Managerial thinking. A study of public managers from developing countries

Abstract

Abstract The field of comparative public administration/management in the United States has been criticized for theoretical underdevelopment and methodological narrowness. Utilizing advances made in comparative business management and taking into consideration the assertion that an agenda based empirical research programme in comparative public administration should highlight managerial processes, the individual, and group‐level behaviours, this paper focuses on examining the attitudes of public managers towards their own organizations. It analyses the responses of 110 public sector managers from 58 different countries of the world while they were in residence for professional development at 12 major universities in the United States. Examining public managers outside their own working environment makes this research on public sector managers to some extent unusual. For purposes of data collection a stratified sample was utilized. The principal instrument consisted of 79 items. Managers were asked to state their attitudes towards problem‐solving and decision‐making, leadership, job challenge, change, and organizational culture. Primarily descriptive statistics are used to analyse the data. Limited use is made of the One‐way ANOVA test. Results show that public managers from developing countries tend to view themselves somewhat differently from the traditional western perspective, especially as it relates to organizational innovativeness and job challenge. Public managers also confirm the earlier held western perspective that personnel in the public sector are more concerned with their personal welfare rather than organizational welfare and that their leadership is more directive. While one has to be careful interpreting the data, the emerging profile of public managers should influence future policy makers in both developing and developed nations of the world.

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