Capacity Building in Public Sector Organisations

Abstract

During the last two decades the world has experienced a major transformation in thinking on the role of government in provision of services and socio-economic development. This change in thinking has come about as a result of the inability of two major philosophies of production—capitalism and socialism—to redistribute resources for the improvement in the living condition of the masses. Both the philosophies have shortcomings. Capitalism encourages entrepreneurship and growth, but it also creates extreme economic disparities leading to poverty. Socialism in its attempt to create an egalitarian society curbs and stifles entrepreneurship, leading to discontentment and economic inefficiencies. Developing countries have followed, by and large, a mix of these philosophies but the result has not been encouraging in most of the cases. Economic distortions and inefficiencies have been the common outcome. In addition, human development indicators and the quality of life in these countries has fallen far below the minimum acceptable standard. Inequitable distribution of resources is attributed to the absence of a participative and democratic political structure on the one hand, and mismanagement of resources and the absence of a facilitative administrative structure on the other. The latter attribute is now commonly termed as poor ‘governance’ of resources.