Contenu du sommaire : Gestion publique, gestion privée

Organizational Change : The Crisis in the Administration. The administration is in crisis. It is a financial and decisional crisis, as well as one of confidence, which can be explained by the difficulties involved in the passage to a post-industrial society. The old System, based on hierarchy, distance and secrecy, is no longer suitable. The administration should take inspiration from the principles of simplicity, autonomy of operational units, and government through culture, as has been applied in some companies. Preparation for decision-making, evaluation of results and use of human resources should be taken into consideration. Above all, investment should be made in knowledge, the major impetus to action.

An Engineer's Point of View on Organization Management. To manage means to evaluate the past and decide for the future. An economic agent bases choices on a small number of criteria, preferably statistical. He organizes them logically because he feels himself to be judged ; he is judged according to the technical nature of his work. The economic actor works within a four-fold framework : materials, persons, institutions and the sacred. Crises resuit from discrepancies which appear between these levels and are manifested by confrontations between three logically incompatible agents : manufacturers, salespersons, and financiers. These imbalances have increased because the work is evolving more and more rapidly.

Managing Innovation -A General Model. Public Agencies are frequently characterised as being unresponsive and lack a capacity to innovate. However there are non intrinsic reasons why public agencies cannot behave in an innovative fashion. The article looks at some general lessons from the private sector which may provide public sector managers with an insight into how to engage in a systematic search for an innovative approach. To ensure successful innovation it is not enough to set up favourable organizational cultures, create ‘champions' and provide resources. Policy-makers must in addition to other factors pay attention to the vehicule for creating the innovation.

Private or Public Decision-maker : The Same Struggle or the Reflections of a Chameleon. There are striking similarities between public and private decision-makers : solitude, intrusion of the professional into private life, the entry of such concepts as management, strategy, compétition, marketing, and communication into praxis, or at least into discourse, as well as new technologies to be assimilated. Beyond statute, salary and career related differences, public decision-makers can be differentiated from private decision-makers by their lack of stability and difflculty in evaluating their actions. These differences can be avoided, however, and mobility between the two sectors should be increased.

Investment in Public Sector Enterprises. Public investment policies have changed considerably since the 1960s. From 1982 to 1985, they moved from largescale capital investment programs to a policy of sustained investment, due to the allocation of considerable Financial resources to the public sector. Do investment strategies for public enterprises adhere to a logic fundamentally different from those of the private sector ? The author of this article says no, emphasizing the autonomous management of public enterprises and the internationalization of their acti vides.

Decision-making process during strategie investment and divestment decisions. Empirical research is scarce to answer the concerns of governments, unions and public opinion at large, concerning how multinationals make decisions to restructure their international strategic portfolio or close plants overseas to ensure long-run competitiveness. Based on three in-depth analyses of different types of restructuring decisions, the author concludes that the foreign subsidiaries seem to carry most of the decision-making effort for their own plant closures, while for strategie portfolio readjustments during which they change owners, they are not consulted.

Human Resource Management in the Large Public and Private Organizations. In the large private as well as public organizations, the director of the future must be an ‘internationalist', a good communicator, have a deep ethical sense, know how to motivate associates and master management techniques. Adapting human resource management to these demands requires, in particular, the diversification of recruitment, considerable development of continuing education, introduction of a System of assessment and career paths, and the drawing up of replacement lists for preparing promotions.

Modernizing Public Sector Human Resource Management. Human resource management should confront the same challenges and adopt the same techniques in the public sector as in the private sector. However, the administration dealing with management changes is ten years behind the times and must find original methods for success. The top executives in the public service should, in particular, acquire field experience and exchange their know-how with private sector managers. Agent motivation involves improved working conditions and increasing the responsibility of operational units. Relations with social partners should be diversifled and decentralized. Finally, the roles and duties of personal management must be oriented towards coordination, support and animation.

Management Control in Companies and the Administration. An essential function in companies, management control has no institutional existence in the administration. In the absence of such a mode of control, it is more concerned with economizing than efficacity (the measure of results), and is, above ail, unconcemed with efficiency (the relation between resources and results). The introduction of management control in the administration, which would require substantial reassessment of its modes of operation, is an indispensable condition for modernizing the public service.

The Client, the User and the Civil Servant -Modernization Policy and the French Model of Public Service. The French public service underwent a deep transformation during the last decade, influenced by various factors : reduced purchasing power of the agents, increased politicization, break with the model of social advancement, ideological rapprochement with the private sector. The administrative modernization policy, which favors the administration's role as a service provider to that of a producer of standards, has only brought about a partial and unsatisfactory response to this development. Above ail, it rephrases the question of the role played by public action in new terms, in particular the relation between the Government and society.