Public and Private Management: What’s the Difference?

Abstract

Critics of New Public Management argue that differences between public and private organizations are so great that business practices should not be transferred to the public sector. In this paper the theoretical arguments on the differences between private firms and public agencies are reviewed, and 13 hypotheses are identified on the impact of publicness on organizational environments, goals, structures and managerial values. Evidence from 34 empirical studies of differences between public agencies and private firms is critically evaluated. Only three of the publicness hypotheses are supported by a majority of the empirical studies: public organizations are more bureaucratic, and public managers are less materialistic and have weaker organizational commitment than their private sector counterparts. However, most of the statistical evidence is derived from studies that use narrow measures of publicness and fail to control for other relevant explanatory variables. Whether the existing evidence understates or overstates the distinctiveness of public agencies is therefore unclear. A research agenda and methods are identified for better comparisons of management in public and private organizations.

Are public officials really less satisfied than private sector workers?A comparative study in Brazil

“…This study's main contribution is adding to the public-private comparison literature by including non-American data and overcoming the problems of temporal bias, lack of diversity, and respondent bias (Boyne, 2002). This study has expanded the Brazilian literature significantly by providing results based on data from Brazilian public and private sectors and by accounting for cultural specificities.…”

“…This study seeks to contribute to the public-private distinction literature by overcoming some limitations of previous research as pointed out by Boyne (2002) and Rainey and Bozeman (2000). The authors argue that response bias, low response rates, selection effects, weak internal validity, and social desirability responses reduce previous findings' representativeness.…”

“…Boyne's (2002) evaluation on 34 quantitative studies, suggests that public management is characterized by more bureaucracy, a stronger desire to promote public welfare, and lower organizational commitment. Rainey and Bozeman's (2000) review on two decades of empirical research comparing public and private organizations, draws attention to this a priori assumption -private organizations do better that public ones-may lead to a biased conclusion.…”

Public and Private Organizations: How Different or Similar are They

“…The similarities and differences between the public and private sectors have frequently been debated over in the literature on public administration, politics and economics (Boyne, 2002). Works of many scholars have confirmed that both public and private organizations differ in some obvious ways (Rainey, 2009).…”

“…Works of many scholars have confirmed that both public and private organizations differ in some obvious ways (Rainey, 2009). At the same time, some scholars hold the opinion that every organization, either public or private, is similar in some important respects (Murry, 1975, Boyne, 2002. Although many different interpretations and perceptions have been attained, a clear understanding of public and private organizations is yet to be established (Fottler, 1981).…”