Archives - Page 12
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Training in public administration
No. 9 (1985)Professional training in public administration has become one of the efforts in the field of human resources that should be undertaken in Central America with greater commitment and vision for the future. This need is more palpable at the higher levels of public service, due both to the greater knowledge and skills demanded by the growing complexity and technification of the state administrative apparatus, and to the greater degree of participation of officials at those levels in the formulation and implementation of government policies and programs.
This need is heightened by more complex issues arising from the current situation, which pose greater challenges to the administrative apparatus in terms of its capacity for timely and effective response to the complex economic and social problems it must solve. These problems cannot and should not be faced in an improvised manner; they must have the technical-administrative knowledge and management skills to find and implement the appropriate measures to solve them.
Suffice it to mention in this regard, the need to efficiently manage a growing volume of governmental tasks under the impact of an acute economic crisis, which leads to the reduction of public expenditure: as well as the need to introduce in bureaucratic processes and behaviors the changes required by the advancement and strengthening of democratization processes, in pursuit of a fairer and more balanced development.
Public administrators must be equipped not only with greater technical knowledge and managerial skills, but also with a broader understanding of the nature and implications of the various problems affecting society, so that they acquire the necessary sensitivity to understand the social significance of the performance of their responsibilities, in the light of the government's commitment to provide solutions to problems.
Therefore, it is not only an effort to increase the number of civil servants with professional training in public administration. There is also an aspect of the quality of the professional who must be trained to be able to face not only the technical issues of public administration, but also the conflictive challenge of finding adequate solutions to the substantive problems that the administrative apparatus must attack, particularly those that have the greatest impact on the deterioration of the living conditions of large sectors of the population.
It is then about the formation of a public administrator with the knowledge, skills and qualities demanded by the political, social and economic progress of Central American societies.
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Human resources management
No. 8 (1985)The public service as an institution is the part of the community that specializes in the execution of policies for the achievement of public objectives. To this end, the human element constitutes the essential resource and its management influences and conditions the character of the public service.
Despite its importance, human resources management, as a field of functional specialization, is relatively new. It emerged as personnel administration and its beginnings date back to just before the First World War. In its development, the field of human resources and personnel has relied heavily on the contributions of other disciplines, most notably the contributions of the social sciences, especially psychology and economics, which have greatly influenced human resources management.
The current circumstances of the work process and the complexity of public agencies demand from human resources management the integration of these to the organization in which they work, combining the progress of the institution towards its objectives and the realization of the social function, with the quality and efficiency of the personnel. This management requires the creation of an adequate and stimulating organizational climate within the organization, factors that go beyond the traditional activities of Personnel Administration.
Efforts to integrate personnel in an organization are made from different angles and with different objectives, however in all of them a common denominator appears: the convergence between the institutional objectives and the work of qualified personnel for each of the functions; the assignment of this personnel must be flexible, that is to say that it can advance with the socioeconomic dynamics that sooner or later drags the organizations towards changes.
Thus, many changes have occurred in the climate in which the human resources management function operates. These changes, together with the development of the corresponding theories and techniques, have modified the structure and qualification of personnel in human resources units. In an effort in this sense, the State has increasingly intervened to reform civil service regimes in order to increase productivity through training and education programs. On the other hand, the human resources management process has undergone some variations, such as the sharing of personnel functions between substantive units and personnel units, allowing the former to operate more independently.
Despite these efforts, the problems affecting human resources management have not been overcome and the personnel "crisis" consumes too much of management's time; too often personnel management is concerned almost exclusively with the strict supervision of employees' activities, neglecting the establishment of conditions under which maximum self-direction can be acquired.
It is in this sense of self-direction that human resource management calls for the integration of personnel under different perspectives: a) promoting conditions that contribute to trust in human resources, b) generating the participation of personnel in tasks of identification and/or definition of public policies; c) articulating jointly with those responsible for mobilizing and integrating the work process tasks, the execution and solution of personnel problems; d) stimulating creative thinkers within the organization; e) planning in terms of existing public policies and executed and evaluated action f) stimulating the generation of viable proposals that allow arriving at decisions of public interest. These are some of the challenges of human resources management to meet future needs.
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Public companies
No. 7 (1984)The Central American Institute of Public Administration (ICAP) begins a new era of its periodical, the Central American Journal of Public Administration, with the central theme dedicated to public enterprises.
Public enterprises have been the subject of much debate in recent years around the world, but especially in underdeveloped countries. In this debate, various approaches have emerged regarding the foundations and purposes of public enterprises. It is in this environment and with the purpose of questioning the Central American public enterprise that we offer the topic in this issue of the Journal.
The role of public enterprises in postcolonial societies has acquired considerable importance as an instrument of development. When the liberal State abandons its abstentionist posture and initiates the first economic and social interventions, the notion of public service makes its appearance and at the end of World War II its contribution is decisive in the nationalization movements and serves as initial justification for the first manifestations of the entrepreneurial activity of the State, even when these are progressively freed from their link with the public service to affirm the configuration of a new concept of imprecise contours, but whose economic and legal purpose is irreversible: the public enterprises.
The State's decision to create corporate entities to perform functions it had not previously performed, and the intention to remove the new institutions from excessive centralization that would prevent, among other things, timely decision-making and the efficient provision of public services, is undoubtedly the point of reference around which the most decisive phenomenon for the transformation of the legal system has gravitated since the last years of the 19th century: direct State intervention in the economy.
The importance of public enterprises as a whole is such that the direction and form of action they adopt not only affects their development, but also the rest of the macroeconomic variables: the level of economic activity, balance of payments, investment, inflation, etc. Hence the need to focus the actions of public enterprises not only as an instrument of socioeconomic growth and development, but also as an instrument of economic policy, stems from the magnitude and importance, both quantitative and qualitative, that the State's business sector has attained in recent years.
Notwithstanding the important role that is consciously assigned to the public enterprise in the process of economic development and some advantages that "theoretically" are intrinsic to it, there are also some problems that must be considered and taken into account. In fact, they affect in an important way not only the relationship between public enterprises and the government, but also their relationship with the private sector and their relations with the outside world.
Despite recent efforts and important definitions, there is still no general policy for SOEs. That is, there is still no objective definition of the substantive social and economic role of these companies in order to establish the parameters for evaluating their performance, both in their internal management and in relation to the group or sector to which they belong and also with respect to the community they serve. Consequently, the establishment of a general policy necessary to opt for a development strategy with more or less clearly defined objectives, order of priority, goals and clearly stipulated instruments constitute elements that define the role of public enterprises.
In addition, recent intense and controversial debates have reopened the issue in new aspects. Although the controversy is not new, it has acquired particular importance since it has reappeared with singular vigor and, in some cases, has become official doctrines, formulations that propose a profound critical review of the role played by these entities in the evolution of national economies. Moreover, the questioning of these tendencies is no longer restricted to partial aspects, such as, for example, the limits and expansion of the field of activity of state enterprises or the efficiency and effectiveness of their operation, but is part of the broader discussion on the definition of the functions of the State in the economy.
