Compare and contrast the key features of public and private sector Essay

Compare and contrast the key features of public and private sector organisations and explain how these might impact on the role - Essay Example Public sector involve organisations owned and operated by government or their agents and are mostly set up not for profit, but to offer essential services to the public, though profit still reminds one of the objectives of such organisations. Public sectors will major in owning, producing, providing, allocating and delivering goods and services for the government or the public, on either local or international levels, with service provision being more important than making profits. The managers are government appointees, making public companies political institutions. Private organisations. These ere organisations set up, owned, financed, and operated by business people with the single aims of harnessing opportunities to make a profit. The government in private companies only plays a regulatory role through its legal framework, but does not involve in any decision making in such organisations. Their main aim is to invest and harness resources as much as possible to make the maximum p rofit possible from the community. Similarities between private and public companies Service to the public. Both the public and private companies are set up to serve a particular public need, though a private company is responsible to its shareholders and investors to offer such services at a profit. Competition. There are many private companies providing services similar to the public sector services; they all compete for customers and resources, as well as market for their products and services. Examples are schools or healthcare faculties. Organisational hierarchy. Both public and private organisations have different staff occupying differently levels of decision making process, though in the private sector such hierarchies may have different tag names. In the two sectors, hierarchy structure is set to delegate work to the appropriate sections or levels (Kearney, Hisrich, & Roche 2009, 28). Differences between Private and Public Companies Organisation level One factor that charac terizes the public sector is the many formal processes that must be in place to make such an organisation function appropriately (ESADE, 2011). Decision process in public companies involves more degrees of consultations to formalize, leading to increased bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is defined and the regulations, procedures, and rules that have to be adhered to, but have little or no efficacy to the functional object of the rules themselves (ESADE, 2011). Bureaucracy in public sector is mostly due to the divisions of authority between the executive, legislature, and judiciary arms of the government, which have to be involved in the decision making process. On the other hand, private firms are more efficient and have no elaborate formalisation to put in place. Once they have complied with the legal procedures, they can be as small as the owners prefer and as large as possible, with decision making being retained at the senior management level. This makes private sector more efficient in decision making. Market Economy Another difference between private and public sectors is the market economy and economic systems. The public sector has to provide