Leadership in the Shared World
Public and nonprofit sector leaders must satisfy a variety of external constituencies while maintaining supportive internal organizational norms and values. Kee and Newcomer (2008) articulate that leaders must be able to pursue organizational transformation effectively while protecting core public and nonprofit values (Kee & Newcomer, 2008). While leaders may be blamed for market and government failure, the concern for public interest must capture existing policy and official expressions. Leadership should, therefore, be conceived, as a response to the accountability issues appear to be an important concern in the field of public administration (Goldfinch & Wallis, 2009).
Goldfinch and Wallis (2009) argue that in a world where shared power is more effective than individual power, the tasks of leadership must be widely shared (Goldfinch & Wallis, 2009). People will pass into and out of leadership roles hence, a person may be a leader on the one issue and a follower on others. Leadership in a shared world requires collaborative decision making, brokering deals and bridging resources. Leaders in public and private organizations should be able to unilaterally marshal people and material resources within their organizations to meet exigent circumstances.
Significant Assignments
Bridging the public and private sector was a significant assignment for this term. This is because it gave insights on how to build partnerships with public and private organizations and citizens. According to Raffel , Leisink and Middlebrooks (2009), this was a significant assignment, because it involves bridging the best practices from the private sector into government or contracting-out government service delivery to private and non-profit organizations.
Strategic planning in the public and non-profit sector enables individuals to understand how to manage for quality using long-term strategic planning with support from top leadership (Raffel, Leisink & Middlebrooks, 2009). Strategic planning in both private and public sector helps stakeholders to enhance their skills for measuring performance by establishing goals and measuring results, justifying and allocating necessary resource requirements and developing organizational improvement strategies.
The assignment on strategic planning in non-profit organizations was critical because it has become more important than ever, mostly due to changes in the environment of this sector and the need to promote shared agreement on the mission and vision of nonprofit organizations (Ahmed, 2012). Continuous quality improvement plays a major role to the livelihood and survival of the entire organization. Ahmed (2012) says that organizations should use continuous quality improvement as a benchmark for measuring continued success in resource utilization. This concept keeps organizations whether public or private in line with their strategic plans. Ahmed (2012) emphasizes that continuous quality improvement cuts across all stakeholders and ensures effectiveness in execution of responsibilities (Ahmed, 2012).
Skills Learned
All the topics in this term have enhanced my skills in public and private sector management. This is because contrary to the past decade views that new public management was promoting risky, reckless individual oriented behavior by managers and leaders, the view have changed. Instead the studies in strategic management, fiscal management, continuous quality improvement, bridging the private and public sectors has enabled scholars to appreciate that leaders and managers can do the right thing and bypass bureaucracy to implement more efficient and effective governance(Raffel,Leisink & Middlebrooks, 2009).
Another important skill learned in this term is that public and nonprofit agencies often provide services that are not profitable and are for the citizens and clients who need special attention. Pynes (2008) argues that the monitoring, evaluation and continuous quality improvement approaches to evaluating performance should encompass measures such as public satisfaction, employee satisfaction, in addition to relevant financial measures. Pynes (2008) further argues that evaluation system should be developed to support quality and productivity improvements (Pynes, 2008).
In conclusion, McKinney (2004) says that fiscal management in both public and nonprofit should establish general guidelines and standards to ensure that funds are spent honestly and wisely to achieve publicly determined purposes (McKinney, 2004).. This was an important skill learnt in the term because fiscal management provides organizational structures and controls to effectively carry out fiscal duties and responsibilities. All the skills learnt throughout this course in the period are fundamental in the management and teach smooth running of public and private organization.
