Control de no conformidades La organización debe

On the line of executing the policies of government, the bureaucrats/

administrators are given certain administrative powers. Administrative power is the power to administer or enforce a law. Administrative powers can be executive, legislative, or judicial in nature. Administrative power intends to carry the laws into effect, practical application of laws and execution of the principles prescribed by the lawmaker. Therefore, it qualifies as administrative discretion.

According to Laksheyender (2011), administrative discretion means choosing from amongst the various available alternatives but with reference to the rules of reason and justice and not according to personal whims. Such exercise is not to be arbitrary, vague and fanciful, but legal and regular.

However, there is a problem with administrative powers/discretion. The problem of administrative discretion is complex. It is true that in any intensive form of government, the government cannot function without the exercise of some discretion by the officials. It is necessary not only for the individualization of the administrative power but also because it is humanly impossible to lay down a rule for every conceivable eventually in the complex art of modern government. But it is equally true that absolute discretion is a ruthless master. It is more destructive of freedom than any of man‘s other inventions. Therefore, there has been a constant conflict between the claims of the administration to an absolute discretion and the claims of subjects to a reasonable exercise of it.

Discretionary power by itself is not pure evil but gives much room for misuse.

Therefore, remedy lies in tightening the procedure hence keeping the administrator accountable as discretions are, according to Ikeanyibe (2013) usually informal and therefore unprotected by the safeguards inherent in formal procedure. Yet it is inevitable since rules and regulations can never be too detailed to the extent that everything an administrator may have to do is clearly prescribed for him/her. Every form of public

policy will inevitably see variations from the original intended policy goals as part of the discretionary process (Theodoulou and Kofinis, 2007).

Policies are not implemented in static environment and exercising discretion to meet the changing political ad administrative environment is a necessity for sustainable long term effectiveness (Wong, 2007). In his support for administrative discretion, Brodkin (2007) sees administrative reforms as a likely way to manage administrative discretion and thus, identified two basic methods of reforms:

i. Managerial and structural repositioning of the bureaucratic organization through formal rules and regulations, monitoring, rewards and penalties, or even persuasion and exhortation. It involves the use of standard instrument the ―old‖ public administration. This is the formal bureaucratic internal mechanism of control.

ii. Administrative reforms in the light of the New Public Management Approach. The New Public Management (NPM) approach to public service production and delivery runs counter to the old ('traditional') bureaucratic approaches that were born with the emergence of the modern states systems across most of the Western world. It rejects the idea of a specific culture for public organizations and typically argues that such organizations should be managed in the same way as any private sector organization (Riccucci, 2001, Page, 2005; Dunleavy, Margetts, Bastow and Tinkler, 2006). This approach was developed during the 1980s as part of an effort to make the public service more "businesslike" and to improve its efficiency by using private sector management models. As with the private sector, which focuses on "customer service", NPM reforms often focused on the "...centrality of citizens who were the recipient of the services or customers to the public sector." NPM reformers experimented with using decentralized service delivery models, to give local agencies more freedom in how they delivered programs or services. In some cases, NPM reforms that used e-government consolidated a program or service to a central location to reduce costs. Key themes in NPM were "...financial control, value for money, increasing efficiency...,identifying and setting targets and continuance monitoring of performance, handing over power to the senior management"

executives. Performance was assessed with audits, benchmarks and performance evaluations. Some NPM reforms used private sector companies to deliver what were formerly public services.

Still, many scholars have found certain deficiencies in this method though it proposes reducing the role of bureaucracy in policy implementation, it seeks to increase its role in policy making, and hence the use of discretion cannot be stamped out the powers of bureaucrats (Ikeanyibe, 2013).

4.0 CONCLUSION

Administrative discretion allows agencies to use professional expertise and judgment when making decisions or performing official duties, as opposed to only adhering to strict regulations or statuses. For example, a public official has administrative discretion when he or she has the freedom to make a choice among potential courses of action. The failure to exercise reasonable judgment or discretion is abuse of discretion.

However, for the good of public policy, this power of the administrator needs to be checkmated. This is the thrust of this unit.

5.0 SUMMARY

In this unit, we have been able to establish that bureaucracies is involved in every stage of the policy making process hence the bureaucrats inevitably become involved in the policy-making process as they develop experience, accumulate information and gain expertise on matters of public policy. This experience enters not only the policy formulation and implementation stage, but also the final process of evaluation, review and assessment. The evaluation state is the process where an organization, whether public or private, evaluates and revises its policies on whether it was effective in resolving the targeted issue.

6.0 TUTOR-MARKED ASSIGNMENT

What is the role of the bureaucracy in the public policy making process?

7.0 REFERENCES/FURTHER READING.

Ayuba A. A; C. M. Tella & P.Y. Mbaya (2012). Public Policy Formulation and Implementation in Nigeria. Public Policy and Administration Research. Vol.2, No.5, 2012.

Cann, Steven (2015). "The Administrative State, The Exercise Of Discretion, And The Constitution." Public Administration Review 67.4 (2007): 780-782. Business Source Complete. Web. 26 Sept. 2015.

Downs, Anthony.( 1967), ―Inside Bureaucracy. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.

Dunleavy, Patrick, Helen Margetts, Simon Bastow, and Jane Tinkler. (2006). ―New Public Management Is Dead-Long Live Digital-Era Governance.‖ Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 16 (3): 467–494.

George Ritzer, (2004). Enchanting a Disenchanted World: Revolutionizing the Means of Consumption, Pine Forge Press,

Laksheyender K. (2011). Abuse of Administrative Discretion.

http://www.legalservicesindia.com/article/print.php?art_id=756

Okotoni Olu, (2001) Problems and Prospect of Nigerian Bureaucracy: Lagos: Journal of Social Science. 7 (3)

Page, Stephen. (2005). ―What's New About the New Public Management? Administrative Change in the Human Services.‖ Public Administration Review 65 (6): 713–727.

Raadschelders, J.C.N. (1998). Handbook of Administrative History. Transaction Publishers. p. 142.

Rabin, J. (2003). "Administrative Discretion". Encyclopedia of public administration and public policy. New York: Dekker. p. 35.

Riccucci, Norma. (2001). ―The "Old" Public Management Versus the ‗New‘ Public Management: Where Does Public Administration Fit in?.‖ Public Administration Review 61 (2): 172–175.

Richard Swedberg; Ola Agevall (2005). The Max Weber dictionary: key words and central concepts. Stanford University Press. pp. 18–21.

Ronald N. Johnson; Gary D. Libecap (1994). The Federal Civil Service System and the Problem of Bureaucracy (PDF). University of Chicago Press. pp. 1–11. Retrieved 12 March 2014.

Tony, W. & Dagmar W. (2015) Weber, Max "Bureaucracy" in Weber's Rationalism and Modern Society, edited, Palgrave-Macmillan 2015. p. 114

MODULE 4

Unit 1 – Organizations; Meaning, principles, types and elements Unit 2– Process of Organization

Unit 3 –theories of Organization Unit 4 –The concept of Management Unit 5– Principles of Management

UNIT 1

ORGANIZATIONS; MEANING, PRINCIPLES, TYPES AND ELEMENTS CONTENTS

1.0 Introduction