(i) State if you agree or disagree with the explanation provided in the summary
ID: 425452 • Letter: #
Question
(i) State if you agree or disagree with the explanation provided in the summary below and why in a minimum of 150 words?
In the public sector, leadership and program performance are directly related. In fact, they depend on one another. In organizations & agencies, those in leadership decide which program measures will be introduced as well as how measures will be met and evaluated. Leadership also determines who will be part of the team to work on carrying out measures to meet the program mission. Chapter 10 in the Holzer (p.286) text describes these functions of leadership in depth. Planning, Organizing, Directing, Co-ordinating, Controlling, and Implementing. With that in mind, a lot pf preparation is required for carrying out tasks and programs that includes each function listed above. Moreover, it is the quality of leadership impacts the quality of performance outcomes. Poor leadership can result in poor performance since it influences the personnel, how efficiently resources are used, and communication between levels of subordinates that are all imperative to reaching outcomes. Under poor leadership, staff may not be motivated, and their strengths could go unrealized, leading to substandard performance measures. Effective leadership in the public sector consists of being decisive, accountable, respectful to subordinates and others, and manages resources well (Holzer, p.307, 2016) These are necessary to good performance as they increase the likelihood that tasks are carried out in the most efficient way possible.
(ii) Discuss Egon Guba's depictions of public policy in " The decision to go to war with Iraq"
According to Egon Guba, it is not policy itself that succeeds or not, It is the organization, or the implementation of the program that does or does not succeed (Guba, 1985). Which again justifies that good performance depends on good leadership. Also, success is such a subjective measure that there cannot be an "absolute value" given to policies themselves (Guba, 1985). Case Study 7 in the Stillman text dissected President Bush's decision to go to war with Iraq. He was a top-down leader that did not communicate with his cabinet or the DoD for certain decisions. Unlike Holzer's description of an effective leader, Bush was dismissive of other's opinions. In fact, this case study shows one example of how President Bush seemingly had his mind made up to go to war months before he made an official announcement, unbeknownst to his own staff (Stillman, p.197, 2010)
Explanation / Answer
1. I completely agree with the facts of the article. Leadership plays vital role in not only the formulation of policy measures but also deciding in the way they will be implemented, the selection of people who will implement them, and maintaining the communication between the levels and motivating the team so as to extract the best perfromance from them. A good leadership therefore can lead to great perfromances through motivated individuals, well planned endeavors and optimum utilisation of resources.At the same time, a bad leadership can demoralise the team, result in wastage of resources, leading to inefficient decision making and will more often than not will lead to disasters and the blame game that follows.
2. According to the Guba's depicition of public policy, the performance and subsequnt success of a policy is the performance and success of a organisation, which again depends on the quality of leadership. President Bush's decision to go to war against the Iraq was a one man decision and a resolve to "teach a lesson" to the enemy. The behavior was against the norms of leadership, where none of the functionaries was involved in making such a vital decision which had long term consequences. Guba's other depiciton that success is a relative measure, is also evident here, where the success of the Iraq campaign was a subjective analysis and there may be different opinions when viewed from different perspectives.
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