The role of private
Sector in a developing country
There is no
denying the fact that from the time of 1980, there has been poke around for a
new loom to private sector organization to deal with the alleged shortcomings
of the old bureaucratic model. This new approach emanates from an overall
crisis of confidence in the Owners of Private Sector Development, ranging from
the claim to ‘roll back the state’ to the ‘reinvention’ of the Owners of
Private Sector Development. It culminates in the emergence of a variety of
innovations in managerial approach in the private sector that are ‘dominating
the bureaucratic reform agenda’ in the 1980s and 1990s; and that demonstrates a
dramatic change of approach in how the private sector operates. The rigid,
hierarchical, bureaucratic form of private administration, which has
predominated for most of the twentieth century, is changing to a flexible,
market–based form of private management. The following concepts are vitally
important in this regard:
·
Constant increase in efficiency
·
Use of ‘ever-more-sophisticated’ technologies
·
A labour force disciplined to productivity
·
Clear implementation of the professional
management role
·
Managers being given the right to manage
Moreover, the
materialization of private sector is seen and promulgated by some as somehow
against the traditions of the private service, inimical to service delivery and
somehow undemocratic, even with dubious theoretical backing (ibid. Hughes
further argues that particularly from a private administration tradition the
good parts of the old model – high ethical standards, service to the state –
are being cast aside in the headlong rush to adopt the new theory. The Private
Sector Development, as introduced by Hood (1991), strongly advocates in favour
of the private sector management style in running the private sector. His seven
doctrines models on how ‘Private Sector Development’ should work are:
·
Hands on professional management in the private
sector
·
Explicit standards and measures of performance
·
Greater
emphasis on output controls
·
Disaggregating of units in the private sector
·
Greater competition in the private sector (to
this may be added actual privatisation)
·
Private sector styles of management
·
Greater discipline and parsimony in resource use
In this
context, Hood, a renowned economist has been criticised for his oversimplified
private-private sector equivalence and more decisively, for the very
undeviating input-output dealings.
In view of the above
discussion, it is evident that in view of the most part entrepreneurial Owners
of Private Sector Developments promote competition between service providers.
They empower citizens by pushing control out of the bureaucracy, into the
community. They measure the performance of their agencies, focusing not on
inputs but on outcomes. They are driven by their goals - their missions - not
by their rules and regulations. They redefine their clients as customers and
offer them choices - between schools, between training programs, between
housing options. They prevent problems before they emerge, rather than simply
offering services afterward. They put their energies into earning money, not
simply spending it. They decentralize authority, embracing participatory
management. They prefer market mechanisms to bureaucratic mechanisms. And they
focus not simply on providing private services, but on catalyzing all sectors -
private, private, and voluntary - into action to solve their community’s
problems. Private sector should work sincerely to promote new products in order
to enjoy the economies of scale in course of time so the economic stability of
country can be established under strong framework of National Income based on
aggregate demate virtually.