Efficiency or Equity: Competing Values in Administrative Reform

In: Policy studies journal: an international journal of public policy, Band 9, Heft 8, S. 1239-1249

Abstract

Efficiency remains the dominant value in administration, through the stubborn survival of the policy-administration dichotomy & the prevailing view of administration as an instrumental activity, with its goals set elsewhere. Until recently, improvements in efficiency have been almost the sole aim of administrative reform. However, recognition of the changing & more demanding role of civil servants, a concern with outcome rather than process in determining the distribution of government-provided benefits, & demand for equal opportunity in public employment have led to a new stress on equity by administrative reformers. Equity & efficiency may sometimes (as in equal employment opportunity) point in the same direction, but the two values are often in conflict -- or else the costs of equity reforms are immediate & measurable, while their benefits are long-term & nonquantifiable. While everyone can support efficiency reforms, which promise the same results at less cost, equity reforms often clearly produce losers as well as winners. The equity-efficiency debate is an unequal contest, & equity reformers can be effective only through the political process & by changing the norms, language, & culture of administration. Modified AA.