LEARN TO LEAD - Civil Air Patrol

secretaries, while private managers have a longer tenureboth in the same position and in the same enterprise. Arecognized element of private business management isthe responsibility to train a successor or several possiblecandidates, [whereas] the concept is largely alien to publicmanagement, since fostering a successor is perceivedto be dangerous.3. Measurement of Performance. There is little if anyagreement on the standards and measurement of performanceto appraise a government manager, while varioustests of performance – financial return, market share,performance measures for executive compensation – arewell established in private business and often made explicitfor a particular managerial position during a specificperiod ahead.4. Personnel Constraints. In government there are twolayers of managerial officials that are at times hostile toone another: the civil service (or now the executive system)and the political appointees. Unionization of governmentemployees exists among relatively high-levelpersonnel in the hierarchy and includes a number of supervisorypersonnel. Civil service, union contract provisions,and other regulations complicate the recruitment,hiring, transfer, and layoff or discharge of personnel toachieve managerial objectives or preferences. By comparison,private business managements have considerablygreater latitude, even under collective bargaining, in themanagement of subordinates. They have much more authorityto direct the employees of their organization. Governmentpersonnel policy and administration are moreunder the control of staff (including civil service staff outsidean agency) compared to the private sector in whichpersonnel are much more subject to line responsibility.5. Equity and Efficiency. In governmental managementgreat emphasis tends to be placed on providing equityamong different constituencies, while in private businessmanagement relatively greater stress is placed upon efficiencyand competitive performance.6. Public Processes versus Private Processes. Governmentalmanagement tends to be exposed to publicscrutiny and to be more open, while private businessmanagement is more private and its processes more internaland less exposed to public review.7. Role of Press and Media. Governmental managementmust contend regularly with the press and media; its decisionsare often anticipated by the press. Private decisionsare less often reported in the press, and the presshas a much smaller impact on the substance and timing ofdecisions.8. Persuasion and Direction. In government, managersoften seek to mediate decisions in response to a wide varietyof pressures and must often put together a coalitionof inside and outside groups to survive. By contrast, privatemanagement process much more by direction or theissuance of orders to subordinates by superior managerswith little risk of contradiction. Governmental managerstend to regard themselves as responsive to many superiors,while private managers look more to one higher authority.9. Legislative and Judicial Impact. Governmental managersare often subject to close scrutiny by legislativeoversight groups or even judicial orders in ways that arequite uncommon in private business management. Suchscrutiny often materially constrains executive and administrativefreedom to act.10. Bottom Line. Governmental managers rarely have aclear bottom line, while that of a private business manageris profit, market performance, and survival.The Public Administration Review’s major reviewarticle comparing public and private organizations, [byRainey, Backoff and Levine,] attempts to summarize themajor points of consensus in the literature on similaritiesand differences among public and private organizations. 10Third, Richard E. Neustadt, in a fashion close to Dunlop’s,notes six major differences between Presidents ofthe United States and Chief Executive Officers of majorcorporations. 111. Time Horizon. The private chief begins by lookingforward a decade, or thereabouts, his likely span barringextraordinary troubles. The first term president looks forwardfour years at most, with the fourth (and now eventhe third) year dominated by campaigning for reelection(what second-termers look toward we scarcely know,having seen but one such term completed in the pastquarter century).2. Authority over the Enterprise. Subject to concurrencefrom the Board of Directors which appointed andcan fire him, the private executive sets organization goals,shifts structures, procedures, and personnel to suit, monitorsresults, reviews key operations decisions, deals withkey outsiders, and brings along his Board. Save for thedeep but narrow sphere of military movements, a president’sauthority in these respects is shared with wellplacedmembers of Congress (or their staffs): case bycase, they may have more explicit authority that he does(contrast authorizations and appropriations with the“take-care” clause). As for “bringing along the Board,”neither the congressmen with whom he shares power northe primary and general electorates which “hired” himhave either a Board’s duties or a broad view of the enterpriseprecisely matching his.73