Roles, Responsibilities and Boundary Riding

Abstract

This chapter addresses: How do Departmental Secretaries construct or perceive their roles and responsibilities in the context of continuing reforms? In executing their roles and responsibilities, Departmental Secretaries navigate a plurality of activities on a spectrum spanning rational-instrumental work at one end and political-interpretive work at the other end. Departmental Secretaries are ‘boundary riders’ who constitute public administration in a rational-instrumental transactional manner on some occasions, while, on others they are drawn into the political arena.

Departmental Secretaries perform roles and responsibilities, some resembling ‘generic’ rational-instrumental activity, as described in the literature (see Drucker, On the profession of management. Harvard Business School Press, 1965; Graham, Mary Parker Follett – Prophet of management: A celebration of writings from the 1920s. Harvard Business School Press, 1995; Kotter, The general managers. The Free Press, 1982), while other work more closely resembles political work. Departmental Secretaries’ more political work escalates the closer they are to the seat of government power. Collectively this work incorporates: (1) rational-instrumental work of leadership, governance and administration; and (2) political-interpretive work of stewardship, stakeholder management and policy.

Departmental Secretaries’ work is contingent, inconsistent, changeable and fluid. The substantive constitution of public administration takes place at the centre or ‘the “fulcrum point” or the “frantic interface” of this spectrum. Public administration has little to do with generic ‘management’ but rather is a complex myriad of bureaucratic activities associated with the business of government.