Public Management: Challenges Faced by Leaders in the Public Sector (Essay Sample)

Public Management
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Institution:
Public Management
A leader is an influential person with the capability of guiding people towards the accomplishment certain goals. Scholars describe leaders as people with responsibilities because the whole society looks upon leadership for guidance. A leader must have wisdom and other important character traits such as honesty and sense of humor. The section of the economy with the duty of providing essential government services is the public sector. Majority of leaders in the society have an important part to play in the public sector. The public sector demands a leader with education and leadership techniques because bad leadership results in failure. A society with good leadership in the public sector has a comparative advantage over other societies. Additionally, the public needs charismatic and innovative leaders with the abilities to handle the challenges involved in the public sector. Leaders in the public sector face certain challenge that slows down economic growth.Leaders in the public sector have difficulty in the delegation of duty. Delegation of duty creates a challenge to the leadership because a leader may delegate a task to the wrong individual. Additionally, wrong delegation of duty slows down the daily bureaucratic activities in the public sector (Bason, 2010). Difficulty in the duty delegation arises because some leaders delegate duties without monitoring the process. Apparently, most leaders in the public sector fail to monitor the assigned duties leading to underperformance. According to Wirrick (2013), complexity arises in the delegation of duties because some leaders delegate duties to employees unknowingly. The mistaken allocation of duty creates a challenge because employees feel overworked. Assigning workers with complicated duties makes the delegation of duty difficult. The leadership challenge arises because the employees start disliking the leader. A good duty delegation process minimizes the challenges leaders face in the public sector.Most leaders in the public sector face challenge during the distribution of resources. The geographical location makes a leader encounter difficulty in distributing resources. Leaders find difficulty in distributing resources in hilly areas because of the geographical location of the region. Wirrick (2013) explained that poor infrastructure in certain areas makes leaders have difficulty in distributing resources. The distribution process becomes hard for leaders because poor roads and transport makes an area inaccessible. Additionally, the population density of the area makes leaders of the public sector undecided on the resource distribution method. The problem develops because highly populated areas demand a lot of resources while low populated areas require minimal resources (Rainey, 2011). Consequently, difference in population density makes leaders distribute resources unequally. Identifying the problems involved in the distribution process reduces the resource distribution challenge that leaders in the public sector face.Public sector leaders face the challenge of maintaining a good relationship with the workers. Low payment makes a leader develop a poor relationship with the employees within the public sector. Apparently, employees blame the leaders for underpayment. Poor relationship between the employee and the leader exists because of poor communication networks. According to Bason (2010), poor communication network between the administrative systems makes workers dislike leaders. Business analysts stated that poor leader and worker relationship exists because of poor employee welfare services. Statistics indicates that proper worker welfare creates a good working relationship between the leader and the employee. Poor working relationships exist between the worker and leaders because of low promotion rates. Apparently, workers develop a negative attitude towards the leaders when the promotion rates are low in the public sectors (Wirrick, 2013). The creation of good working relationships amongst the workers minimizes the challenges that leaders face.Leaders within the public sector face the challenge of proper management of community funds. Leaders mismanage the public funds by setting up expensive community projects that exceed the annual financial budget. Rainey (2011) illustrated that employment of unqualified financial manager leads to leaders mismanaging public funds. Majority unqualified financial managers fail to account for the loss public funds within the bureaucratic system. Financial analysts state that poor bookkeeping leads to mismanagement of funds by leaders. Poor bookkeeping encourages corruption within the finance department because the leaders lack adequate knowledge about the usage of public funds (Bason, 2010). Leaders face the challenge because lack of proper investment plans leads to mismanagement of public funds. Im...