Why are managers in the public and private sectors treated so differently? The former are talked about in terms of layers – all too many layers, they are a drain on precious resources, they are paid too much, they get in the way of the ‘real’ workers, and they are to be blamed for the many things that go wrong in the public sector. The latter are referred to as entrepreneurs, leaders of industry, who must be paid a lot if they are to be attracted to take on any job, they are worth every penny because they have to take tough decisions, and make money for their company.
But isn’t this all a mirage to give the impression that the private sector is somehow superior to the public sector? Think about it.
At the most basic level, all organisations – private or public – need managers, otherwise there would be no overall planning, no coordination, no strategic adjustment in response to disparate feedback. Too many layers of command and control would – again in the private or public sector – be counter-productive, but lack of management support means that operational staff have to set aside time to do the planning and coordination, only less well because they can neither focus on organising everyone else nor concentrate on carrying out their own work.
As for pay, managers in the public sector are generally paid less well than their counterparts in the private sector. Some try to argue that this must be down to public sector managers not being ‘good enough’ to get private sector jobs, or they simply haven’t got the ‘go-getter’ mentality to work for businesses. This trite observation overlooks two factors. Firstly, pay structures in the public sector are on the whole bound by a greater degree of equity, and both the gaps in pay across the different ranks and comparable rates of pay increase are kept in check. In the private sector, the higher one goes in the management chain, the more one tends to be able to secure much higher pay and pay rises than people lower down. Secondly, and this might be difficult for people who can think of little beyond monetary self-interest to understand, there are many people who are motivated by the ethos of public service, and do not consider salary level the be-all-and-end-all in career planning.
Leaving aside the fact that private sector managers may play only a minor part in their company’s profit-making (which could be mostly down to the hard work of operational staff who get just a tiny share of it), or barely breaking even, it should be noted that their public sector counterparts have to deal with pressures that are of a whole different order.
Public administrators – responsible for policy development, strategic planning, service delivery – have to constantly balance competing demands and interests. There is no such thing as ‘this is not our business’ because everything in the public domain connects with each other, and the politicians in charge rightly want to address any issue that is impacted by the activity any public administrator is handling. Different people have different views and expectations; housing decisions affect community safety; environmental arrangements affect public health; and one has to strike a sensitive and effective balance if one is not to end up upsetting everyone.
In the private sector, good management can generate higher revenue and thus more resources to do one’s work. In the public sector, good management can improve services which lead to higher demands with no corresponding increase in funding, and one has to come up with constant innovations as well as the good old ‘efficiency’ cuts to keep things going.
Finally, there is the public accountability and intense scrutiny that places public administrators directly under the microscope of political oversight. There is no hiding behind commercial confidentiality, a manager working for a government body has to be prepared to answer questions – raised in any quarters – about any aspect of their work.
There are public-spirited managers in the private sector who have made a move to the public sector, but some have moved back to the business world not because of pay, but because managing in the public domain – for those who have never experienced it – is surprisingly challenging.
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