Public Administration Cost and Information Concepts Assessing Public Policy Initiatives
Part 1
The implementation of Public policies initiatives are influenced by a variety of factors; nonetheless, the most Principe aspect is cost. There are three types of costs that are relevant to the choice of policy initiatives by public agencies namely, production costs, bargaining costs and opportunism costs.
Production Cost. According to Weimer, and Aidan (307) production costs are associated with are directly in the creation of the policy initiatives as bargaining and opportunism make up the transaction cost of governance. Production costs are related to the policy needs and may involve the acquisition of services in terms of economies of scale. For example, when a town council finds the need to improve security policies the cost of finding partners in doing so is what is called production cost. From this instance it can it is evident that ‘service acquisition costs’ can be described as a production costs in public administration.
Bargaining costs. Bargaining costs contain a variety of components such as the costs that are directly related to the negotiations of contract details that include identification of potential contractors, the gathering of information, about policy performance, or writing mutual acceptance provisions (Weimer, and Aidan 309). As stated by Guess and Paul (88) the concept of Bargaining costs are based on allocating policies as well as servicing them. For example, when a town council is setting up a health emergency service the hiring of ambulances and required staff the costs of doing so is what is referred to as Bargaining costs. From the example, the hiring costs are termed as bargaining cost in Public administration.
Opportunism Cost. Public-private hybrid entities combine both public and private ‘ownership’ of physical assets or financial residuals. This intermingling augments the complexities of public relations. According to Weimer, and Aidan (316), the principal issue when dealing with hybrid entities is that public purposes go beyond profit maximization, which is the primary motivator of private ownership. The contractual relationship between the two invites opportunism and its costs. Guess and Paul (211) defines opportunism cost as the alternative of allowing one entity in a Public-private hybrid organization to take precedence over policy initiatives. For example, a policy such as that of offering public transport services at low costs may be set to improve community movement and therefore require equipment such buses. Consequently, this would cost significant money with less in return. The opportunism cost, therefore, will lie on the private wing of the organization
Part 2
Field research also called field work is an inquiry or data collection methodology that is mostly conducted outside a laboratory or an office working setting. On the other hand, Document research is defined as data collection methodology process that is conducted within an office work setting that uses already published material to find answers to inquests. According to Johnson (16), the primary contrast between field research and document research is the former is a primary methodology that is dependent on the researcher’s data collection skill as the former is secondary depending on other individuals study results. Filed research studies are more precise to a particular inquiry or sample cluster; on the other hand, document research is principally general and requires the researcher to associate data in order to give a clear comprehension of a particular issue.
Policy analysis is defined as the process employed in public administration to make it possible for civil servants to assess, analyse and provide the best possible options to implement regulations or guidelines that help elected members attain their goals (Wolfe 99). The process requires a significant amount of data collection from a variety of relevant sources. Consequently, this highlights a number of challenges. The first issues when gathering information is reliability. Data from a document may be reliable in the instance they are outdated; additionally, such information might not be topically related hence requiring a researcher to use assumptions that are not dependable. During the gathering process, information may be costly to acquire in addition to time-consuming. Field researchers though highly reliable and specific are expensive to attain as they consume significant skill, financial resources as well as time.
Works Cited
Guess, George M, and Paul G. Farnham. Cases in Public Policy Analysis. Washington, D.C: Georgetown University Press, 2011. Internet resource
Johnson, Laura R. Community-based Qualitative Research: Approaches for Education and the Social Sciences. , 2016. Internet resource.
Weimer, David L., and Aidan R. Vining. Policy analysis: Concepts and practice. Taylor & Francis, 2017.
Wolfe, Mark A. “Document research system and method for efficiently displaying and researching information about the interrelationships between documents.” U.S. Patent No. 6,263,351. 17 Jul. 2001.