Task and Autonomy of Public sector agencies in Pakistan: A picture from a non-western country

Governments across the world have been opting variant policies to serve the public in preeminent manner. Diverse paradigms in public service have been adopted and trialed. New Public management also came as a solution for the... [ view full abstract ]

Governments across the world have been opting variant policies to serve the public in preeminent manner. Diverse paradigms in public service have been adopted and trialed. New Public management also came as a solution for the problems that public sector around the world was facing since the economic crisis of 1970’s. The focus was on creation of agencies with greater autonomy and performance based pressures to improve their performance. Organizations were given more autonomy and were made task specific to improve the effectiveness of public sector and making the accountability easier. Autonomy of the agencies was supposed to be related with the task of the agencies as some tasks require more autonomy as compared to others in order to be performed effectively. The policies that arrived with NPM, propagating more autonomy for the public agencies based on their task requirements, travelled from OECD countries and European Union. Developing countries like Pakistan, adopted these policies as they were considered legitimate by the developed countries.

The article aimed to ascertain the role of culture in explaining the perceived autonomy of public sector agencies and to measure whether primary task of the organization affects the autonomy granted to the public organizations in Pakistan. Hofstede’s cultural dimensions are used to explain the autonomy of the agencies. While the effect of task on the autonomy of organizations is discussed in the light of culture of Pakistan in order to understand the difference in execution of similar policies in different contexts.

For this research data from 114 public organizations of Pakistan was collected and analyzed. Descriptive analysis of independent and dependent variable that are autonomy an task was used to explain the cultural dimensions of Hofstede’s model in Pakistan. Regression analysis was performed on the data to analyze the effect of task on autonomy of organizations. Task is divided into two major categories that include service delivery and regulation. Three dimensions of autonomy are studied that include human resource management autonomy, financial management autonomy and policy autonomy. Data collection instrument is questionnaire designed by COBRA/COST for the study of governance and management in public sector organizations. COBRA/COST is a European research network which has conducted similar kind of studies in countries across the globe. The findings from Pakistan are discussed in the light of similar studies conducted in other countries of the world.