Four Faces of Public Service Efficiency

Abstract

We argue that there are four main dimensions, or faces, of public service efficiency, which should matter to theorists and practitioners of public management. The first, productive efficiency, relates to the maximization of outputs over inputs; the second, allocative efficiency, refers to the match between the demand for services and their supply; the third, distributive efficiency, relates to the pattern of service delivery amongst different groups of citizens; while the fourth, dynamic efficiency, refers to the balance between current and future consumption. We examine each of these faces of efficiency in turn and reflect upon the potential trade-offs between them.

Key words:

• Public services
• efficiency
• theory
• policy
• management

Notes

Note Drawing on Moore's (1995) idea that the legal and moral authority of the state is also an important resource for public managers, it is also perhaps possible to discern a fifth dimension: procedural efficiency, which deals explicitly with why government should produce. The issue of whether or not government should exercise its authority to produce services – together with the positive and negative consequences of that intervention – is clearly a vast topic in its own right, one, indeed, to which we hope to return in future work.