ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we began by considering the nature of the public sector. We then explored the public sector around the world by means of six exemplar discussions. This led into a more in-depth examination of the public sector using a single illustrative example – UK local government.
21Even from this initial chapter, we can see that there is no single model of “the public sector” that covers every possible combination of services, organisations, and countries. We have seen that the public sector is far more complex than a single definition suggests. It covers a range of services, not all of which are obvious, and each of these operates according to distinctive procedures. These vary from function to function and from country to country. Even in this first chapter, we have seen that the public sector and the private sector differ in many important ways.
Since the public sector operates differently from the private sector, its strategy needs to be understood on its own terms, and this is the focus of the remainder of the book. The next chapter begins the process of understanding by exploring how management operates in this context
