The public budgeting leaders have the responsibility of fulfilling various roles including planning, reforming, and budgeting. Public budgeting involves three areas that are mostly dominated by the fields of economics, planning, and data sciences. Planning is used to determine goals and setting up the necessary programs to achieve them. Programming also helps in the administering of efforts that efficiently assist in the achievement of the set goals.
Budgeting involves the handling of financial estimates and manipulation of resources that are needed by the agencies in executing of the laid out plans. For the community’s well-being, officials should have the capability of managing the budget, distributing resources and also predicting costs (Wildavsky, 2006)
The public budgeting leaders should have the skills of public budgeting, revenue planning, the ability to evaluate and solve problems when it comes to fiscal activities in the public sector, and the skills of budget presentation. After the budgeting exercise, leaders should complete the hypothesis testing and run a Confidence Interval Test to display confidence in their results. An interval test is a “parameter between two values and statisticians will usually choose one of the following three degrees of confidence: ninety, ninety-five and the ninety-nine percent to help get the C1 test started” (Wildavsky, 2006).
When serving as a public sector manager, an individual must understand the responsibilities of that come with this role, and that the duties of this position are comprehensive. The manager should be aware that the money that is spent belongs to the public, and that the federal law always constrains the scope of the projects whereby the public has the right of redressing them. In addition, a manager should constantly remember that he or she is responsible for tax money and the public trusts him/her to spend their revenue wisely.
In case of unexpected developments in the course of fund management, a public manager should be prepared to assume responsibility irrespective of the fact it is his/her fault. Statutory accountability and constraints of the manager and the other partners in the public sector should be laid out very clearly. Focusing on how legislation works and how it can be used flexibly is another way of streamlining public budget management (Bovaird, 2009). A strategy should be provided so as to ensure that the public is aware of what the organization is doing and make sure that they can contact him/her whenever anything is amiss.
A public manager should ensure that his/her role is clearly laid out and supported by internal and external structures. Therefore, a manager should introduce his/her strategy to each team member. Consequently, the manager should go through the documents and clearly illustrate the output that is required from all individuals and how the team will contribute towards the achievement of the set targets. The members should know they have a critical role to play in the success of the organization.
The members should be brought face to face with the people who benefit from the services that are to be offered. The roles of each member should be clearly laid out and the message should be heard to avoid any misunderstanding. Performance Appraisals should be used for the team members to know how they are fairing on. Rewards such as bonuses, awards either monetary or otherwise, and fully paid trips to different destinations should be motivating factors for all the members. The manager should be in the forefront practicing what he/she is preaching thus setting a good example to the members. Once the responsibilities are clear, the members are sent off to perform their duties whereby in case of any failure they should be answerable (O’Leary & Bingham, 2009).
The manager should always have a contingent plan in case things do not work out as expected, because the public expects everything that holds their investment to be a success. The manager should always get things into perspective and in the case of any failure, the source of the problem should be pointed out. Overall, the leader should be able to take another person’s blame in his/her capacity. Walking around with negative feelings is not a good way to fix a problem in public management affairs. In the case of challenges, the manager should also seek advice from other managers who have gone through similar issues.
The managers should also be very brave (O’Leary & Bingham, 2009). Ego can get in the way once in a while since taking and giving responsibilities are straightforward. Tasks involved may be very different and some of them may be boring while others may be fascinating like flying out to various destinations or meeting very famous people. Boundaries should be kept since some things can never be entirely clear. Issues should be sort out with delicacy and tact, and every task should be pointed out for every individual. By giving out clear responsibilities to individuals, one creates a more confident and honest culture that has a positive attitude about winning. Consequently, this approach can prevent situations in which events seem to control people instead of people managing them.
Rational Decision Making
Budgetary decision-making can be rational whereas rational decision-making is the opposite of intuitive decision-making. In rational decision-making, people use analysis, facts, and systematic processes to come to a conclusion. Rational decision-making is “the precise and analytical processes that business enterprises use to come up with a solid decision” (Doyle, 2009, p. 701). Budgetary decision making in any business or organization occurs every day.
Some organizations utilize intuitive decision making in seeking solutions to modern-day business problems. The administrators use their perceptions and intuitions as a guide in the decision-making process. In this case, no facts are involved in this type of decision-making process. This approach requires an executive to sort out circumstances devoid of the necessity for critically thinking about the steps to be taken. When the decision-making process has no facts and there is a difficult decision to be made, the intuitive decision-making comes in handy.
A good example of a rational decision maker is James, the manager of a restaurant who is confronted by dwindling profits. When the manager was under enormous pressure to increase the amounts of profits from his business, he took a rational decision making approach and realigned the business model. In rational decision-making, the process includes defining the problem, identifying the decision criteria, allocating of priorities to the criteria, developing the alternatives, evaluating the options, and finally selecting the best option.
Defining the problem that is facing the business is the first step. The defining stage is relatively easy as the board of management should be aware of the difficulty. No matter how long the problem has persisted, a criterion on how the decision-making process will commence should be made. The “evaluative stage determines the failures and the success of the alternatives” (Doyle, 2009). Examples of such scenarios include situations where site-sensitivity analysis and the site-suitability are being conducted. On the other hand, “going through the process thoroughly defines the problem, exploration of all the alternatives for the problem and gathering more information, evaluating the information, and identifying the best options in anticipation of the consequences” (Doyle, 2009, p. 702).
Out of all the solutions that have been created, the best ones should be chosen and the site of operation should be developed at this choosing stage in reference to all the other available strategies. The rational decision comprises of a final solution and an implementation that is secondary to the site. The four stages that form the core of the Rational Decision Making Model are the identification of the problem, assessment, finding the best criteria to be used, and finally choosing the best and final solution.
Through a rational decision, the best and preferred alternatives are implemented to the problem and the preliminary task involves monitoring of the selected solution (Eisenhardt & Zbaracki, 2002). Furthermore, when a rational decision is used, building and the renovation are the key things throughout the implementation of a project. On most decision-making scenarios, monitoring and evaluation of outcomes and results is necessary. A rational decision supports the final supervision of the issue where the results are observed and put into records. In order to evaluate whether the rational “decision made is effective, feedbacks are always welcomed and further actions may be taken to improve evaluation outcomes” (Eisenhardt & Zbaracki, 2002, p. 18).
References
Bovaird, T. (2009). Public management and governance. New York: Taylor & Francis.
Doyle, J. (2009). Rational decision making. MIT encyclopedia of the cognitive sciences, 3(5), 701-703.
Eisenhardt, K. M., & Zbaracki, M. J. (2002). Strategic decision making. Strategic management journal, 13(2), 17-37.
O’Leary, R., & Bingham, L. B. (2009). Surprising findings, paradoxes, and thoughts on the future of collaborative public management research. The Collaborative Public Manager, 2(4), 255-269.
Wildavsky, A. (2006). The political economy of efficiency: cost-benefit analysis, systems analysis, and program budgeting. Public Administration Review. 23(1), 292-310.