Managing versus Doing in Government

Abstract

It is argued that a large number of public field personnel in India have been associated with doing rather than managing jobs. There is need for conceptualizing the doing and managing tasks and clearly focusing on different types of tasks which involve a high degree of managerial skills and those which do not. Unfortunately, non-realization of this distinction between doing and managing jobs in government has led to wrong selection, training, and placement of public personnel. One is not sure whether public service systems need more of man agers than doers or a varying proportion of both.