George Boyne in his article “Human resource management in the Public and private sectors: An empirical comparison” explains with empirical evidence how even though private and public sector management differs in service ethos but this difference is significant which impacts the tradition, culture and practises of both the sectors. Over the past two decades many different interpretations and perceptions have come into play on the similarities and differences between private and public sector management.
Public sector management before the 1980s was found to be working more on a Weberian centralized model where you would find a hierarchical model of public services, the administrative rules and regulations of the organisations were determined by central government which were often conflicting in nature and were implemented by public organizations with relatively little scope for strategizing at a local level (Bach and della Rocca 2000). Notions of paternalism, standardization, job security, collectivism, developmental-humanism and the aspiration to be a ‘model employer’, were the values underpinning the management of people (Farnham and Horton 1996; Boyne et al. 1999; Jaconelli and Sheffi eld 2000; Lupton and Shaw 2001
There have been increased initiatives in modernizing the public administrations in various parts of the world. Primarily, the reforms have been in the structure, process and systems of the public sector organisations. Two schools of thoughts are being followed, wherein one states that both public and private sector organisations have similarities and show convergence whereas the other states that there is a fundamental difference in working of public and private sector organisations.
It is assumed that the behaviour and attitude of employees of a public sector organisation is vastly different than that of a private organisation. As a result,