HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT IN THE PUBLIC VERSUS PRIVATE SECTOR: A THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE.

• Date: 01 September 2018
• Author: Potcovaru, Ana-Madalina

1. Introduction

   It's becoming more and more of a classic debate about what the main differences between the public and private organizations are, and of those, which are the ones that determine the inefficiency of the public sector. It is known that the results of the economic activity are involved in intense processes of distribution and redistribution, in order to harmonize the interests of the four forces involved: employers, employees, local community and state (Done, 2015).

   Taking a quick peek at the past we can see how and why the private sector was created and how it managed to become in a much smaller timeframe a game changer for the entire world. Well, as always, there was a time when only the state was evolved in all the matters, from economy to the offering of certain goods, but, even during that times, there were other forms of private entrepreneurship, like the knights (as an example, the Knights Templer or the Order of Solomon's Temple Knights), which were able to participate in battles, to conquer some outer territories and thus amass large a large amount of wealth. They could be considered as being one of the first private "companies." The most important development of the private sector took place during the Industrial Revolution, when, the sudden automation of some man-powered actions made the necessary capital to be much lower and available to a larger number of ordinary people (Wittmer, 1991: 369-370). Thus, in just a couple hundred years, the private sector outperformed the public one, becoming a global force, with the largest and most powerful multinational companies being able to influence and dictate the direction of an entire country. With other words, the activities of a company are expressed with higher values by: falling sales, financial difficulties, reduces access to funds (Zefinescu et al., 2015).

   Countries of South East Europe went through the process of reform during the last two decades, but the reform is not over yet (Savic and Zubovic, 2015). Nowadays, in both public and private sectors, the human resource if of vital importance for the success or failure of a project or an entire organization. Private employers recruited their workers mostly from the state enterprises rather than from the large unemployment pools (Savic and Zubovic, 2015). Because of the incentives, usually the private sector is in the best position to attract the most talented and experienced individuals, so this paper aims to provide some practical solutions in order for the public sector to attract a higher number of well prepared workers.

2. Key Facts Regarding the Public and Private Sectors

   For the beginning, let's see exactly how the two areas are so different. First of all, the size of the projects, both in manpower and money are usually larger in the public sector, thus making it more difficult from the start to better manage them. Further, since all the private organizations exist for only one thing, making profit, they tend to perform better, for each company, being small or large, existing a target and a plan on how to reach their rentability goal. On contrast, few public organizations have clear goals to reach and there are few if none constraints in place if that goal isn't reached at all.

   Speaking from the human resources point of view, most individuals join the private sector in order...