thus empowering managers to innovate) is an ongoing enterprise.

The more traditional sub-fields of operations management, service delivery, human resources
management and organizational culture are essential parts of the art and science of being an
effective public manager. But more recent topics such as change management and building
and managing networks of capacity are getting increased attention because of the rapid
changes in the mix between the private sector and the public sector, the changing technologies,
and the demands for greater flexibility and adaptation.

Finally, the economics and political science literatures provide solid frameworks concerning a
wide variety of phenomena. The literature on political science gives powerful insights on the
political context of policy-making, the behavior of the legislative bodies, how the press
behaves and how its behavior affects the conduct of government, and what motivates the
behavior of elected executives. The economics literature provides both a theory defining the
proper role of government and a toolbox of methods to evaluate government activities; it also
provides a framework to analyze the effects of different incentives on the behavior of
managers (from Moore, 1995, page 5.)

All these fields contribute to the body of knowledge of public management. The impact of
these contributions can be conceptualized as in Figure 1. There, we divide all the fields and
traditions either into “general perspectives” or “functions”, and represent the degree or
“overlap” (or contribution) to the theory of public management. For instance, the writings of
“political management and public sector marketing” are more directly and solely dedicated to
public management than the literature on “operations management and service delivery” in
general. The assessment of the contribution to the field of any related discipline is essentially
problematic and controversial, but has some utility: to the least, it “maps” the different
influences and contributes to the debate about the boundaries of the discipline.

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Figure 1: Contributions of different fields to public management.

General Perspectives Functions

P
Administrative Law U
Pol. M. & Pub. Sec. Mktng
B
Management and Leadership L
I Perf. Measur. & Accountab.
C
Classics of Public Administ.

M
“New Public Management” A Op. Man. & Service Delivery
N
A Human Res. & Cul. Change
Comparative Public manag. G
E Change Management
Economics Literature
M
E
Political Science Literature Manag. Networks of Capacity
N
T

Another interesting and controversial question is how much is the literature on business
management contributing to public management. In principle it is hard to tell, but I came up
with some raw estimates of this: I divided the field of public management into different sub-
fields, and scanned the books and papers that many scholars in public management thought
were essential. Some of those writings were from the business management literature, but I
found that these contributions were concentrated in very concrete “niches.” Figure 2 lists the
percentage of readings from the business management literature that I scanned, compared to
the total of readings in each area.

Again, the decision on what to read and what to leave out was quite personal, but I believe it
reflected some of the trends in the field. (I decided to pay special attention to what the experts

14
on each area thought were the main contributions.) It is interesting to note that about a third of
all the contributions to public management come from the business world, if one assumes that
each sub-field is equally weighted in relative importance.

Figure 2: Contributions of business management literature to public management, by sub-

field.
Area Contribution

Leadership and Management in General 47%

Public and Private Management 0%
Classics of Public Administration 0%
Law and Public Management 0%
New public Management in America 0%
Comparative Public Management 0%
Political Management and Public Sector Marketing 0%
Performance Measurement and Accountability 0%
Operations Management and Service Delivery 60%
Human Resources Management and Organizational 78%
Culture
Change Management 71%
Building and Managing Networks of Capacity 33%
Total 33%

Similarly, Figure 3 views the same data from a different perspective. It responds to the
following question: if we conceptualize the field of business management as a whole, to which
areas of public management is the business literature contributing? (in percentages.)

15
Figure 3: Where is Business Management literature contributing to Public Management?

Building and
Managing Netw orks
of Capacity
4% Leadership and
Change Management in
Management General
22% 31%

Operations
Human Resources Management and
Management and Service Delivery
Organizational 13%
Culture
30%

Total = 100 %

This breakdown of contributions from business management to public management constitutes

a very broad approximation to the actual contribution. A much more detailed and extensive
investigation is required to assess the true significance of the contribution in each area.
Nevertheless, it is important to see what types of functions of public management are being
influenced by the business literature.

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Towards a Narrow Definition of Public Management

By speaking, by thinking, we undertake to clarify things, and that

forces us to exacerbate them, dislocate them, schematize them.
Every concept is in itself an exaggeration.

José Ortega Y Gasset. 1949. “In Search of Goethe

from Within.” Partisan Review. New Brunswick,
N.J

Some people may object: Why do we care about how to define public management when we
already have a well-rounded theory of public administration? My answer is that the theory of
public administration may be mature, but there is also strong evidence that the field is crisis.
Some elements that contributed to the crisis of public administration were the following. First
of all, the concepts of public administration were not very clear on the first place, although the
function was indeed straightforward: to act as is policy was already set. In actual empirical
studies, it was difficult to separate the concepts of policy and administration, so the theory
became less relevant (more on this later).

A second factor that contributed to the crisis of public administration was an increasing
mistrust in government, and the ability of the political process to provide adequate policy
guidance. This political crisis was triggered by Dahl’s pluralist vision of the political process
as a domain of narrowly focused elites, and was aggravated by more pessimistic views from
Olson (1965), Schattschneider (1975), and others, concerning the bias of interest group
representation.

An additional fact was the shift from static to dynamic organizations. The quest for
accountability and efficiency produced static organizations that benefited from economies of
scale, while producing uniform products and services (“one size fits all”). Increasing demands
for continuous improvements, changes in processes and responsiveness to new mandates,
coupled with a desire for flexibility towards particular demands (heterogeneity), commanded a
quest towards more dynamic organizations (again, more on this later).

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The surge of public policy schools, the emphasis on cost-benefit analysis, and the increasing
insistence on “customer value,” all have as a common denominator the idea of getting politics
out of the way, and increasing “responsiveness”. But the whole idea of “responsiveness” is
difficult to define: do we mean responsiveness to the individual citizen, or to the collective
body? If we want responsiveness to the collective, then we would have to promote
administrative law; if we want responsiveness to the citizen, we will stress due process. If the
objectives are being effective, efficient, fair, and accountable, then producing Ford’s “Ford T”
is a good idea. But if you believe in customization, then building that same car is not a good
idea. A tension between efficiency and effectiveness on one side, and accountability and
fairness on the other, develops as soon as fairness and accountability are redefined. The field
of public administration does not give us adequate frameworks to analyze this problem.

Another unforeseen development of recent decades was the increase of political conflict
caused by the expansion of the scope of government. This expansion also created a strong
movement that challenged in various grounds the new role of the state, questioning the
legitimacy of the policy mandates that directed those changes on the first place. In addition to
the questions regarding the scope of the government, there are increasing pressures to change
the relative mix of federal, state and local government.

Once the policies underlying public management become heavily questioned, ambiguous, or
even contradictory, the presumed mandate that supposedly guides public administration is not
straightforward anymore. People realized that mandates are ambiguous and imperfect.
Therefore the relevant question is “How should public managers operate in a world of
ambiguous public mandates?” When the policy mandate is not clear, there are two possible
solution paths: the first one is to enrich the set of existing administrative procedures, so the
organizations can come up with some uniform response in an almost automatic way. The
second solution consists in increasing the degrees of freedom of the public manager, and then
promoting a responsiveness towards external feedback. If the first idea of rule-proliferation is
discarded, and the second solution is preferred, then the concern about managerial discretion,

18
although ubiquitous in the public administration school, becomes counterproductive. The first
one rests on structure, the second on the actor (the manager).

Precisely these different solutions (structure-based and actor-based) represent what I consider
the two different and competing theories in the marketplace of ideas about what the field of
public management should be. Some people contend that the field should mainly focus on the
structures and institutions distinctive of the public sector, other people argue that the field
should concentrate principally on the role of the managers and in giving them operational
guidance. Let’s see the arguments on each side.

Structure-Based Public Management

One of the most prominent and polemic scholars that defend this view is Lawrence Lynn.
Lynn (1996) regrets the alleged abandonment of what he sees as a healthy initial bias of public
policy schools towards analytics, and the adoption of the homiletics approach. The homiletics
approach is the study of psychological states of presumably heroic figures, and the use of
generic prescriptions for action suggested by their successes. He sees the bias towards the
homiletics approach as a move towards the view of public management as an art, as opposed
to science. While the author advocates for a mix between art and science, he openly favors a
reliance on models and theories. He encourages the development of testable hypotheses and
internally coherent research programs. In this view, rational choice and economic models play
a central role in organizing the application of “science” to public management. Structures
should be the center of any research program, not the specific individuals, however “heroic”
they may be; the design of macro arrangements should be the focus of the discipline’s
concerns.

Actor-Based Public Management

Many scholars seem to share the view that public management should concentrate on public
managers, they way they operate, and in giving them operational guidance on how to improve
their performance. For instance Levin and Sanger (1994) seek in a book to “provide an
operational guide that outlines the conditions under which... entrepreneurs work, how they

19
develop and implement their initiatives, and why they succeed” (page 9). Behn (1993)
contends that a field of knowledge is defined by the questions this field is supposed to answer.
Behn (1996) defines in page 91 the big question of public management research as: what do
the managers of large (and small) public (and nonprofit) agencies need to do to increase the
ability of their organizations to produce results? The author then examines three subordinated
questions: What do public managers actually do? What is it that successful public managers
do that makes them successful? How do public managers think and learn?

Structure vs. Actor

Structure-centered theorists are fast to hammer actor-centered ones for “not being scientific.”
They argue that their research is not empirical and systematic. While there may be some
degree truth in these allegations, especially regarding the “systematic” part, I think that this is
not generally the case. Actors-centered scholars are very empirical: they focus their research
in the empirical world, and then try to generalize, whereas in many cases structure-centered
theoreticians borrow or develop theories that are somehow “deducted”, and then (regrettably,
only sometimes) try to falsify them.

It is my opinion that the actor-centered approach is simply more useful both to the academic
and “real”2 worlds. The main argument is one of comparative advantage: other disciplines
(economics, political science, especially the neo institutionalist perspectives in these
disciplines) already have powerful tools to comprehend problems analyzed from a structure
centered perspective. At the same time, there is no discipline (besides public management
itself) that comes close to giving operational guidance to public managers; business
management techniques may help but can also seriously mislead the naïve reader.

There is a need for an organized body of knowledge that can contribute to the day-to-day lives
of public managers, in the same way that it is already accepted that there is a need for business
management as a discipline. Public managers are in no less need for concrete, down to earth
training than business managers that get their training in MBA classes and in popular

2
Whatever "real" may be!

20
management books. Public management should not defraud the expectations of insights on
how to improve the performance of public managers; public management should mainly focus
on actor-center approaches.

A problem of actor-based view is that it may overlook some important structural problems and
challenges that may not be solved only by effective public managers. For instance, there are
some structural problems related with hiring structures that may not be addressed adequately
by a purely actor-centered approach. There is therefore reason to continue worrying about
structures and institutional arrangements, not maybe as the main concern of the field, but as an
auxiliary but important research program. The bridge between the structure-centered research
program, and what I contend should be the mainstream actor-centered approach could be the
concept of paradigm.

Bureaucracy and Post Bureaucracy

Paradigms may provide some common language and frameworks to understand public
management both from an actor perspective and a structure approach. From the actor
perspective, the link between patterns of shared beliefs more or less organized around
“paradigms” and the managerial imagination is more evident. A manager that shares a purely
bureaucratic paradigm (in the Weberian sense) is likely to behave differently from a manager
that sees his job in a more “post bureaucratic way.” From the systems perspective, the
organization of institutional arrangements that shape the incentives of people in the public
sector will also be influenced by what the objectives of these arrangements should be. For
instance, the bureaucratic paradigm prescribes the maximization of efficiency, while more
modern approaches are more concerned about dynamic adaptation and innovation (problems
that are not well addressed by the bureaucratic paradigm.)

The Bureaucratic paradigm was articulated and popularized by Max Weber, the German
sociologist. The central tenets of such paradigm for organizations are well known, and
therefore need not much explanation here. Essentially, the idea is of an organization that can

21
be conceptualized as a pyramid, where there is an internal division of labor reflected in the
precepts of specialization and differentiation. This bureaucratic way of organizing was
supposed to bring about efficiency, consistency and to rescue organizations from
particularistic demands, corruption and inefficiency. Most governmental organizations were
designed with the bureaucratic paradigm in mind.

The bureaucratic paradigm, as an ideal way of designing and organization, has been in the last
decades under intense attack. In the realm of business management, there is a decreased
emphasis on efficiency and economies of scale, and more emphasis is being drawn on
flexibility of production, just in time inventory management systems, outsourcing, etc.
Products and services are being de-standardized and tailored to specific customers. All these
(and other) developments have eroded the allure of the bureaucratic paradigm, and have
triggered the attention on concepts suck as flexibility, open systems, networks, among other,
that are difficult to place within the bureaucratic paradigm. We will discuss more below about
the decline of the bureaucratic paradigm in government organizations.

The decline of the bureaucratic paradigm and the crisis of identity of the state create in fact a
noticeable vacuum in the theory on public management. The problem is how should we react
to problems such as he redefined role of government in society (value), the declining prestige
of civil service, recent technological changes (internal operations), changes in management
theory, new political demands (external environment), etc.

Barzelay (1992) explains the history of what he calls the bureaucratic reform vision was
instituted by the progressive reformers in the US. He contends that this bureaucratic
paradigm, that was an important improvement over waste, disorder and patronage, has
become obsolete and counterproductive. The book argues that the success of this program
signals the emergence of the post-bureaucratic paradigm. This new conception stresses the
delivery of value to customers, as opposed to the control of costs and the struggle for
efficiency. This conceptual development mirrors the development of new theories of business
management, and is based in the diminished importance of economies of scale, and the

22
increasing relevance of flexibility and value delivery. Figure 4 summarizes the main tenets of
the bureaucratic and post-bureaucratic paradigms.

Figure 4

Paradigms according to Barzelay

Bureaucratic Post-Bureaucratic

• Main goal: Public Interest • Main goal: Results citizens value

• Honesty and efficiency
• Specific delegation of authority
defines roles
• Strong internal control to avoid
fraud, waste and abuse
• Must apply rules and procedures in
a uniform manner
• Focus in roles and responsibilities
• Insist on SOPs.
• Separation of thinking and doing.
• Quality and value
• delivery of value to customers
• Empowerment: encourage
employees to make judgments
• Two-way communication with
customers
• Flexibility
• Focus in accountability
• Increases discretionary authority
• Competition
• Continuously improve processes

Source: Adapted from Barzelay (1992).

Dubnik (1994) notes that there are important differences among theories that claim to be
“post-bureaucratic,” and among people that want to constitute an administrative reform
movement. The author classifies the emerging theories in three categories: minimal state,
deregulating government, and reinventing government. Although this classification is by itself
problematic, it shows that the “new paradigm” is not yet well rounded, and that internal
inconsistencies and political clashes among supporters are likely to continue at least in the
short term.

23
Problems with Bureaucracy

Bureaucratic organizations have problems. On the first place, it is rare the situation where
bureaucratic structures and bureaucratic legitimacy are completely embodied by an
organization, and in many cases where there are “critiques to bureaucracy”, the critiques only
point out the failure of full introduction of bureaucratic behavior and structures. But even
when it is fully institutionalized, bureaucracy in not a panacea: bureaucratic structures are
said to be alienating, rigid and unadaptive, and a tool of power from the few to the many
(Perrow, 1986:5). The old institutionalism also articulated, in the exposé tradition (Perrow
1986), a propensity for co-optation by the environment, subverting original goals (Selznick
1949); similarly, internal élites of the bureaucracy may become self-serving in what has been
called the “iron law of oligarchy” (Michels 1969).

These dysfunctions are in turn anticipated by the political system, that articulates responses to
control bureaucratic behavior. These mechanisms range from the obtrusive to the unobtrusive
(Perrow 1986:2), including also external mechanisms of control (mainly high powered but
also low powered, see Williamson, 1985:132). Mechanisms of control include the
proliferation of rules, SOPs, manuals of procedures, budgeting and financial management
standards, human resource regulations, et cetera. These procedures and mechanisms embody
both the standardization of bureaucratic behavior to boost efficiency, and also the desire of
external political actors to control process, structures and outcome of bureaucracies
(accountability). The crystallization of these rules and regulations produces, ideally, a
reduction of fraud, waste and abuse and the boosting of static efficiency. Rules also tend to
ensure due process and the defense of individual rights from arbitrariness and particularism.

The quest for accountability and efficiency produced static organizations that benefited from
economies of scale, while producing uniform products and services (“one size fits all”).
Increasing demands for continuous improvements, changes in processes and responsiveness to
new mandates, coupled with a desire for flexibility towards particular demands
(heterogeneity), commanded a quest towards more dynamic organizations. The surge of
public policy schools in the US (Lynn, 1996:56), the emphasis on cost-benefit analysis, and

24
the increasing insistence on “customer value and orientation,” all have as a common
denominator the idea of getting politics out of the way, and increasing “responsiveness.” But
the whole idea of “responsiveness” is difficult to define. If we want responsiveness to the
collective body, then we would have to promote administrative law; if we want responsiveness
to the citizen, we will stress due process. If the objectives are being effective, fair, and
accountable, then producing a “Ford T” is a good idea. But if one believes in customization,
then building only that car is not a good idea. A tension between efficiency and effectiveness
on one side, and accountability and fairness on the other, develops as soon as fairness and
accountability are redefined.

Once the policies underlying the agency become heavily questioned, ambiguous, or even
contradictory, the presumed mandate that supposedly guides bureaucratic behavior is not
straightforward anymore. Mandates are in reality ambiguous and imperfect, leaving two
alternative solution paths: the first one is to enrich the set of existing administrative
procedures, so organizations can come up with uniform responses in an almost automatic way.
The second solution consists in increasing the degrees of freedom of the public manager, and
then promoting a responsiveness towards external feedback. If the first idea of rule-
proliferation is discarded because of the increased risks of further bureaucratic dysfunction,
and the second solution is preferred, then an excessive concern about managerial discretion
becomes counterproductive.

An Example about Bureaucracy and Post Bureaucracy: Corruption Control

Developing countries face what could de called the double challenge of fighting systemic
corruption and enacting a post-bureaucratic reform. Management theorists have not paid, yet,
great attention to this problem. Organizational theorists have traditionally focused in the
introduction of a Weberian bureaucratic model that was thought to eradicate or dramatically
control corruption instances. Deviations from this perspective were generally seen as a failure
to fully implement universalistic rules, procedures and personnel and procurement functions.

25
I will briefly discuss the emergence of bureaucratic arrangements, its advantages and
disadvantages, and some of the (problematic) remedies that political overseers seek in order to
control bureaucratic behavior. After enumerating some of the most common remedies, I will
analyze in more detail two specific mechanisms: the budgetary process and the use of external
markets. I will also consider the intensive use of information technology in furthering
accountability.

As Skowronek (1982) remarks, bureaucracy emerges in the US as a functional response to the

political demands for the development of state capacities and the necessity of providing
uniform responses to social and political demands on the state. Bureaucratic structural
arrangements eventually provided order and uniformity of responses to complex demands to
an extent that courts and political parties could not fully provide any more, promoting
efficiency in routine tasks. Bureaucratic authority, as an ideal type,3 also helped to purge
particularism and patronage (Perrow, 1986: 6), therefore reducing fraud, waste and abuse and
promoting more inclusive organizations.

The standard recipe for controlling corruption is the enactment of bureaucratic systems, but
these bureaucratic formulae proved to be poor performers in many dimensions. The big
problem with Barzelay′s post-bureaucratic paradigm for hyper-corrupt countries is that it
favors a true relaxation of administrative controls, and this may spell disaster in cases where
corruption is rampant.

Three Examples of Ways to Foster Accountability

The Budget

A specific example of rules and regulations created to control bureaucratic behavior is the
budgetary process. Budgets are a means of promoting accountability in the dimension of what
it is spent by a given agency (as opposed to outputs or outcomes). The budgetary process may
come under intensive congressional oversight and scrutiny; in this fashion, the agency remains

3
For its main characteristics, see Weber (1946).

26
accountable in many aspects of its operations, having to justify expenditures, changes in
programs, personnel increases, and so on. In this sense, following Weingast, politicians are
principals and bureaucrats, agents; and this relationship creates an agency loss. But Moe
(1984) shows in an eloquent way that this relationship is by not equivalent that the problem of
ownership and control in private business. Nevertheless, however imperfect, the agency
metaphor is useful and reinforces a tight external control over the budget. This tight control
produces further dysfunctions in the internal dynamics of the agency, due primarily to the
proliferation of rules and norms and the distortion of incentives for bureaucrats. The common
prohibition of rolling over budget surpluses to new fiscal years also creates perverse
incentives. Simon warned about some of these problems in chapter 9 of his seminal book
Administrative Behavior. For a more updated account see DiIulio, ed. (1994).

The budgetary process as a control of bureaucratic behavior also creates dynamic

inefficiencies and makes public organizations less adaptive and creative.4 Some writers argue
for radical changes in the budgeting process,5 while others (generally more experienced
practitioners) take a more cautious approach and warn against “a budget with the flavor of the
month”)6 Solutions to these problems are by no means obvious (again, see DiIulio, op. cit.)
and will probably stay at the heart of public management for a long time.

External Markets

Another essentially different means of controlling bureaucratic behavior is the use external
high-powered incentives (Williamson 1985). Business organizations have several ways of
controlling bureaucratic behavior. The first one is the governance structure that separates
ownership and control and determines a principal agent relationship between the board of
directors and the management. Although imperfect, this mechanism seems to function in a
satisfactory fashion in most cases. Nevertheless, in some specific instances, the board of
directors (“the agent”) may fail to deliver the desired level of performance to the shareholders
(“the principals”) triggering hostile takeovers. In any case, mergers and acquisitions constitute
an effective regulation of bureaucratic behavior. Private firms also have another control

4
See Altshuler and Behn (1997)and Moore (1992).
5
For instance, see the “simple” approach used in pages 161-5 Osborne and Gaebler (1992).

27
mechanism: product market competition. If the bureaucracy creates too much organizational
slack (Cyert and March 1963) then the product or services that it produces may become
unprofitable, forcing the reduction of slack or the shutting down of the business.

State bureaucracies do not enjoy (or suffer) the disciplinary function of the market for
corporate control and bankruptcy procedures. On the other hand, some efforts can be made
for improving competition in the product markets and even for introducing some competition
for managerial control. Competition for managerial control may be re-created through
benchmarking techniques. For instance, regional offices of an agency can be compared and
may compete for resources. The problem is that this enactment of competition-like procedures
is costly and will only work when the good or service delivered is at least to an extent
measurable (consider the difficulties of measuring “education”). Another danger may be the
creation of sub-optimal competition (“rat races”) where agencies compete in the dimension of
cost, regardless of the quality of service (for instance, that may eventually happen with the
devolution of welfare administration to states and also in the case of prison privatization.)

Competition in the product market is, in principle, less difficult to produce. In many
instances, competition for procurement of internal services can be organized in order to reduce
slack.7 Privatization, franchising, the use of bids, public-private partnerships, vouchers and
co-production are other alternatives to control bureaucratic behavior via competition.8 The
globalization of markets and the increasing mobility of people may further enhance the
effective competitive pressures on public organizations.

Information Technology

Essential elements of corruption are organizational failures in providing accountability and

fairness. Fairness and accountability can be assessed in at least three dimensions: horizontal
(every case should be treated alike); vertical (cases that are different in a relevant way should
be treated different); and the idea that rules should be simple. It is virtually impossible to
comply with the three criteria at the same time, so any regime is inherently open to attack on
one of these bases.

6
See Kliman (1996) and Lewis (1988).
7
See, for instance pp. 42-43 of Barzelay (1992)

28
A possible solution for the problem of delivering fairness and accountability may be the use of
information technology: the allowance for greater discretion for public managers can be
balanced by an open access to review by inexpensive technology. Intensive use of data bases,
on-line procurement systems and on time information systems may help not only to empower
managers and employees, but also to hold them accountable in unprecedented ways. Still, the
usefulness of information technology on accountability is yet to be explored, and
technological innovations may change the roles within organizations (Barley, 1990) obscuring
the attribution of responsibilities and thus lowering the accountability of individual public
servants.

Do you Prefer Bureaucracy or Post Bureaucracy? Yes!

In conclusion, the use of Budgets as an overseeing mechanisms is very problematic, but

unlikely to disappear and difficult to reform; the use of external markets and the careful
creation of institutional arrangements that simulate competition is a promising leverage for
controlling undesirable bureaucratic behavior and ubiquitous corruption; the same can be said
about the implementation of information technology systems that promote accountability
while allow for further managerial discretion. Both external markets and information
technology should be used selectively and carefully, because there is not enough evidence
concerning their effectiveness and the conditions under which they are likely to be cost
effective. This should be an area of promising research.

In any case, the set of tools and techniques necessary for modernizing and expanding the
capacity of Argentine public sector organization seem to require a very interesting mix of
bureaucratic and post-bureaucratic solutions. The challenge can be thought of as to achieving
bureaucracy and post-bureaucracy at the same time.

Just as the US bureaucracy emerged from a strong public demand for accountability and for
the control of waste, fraud and abuse, it is likely that the types of solutions to similar demands

8
Osborne and Gaebler, op. cit., pp. 332-342.

29
in Argentina will require comparable responses. The establishment of a well paid body of
public servants that have relevant expertise on relevant areas of public administration is
absolutely indispensable. (This involves both overhauling rules and regulations that impede
rational human resources decisions in government, and to decrease the reliance on external
consultants that conform parallel bureaucracies that are unaccountable to the public at large).
The design of clear rules and lines of accountability is also necessary. In short, it is necessary
to fully establish the basic institutional arrangement that characterize the organizational form
known as bureaucracy. Bureaucratic structures and procedures can go a long way in
controlling corruption.

On the other hand, the mere reproduction of a rigid Weberian bureaucracy will not constitute
an adequate response to the enormous challenges that the Argentine public sector faces. In is
necessary profit form the development of post bureaucratic perspectives that stress flexibility,
entrepreneurialism, and service delivery. These developments are clearly post bureaucratic.
The same can be said about the increased use of markets, public-private partnerships, and
information technologies.

This approach that combines bureaucracy and post bureaucracy may rely in a more
entrepreneurial and strategic conception of public managers. Such a conception would
increase discretionary decisions by public managers, decreasing the absurd numbers of rules
and regulations that current managers have to face, while at the same time would increase the
quality of the fewer controls that remain. The motto for such reform would be: “less rules, but
more accountability.” It would embody a completely new agenda for public management.

30
Public Management in Argentina: Towards An Agenda

Fine Tuning Roles and Limits of Government

The normative debate concerning what should be the role and limits of the state in Argentina
seems to have much narrower boundaries than in the past. Widespread privatization and
deregulation, and the combined effect of an assault on the welfare state by powerful
corporatist interests, have caused a radical redefinition of the role of government, especially at
the national (federal) level. Both public opinion and elites seem to favor a role for
government that is more limited than in the past. The days of bitter antagonism between left
and right concerning whether the welfare state should be maintained, enhanced, or
permanently abolished, seem to be gone, at least for now.

What is left is a much more refined and bounded conversation about the exact role and limits
that the government should have in order to serve society well. This debate about the fine
tuning of the role and limits of government is interesting for the limits of this paper because it
may interfere with the management of public organizations. In other words, the debate about
what should be done can not be completely separated from the debate about how it should be
done. For instance, a conception of the state that is completely minimalist and that is based on
a view that markets work best in most situations, will dictate a significant reliance on markets
mechanisms for the delivery of goods and services financed by the government. A conception
that values the democratic process and relies more on rights and duties may inform a view that
will stress that fairness of process and a more limited role for market mechanisms.

Some of the functional areas of government that are to an extent being fine-tuned are the
following:

• Health. Should government guarantee a higher level of health care? How can we
eliminate inefficiencies such a double payment system?

31
• Education. Should we use charter schools? What about vouchers? What about means-
testing free public universities? Etc.
• Security. There is great concern about public safety, police reform, and the possible use of
other armed forces to complement police departments in the fight against crime. The new
role of the armed forces after the cold war is also a continuous question mark.
• Property rights enforcement, judiciary system.
• Public goods. Currency. Environment.
• Poverty and income distribution.
• Regulation (utilities, antitrust, environment).
• Industrial policy. Consider the debates about the role of government in supporting small
and medium sized enterprises, the debate about the automobile regime, etc.

This short “laundry list” of functional areas is meant to stress two things. First, there is still an
important debate concerning the exact nature that the state in Argentina should have. Second,
the nature of the solution that the polity will dictate will, to an extent, embody a mandate
about the way public organizations should be managed. If the vision about the world is that
markets are full of imperfections and that government should be supervise markets constantly,
then it is incoherent to use management tools that assume that an increase in use market and
quasi-market mechanisms for administrative purposes are the way to go.

Managing the Process and the Fallacy of Policy-Implementation Dichotomy

Even taking the role of government as given, there are several issues that are important to the
policy making and policy implementation processes. Some of these issues are related to the
processes themselves, because the precise qualities of the policy making and implementation
processes determine important attributes of the goods and services produced.

The first issue is whether implementation can be practically or conceptually separated in a neat
fashion from policy making. This issue has proved to be contentious over time and in very
different countries. Although the debate has a life of its own and can not by any means be
solved (or even fairly summarized) here, I will introduce some preliminary considerations
because it will be relevant in the next years in Argentina.

32
The original conception of the North American bureaucracy was strongly influenced by an
article by Woodrow Wilson (1887). In this seminal paper, Wilson envisioned a neat
separation between the functions of policy making and administration. To put in crudely,
policy making was thought to be a high level process of policy formulation, where to polity
would formulate specific policies for specific problems. This process was envisioned as being
inherently political, and both democratic and cerebral, in the sense that most thinking was to
be done at this level. Administration was, in this vision, the realm of a highly trained
bureaucracy that was (and should be) isolated from political pressures. Administration was
the realm of apolitical public servants that were supposed to abide by a reasonably clear
mandate and implement policy in a highly efficient way. The American tradition of public
administration was shaped along these lines.

Now, the section about Accountability, Efficiency and Imperfect Mandates made clear that
actual political mandates are far from being unambiguous, and in most cases is contradictory
and inherently problematic. Once the mandate is recognized as being ambiguous, problematic
and contradictory, then the neat separation between policy making and implementation cannot
be separated in a neat fashion. Even as early as in the late sixties, Frederick C. Mosher (1968)
stated that “developments in recent decades in the ‘real world’ of governments have brought to
the policy-administration dichotomy strains which have grown almost beyond the point of
toleration.”

Another problem of the policy-implementation separation is that it tends to divide between

thinking and doing. This division has proved to be problematic in the strategic management of
private sector, business organizations (see for instance Minzberg et al. 1998). In the public
sector matters are even more complicated, because government has no bottom line, and
therefore it is very difficult to be extremely concrete about the types of outcomes desired on
the first place. The implementation process is also more difficult in the public sector because
of its particular characteristics that make the process very important on its own sake. For
instance, in a democratic society, the process of implementation may be required to follow
certain rules concerning the participation of civil society or organized groups. Due process

33
and fairness are also extremely important qualities of the process. So this division between
thinking and doing, already problematic in the management of business organizations,
becomes extremely questionable in the public realm.

It is also true that even if it were desirable to produce a neat division between policy making
and administration, it may be extremely difficult to write a specific contractual arrangement to
govern the interface between the two functions. Furthermore, it were so easy to write a
contract, why shouldn’t we just outsource and privatize this activity? Indeed, recent
developments in contract theory suggest that certain properties of the goods to be produced
(such as “quality”) produce problems in the contractual arrangement that undermine the
argument in favor of high-powered incentive schemes.9

In the case of the well-known administrative reforms in New Zealand, the initial sharp
separation between policy and administration was eroded as time passed by, and a more
realistic view took its place. The main idea was that there is a large gray area where
administration and politics intersect, and a dialogue between parts is necessary (Matheson
1998).

So much for the policy-administration dichotomy. What are other of these process issues that
are important in policy making and administration? Again, the universe of factors is large, but
I will suggest a couple, in order to convince the reader of the importance of the process itself.

First, take the issue of corruption. Corruption is to a large extent an issue both policy making
and implementation being influenced by unauthorized parties. Corruption can of course be
situated at the level of policy making by the outright bribery of policy makers. But the
implementation process can also be subject to corruption. The literature on corruption is
remarkably dispersed; this lack of focus can be partly explained by the difficulty to define and
agree on the limits or the term. Klitgaard (1988) presents an excellent overview of the subject
of corruption. The publication in 1977 of the seminal book, Corruption: A Study in Political

9
See for instance Holmstrom y Milgrom (1991) and Hart, Shleifer y Vishny (1996).

34
Economy, by Susan Rose-Ackerman, was an important step in the application of economic
tools to the analysis of different types of corruption. Ades and Di Tella (1995) review the
literature on the economics of corruption with particular reference to the recent empirical
contributions based on subjective indices. One of the most remarkable achievements, in my
opinion, was made by Mauro (1995), who performed the first systematic cross-country
empirical analysis that relates indicators of bureaucratic honesty and efficiency to economic
growth. He found that corruption lowers economic growth, even controlling for related
factors.

Anecdotal evidence and perception indexes10 both suggest that Argentina suffers from a
serious corruption problem. As we have seen in the section Bureaucratic vs. Post
Bureaucratic Paradigms with Comments About Corruption, the issue of corruption is difficult
to tackle from an administrative perspective. In any case, if the goal is to produce
organizations that have processes of desirable qualities, it is essential to face the issue of
corruption with great vigor in order to improve the equity and efficiency of governmental
organizations.

Another important process issue is the role of civil society and interest groups. It is only
natural to be ex ante in favor of the participation of civil society in policy and implementation,
but to caution against lobbying by private self interested pressure groups.11 But the distinction
between civil society though non profit organizations, and the representation of self interest
groups (functional groups or other) is extremely difficult in a pluralist society. In any case, the
policy making and implementation process improves its quality by a healthy dialogue between
different actors, and external actors can bring an important quota of information and substance
to the table. The challenge is to extract these benefits without allowing the capture of policy
domains by organized interests. Again, this process issue will have to be improved in
Argentine democracy.

10
Such as the one prepared by Business International, a part of The Economist Intelligence Unit, or the one
compiled by the organization Transparency International.
11
Some names associated with research on interest group pressure and lobbying are Mancur Olson, Peltzman,
Tullock, Buchanan, Tollison, Ekelund, Gary Becker, Dendau, Munger, Austen-Smith, Wright, Baumgartner and
Leech.

35
Recent debates about a possible law about the regulation of lobbying activities in Congress
indicate certain awareness of the problem. In the same token, civil society in beginning to
have a prominent role in the control of corruption and in the informal overseeing of the
political process; for instance Transparency International (through Poder Ciudadano, its local
chapter) is playing an important role in making political actors more accountable to society.

Towards an Actor-Centered Approach

The overwhelming majority of studies about public organizations in Argentina are currently
around what I called the structure-based approach. While I by no means question the
usefulness of the general approach or the specific examples of it, I would argue for an equally
vigorous line of research that centers mainly on the public manager as the main actor.

This focus on the public manager would translate into more research on issues like decision
making in the public sector, main characteristics of effective managers, and the development
of managerial doctrines that are both good descriptors of effective managers and useful
frameworks for real life public administrators.

Another element that is absolutely necessary is the development of case studies that illustrate
important administrative situations and decisions. Having an important stock of cases that
reflect the local context and idiosyncrasies of Argentine society will help both teaching and
research. From a research perspective, the case study provides thick narratives that inform the
development and encourage the falsification of theories.

Current public managers do not have well articulated theories that inform heir actions.
Instead, they seem to adapt a hodgepodge of ideas from related disciplines and from popular
business management books. Business administration books may be useful, but are not
adequate as the main source of ideas for public managers. More case studies will encourage
the development and dissemination of theories that are more suitable to Argentine public
management.

36
From a teaching perspective, the availability of an important stock of case studies enables
relevant class discussion in graduate degrees in public management and similar environments.
Case studies have proven to be an extremely important tool for MBAs; the same can be said
for master’s degrees in public administration and public policy. The main reason seems to be
that by reviewing different cases, students train their “decision-making muscles” and learn to
perfect the strategic quality of decisions that they will make in the future. The actor-centered
approach and the case study method have tremendous complementarities.

Of course, as I wrote before, a systems approach is still necessary since many public sector
problems indeed need a complete overhaul that can only be performed by a reforms informed
by some sort of systems approach. The systems approach seems to be also useful in the design
of incentive structures that foster efficiency, accountability and innovation.

In short, the main task is to complement a new, less perverse, incentive structure, with a new
strategic conception of public office. This new strategic conception of public office should
emphasize the particular set of values appropriate for public sectors, and should also elicit a
more proactive conception of public managers, in contrast with the traditional, passive view of
public administrators as mere implementators of policies and programs.

37
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