A cautionary note about government/public services becoming more business-like

From "Turn on, tune in - or drown in a sea of mediocrity," from The Observer (the Sunday edition of the Guardian). From the article:

'We must reject the idea - well-intentioned, but dead wrong - that the primary path to greatness in the social sectors is to become "more like a business".' The interesting thing about this proposition, which runs counter to a tidal wave of advice and practice, is that it comes not from an unreconstructed member of Old Labour, but from the author of two of the most interesting and respected business books of the 1990s, Jim Collins.

In Built to Last, co-written with Jerry Porras, and Good to Great, Collins tried to identify what distinguished enduringly excellent organisations from the merely good, and how one could become the other. Now, in a 30-page monograph to accompany what has come to be known as G2G, Collins extends the thinking to the public and social sectors.

This is work in progress, and detailed research is under way, but he is confident enough to present a preliminary conclusion: most businesses lie somewhere on the spectrum between mediocre and good; very few are truly excellent.

Many accepted business practices turn out to correlate with mediocrity rather than greatness. So why should we insist on importing such practices into hospitals, universities and charities?

The real distinction is between excellent and the rest, not between business and social, he says. Great companies have more in common with great charity or public-sector organisations than they have with indifferent companies.

Index Keywords: public-administration