Contenu du sommaire : Le management public.

Administrative science — public management analysis of public policies. Outlining an interpretation of how the main types of administration analysis and their interrelationship have evolved, the author sets out to define the nature of the organizational revolution of which public management is an essential part, as against the institutional tradition of administrative science. An assessment of the limits of this revolution leads to query whether the analysis of public policies does not open up a third avenue, next to the two first-mentioned procedures, of analysis and action upon the administrative phenomenon.

Productivity and program evaluation in the United-States. A growing need has made itself felt over the past years within US administration for accounting for administrative action, leading to a ‘productionist movement', based upon two main ideas : the development of a precise and usable evaluation of the output and productivity of organizations and that of a method by which it would be possible to translate evaluation findings into reliable and adequate data on current programs with a view to spelling out organizational objectives and achieving relevant results.

Paradoxical issues of public management. Public management having reached a certain apex by now, one may query whether there will remain a lasting impact upon the process of public administration, particularly in the face of quite a series of paradoxical issues which have arisen in this context. There is flrst of all the paradox of the French public sector's development without a parallel growth in public management ; another paradox lies in the very definition of public management ; ail these issues find a concrete illustration in the case of nationalizations.

Legal and managerial rationale in the french administration. If one follows the statements of higher French civil servants, one is led to believe that the French administration is completely given over to management and its logics. However, even though such statements reveal quite a change in approach and valuation within the upper ranks of civil servants, the fact remains that the traditional administrative model still prevails, the machinery being caught between two conflicting rationalities, one legal, the other managerial, which oppose each other (cf. lst part : the conflicting rationale), while they also combine in practice (cf. part 2 : the interweaving rationale).

Management and cultural discrepancies. With a European-style managerial System, African companies do not reach corresponding performance levels. Among the many reasons therefore, cultural factors cannot be denied. Indeed, what accounts for the lower yield of techniques and their poor image or infrequent use in strategies is the different mental and moral background of users as against that of those who created them to their image and likeness. Such a différence is not to be viewed as either a gap or backwardness, but rather originates from the socio-cultural idiosyncracy of the African countries whose organizations cannot work according to alien raies, which are therefore inappropriate.