THE MANAGEMENT OF PUBLIC PROVISION

This work addresses the special character of public management by posi ting some important distinctions under-represented in current academic literature. In exploring the primary distinction between public admin istration and public management, the analysis proceeds from a treatmen t of public management as control of a production process uniquely con figured as a combination of policy brokerage and resource management, to a demonstration of the economic agency (value addition) of public m anagers. The paper also presents a contextual analysis of the scope an d scale of the public sector as this pertains to a model of ''public p rovision'', and introduces some new ideas regarding the temporal chara cteristics of public management as it responds to a discrete set of th ree cycles: the budget cycle, the product cycle and the policy cycle. This work aims to provide tools for analysis which both distinguish pu blic administration from public management and distinguish the economi c agency of private managers from that of public managers. The general argument is that the ''public provision process'', while similar to a conventional production process, contains unique and important respon sibilities which need to be understood and defended. By the same token , public managers ought to be empowered by a knowledge and identity wh ich express their importance as economic agents who contribute both to the commonweal and to the wealth of the nation.