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The central theme of my article relates to the critical significance of effective management and administration in government as well as public and private enterprises, for the development, maintenance and survival of democracy in a developing country.
My fundamental postulate here is that both in national and enterprise management, democracy and effective management have a symbiotic relationship. I am not speaking of political systems that boast some outward form of democracy but without the substance of democracy, that substance consisting of efficient services and quality products actually delivered to citizens and customers by government and enterprises respectively.
With legislative accountability to citizens and mechanisms of market oversight of, and responsiveness to, customers institutionalized with reference to matters of public interest at national and enterprise levels, democracy demands effective management of national and enterprise systems.
In its own turn, effective management reinforces democracy by continuously attempting to optimize the various socioeconomic variables in national and enterprise life.
The reason why the central curiosity and quest of this article does not seem to have become one of the central concerns in the academic and policy-making communities dealing with democratic development, may lie in the fact that it is highly cross-disciplinary.
Democracy and its development are directly studied by political scientists and public administration theorists while management systems have been dealt with mainly by business schools.
The practical policy-making interest in the relationship between management and development began in the early eighties. The first time that management (governance in current parlance) became a focus at the international finance institutions was with the publication of the World Bank's 'World Development Report 1983' with 'Management in Development' being one of the two study themes.
This report did not deal with the political system in which "management" and "development" were to flourish. The study of the importance of macro and micro level governance in development of democracy in developing countries accelerated in early 1990s.
Yet the other side of the symbiosis, the role of modern management systems in development of democracy in developing countries has not been given much direct attention, particularly in terms of lessons to be learnt about the mutually reinforcing relationship between deliverable and consumable democracy and modern management systems in the parallel evolution of democracy and management in developed democracies.
The UNDP Human Development Report 2002 entitled "Deepening Democracy" does deal with governance (management) issues but only at the global level and the national macro level.
Thus, this report has missed a very strong area of intellectual and policy making effort towards strengthening management systems that can strengthen democracy, in effect, a bottom-up approach to democratization, rather than the top-down, and quite often top-top path of superficial democratization, in form only and not in substance, characteristic of the democratization effort in the developing world.
Vicious circle: I believe that one of the strongest forces working against the emergence of sustainable democracy in developing countries is the lack of effective management at the national and enterprise levels.
The vicious circle of superficial democracy failing and leading to authoritarian regimes, and relapsing back again into only superficially democratic systems, is a familiar sequence of events in the developing world.
The "anarchy and systemic breakdown" claimed to be associated with democracy in a number of developing lands, and the "hankering for" and acceptance of authoritarian and often military regimes, represents in reality a demand for governments and businesses to ensure that citizens get the public services that they are entitled to, and customers get the promised value for their money.
The average citizen may recognize visible, concrete and consumable outputs of democracy when public services physically reach him and when business products deliver promised value.
The characteristic low turnouts in elections in developing countries is indicative of voter indifference to changes of face only at the 'Assembly' and 'Senate' levels, which more often than not fail to deliver consumable democracy.
E=M x (C Square): Not only as a student of democracy and management, but also, more strongly, as a citizen consuming the services of the government of my country and the products of enterprises, I equate citizen/customer orientation in national and enterprise management with democracy in a form deliverable to, and consumable by the citizen/customer.
When government departments and public sector organizations interfacing with the public resolve to direct their effort towards putting the citizen and customer first in their thinking and actions, democracy begins to function in a consumable form, earning a deserved vote again.
Likewise, when enterprise managers begin to understand and implement the logic of customer focus, they begin to be democratic; customer satisfaction leads to resale, that is, an economic vote again.
I intend to substantiate the foregoing by briefly quoting selected episodes from economic and management history to prove that the tools and techniques of effective modern management emerged in response to national or enterprise management needs arising from democratic pressures, while in their own turn, modern management techniques have created increasingly higher performance bars for democracy as citizens' voice and customers' feedback begin to be increasingly listened to and sought.
NATIONAL BUDGETING: In the evolution and development of budgeting, the most important tool of national management, budgeting systems and techniques in the USA and Europe have been developed in response to the tax-paying citizen's need to know how his taxes are being utilized in the public interest and whether needed public services are being available and provided at the lowest possible cost.
Take the example of the evolution of national budgeting in the USA from line-item expenditure budgeting in the 1920s and 1930s through performance budgeting in the 1940s and 1950s, Planning-Programming Budgeting System (PPBS) in the 1960s, 'management by objectives' in the early 1970s and zero-base Budgeting from the late 70s till the present system under which the financial budget document is accompanied by a separate detailed 'management document' which explains the 'how' of the 'what' of financial appropriations proposed in the budget.
Throughout this evolution, the pressure for change came from democratic pressures forcing greater transparency and concrete, measurable accountability for the taxpayer's money.
Another important illustration of how the democracy-management symbiosis works is the episode of how, under democratic pressures, the U.S. Congress held detailed hearings in 1911, on the behest of affected labour unions, to establish whether the efficiency techniques of Frederick Winslow Taylor were serving the public interest while in use in the government.
As a response to the labour unrest led by the then incipient leftist union organizers climaxing with the 1886 Hay Market workers riots in Chicago, Frederick Taylor's Scientific Management concepts emerged so as to integrate and involve labour in the setting of production standards, relating higher pay and higher productivity, creating, in essence, a management system both economically and politically democratic.
It is ironically interesting to note that Taylor's system made a very impressed Lenin remark that it is through it that "capitalism will develop into socialism", and a convinced Trotsky used these techniques in his reorganization of arms production in the Red Army.
FDR COMMITTEE: The appointment by FDR, of the Committee on Administrative Efficiency, whose 1937 report to Congress written by management gurus Luther Gulick and Lyndall Urwick again illustrates the symbiosis of democracy and modern management techniques, in terms of the fact that FDR had created this Committee under congressional pressures and the implementation of the report contributed to further democratization of management in government.
RECENT DEVELOPMENTS: The use of management techniques such as cost-benefit analysis, 'management by objectives' and 'total quality management' in the Pentagon after World War 2, again illustrates how these were adopted under democratic pressures and how these in their own turn contributed to democracy.
The most recent example of the symbiosis of democracy and modern management is the emergence of e-governance in the US federal government, whereby a management technique has been adopted to further concretize the accountability of government departments and institutions, and has stood to raise the performance bar of democracy.
CONCLUSION: I plead for an effective management movement at government and enterprise levels in developing societies in general and my own country in particular, so as to let the heave and ho of the seemingly "unstable" ship called democracy, be absorbed by the strong ballast of stable systems of management in government and private enterprise.
I believe that in its role as the alert navigator of the ship of democracy, effective management is the permanent revolution in a developing society.
Developing societies do not have to reinvent the wheel of democracy; the adoption of effective modern management and administrative tools in government and private enterprise should by itself create continuing pressure for democracy, both as a state of affairs and a state of mind.
ssemess@cyber.net.pk.
