Public management is a term that considers that government and non-profit administration resembles private-sector management in some important ways. As such, there are management tools appropriate in public and in private domains, tools that maximize efficiency and effectiveness. This contrasts with the study of public administration, which emphasizes the social and cultural drivers of government that many contend (e.g. Graham T. Allison and Charles Goodsell) make it different from the private sector.
Studying and teaching about public management are widely practiced in developed nations. Such credentials as the Master of Public Administration degree offer training in decision making relevant to the public good using public infrastructure.
The public manager will deal with critical infrastructure that directly and obviously affects quality of life. Trust in public managers, and the large sums spent at their behest, make them subject to many more conflict of interest and ethics guidelines in most nations.
Read more about Public Management: Organizations
Famous quotes containing the words public and/or management:
“Many older wealthy families have learned to instill a sense of public service in their offspring. But newly affluent middle-class parents have not acquired this skill. We are using our children as symbols of leisure-class standing without building in safeguards against an overweening sense of entitlement—a sense of entitlement that may incline some young people more toward the good life than toward the hard work that, for most of us, makes the good life possible.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“No officer should be required or permitted to take part in the management of political organizations, caucuses, conventions, or election campaigns. Their right to vote and to express their views on public questions, either orally or through the press, is not denied, provided it does not interfere with the discharge of their official duties. No assessment for political purposes on officers or subordinates should be allowed.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)