Research Topics: Social Costs And Benefits Of Marking The Change

The Condition of The Political And Social Costs and Benefits of Marking The Change

John A O’Looney reminds the public managers that apart from the financial costs and benefits, the political and social costs and benefits are also needed to be considered before deciding the possibility of service outsourcing. The social costs are mainly tied with the public employee labour unions.   In Hong Kong’s context, disciplinary services are prohibited to form any labour unions. However, staff association is allowed to establish with the approval of Commissioner of Police. In the Hong Kong Police, there are for staff associations i.e. Junior Police Officers’ Association, Local Inspectors’ Associations, Overseas Inspectors’ Association and Superintendents’ Association, to represent their members to liase and communicate with the senor management. However the associations have no collective bargaining power. In fact, the official mechanism for managing civil service labour relations in Hong Kong is consultation, not collective bargaining[1] The above associations only receive members from the regular police not their auxiliary counterparts as member. More importantly, the associations are to represent the views from their members only. There are no official staff associations established to represent the auxiliary officers. Any matters affecting the welfare or the condition of service of the auxiliary officers will be reflected to the senior management through the chain of command. Although a Hong Kong Auxiliary Police Association is established in 2002 by the auxiliary police officers, the association is not recognised by the Hong Kong Police as one of the official staff association. Therefore, there is neither labour union nor staff association to represent the auxiliary officers, making the concept of social costs and benefits mentioned by John A O’Looney not applicable for the service outsourcing of the Hong Kong Auxiliary Police. However, if the services discharged by the Hong Kong Auxiliary Police is outsourced to a private contracting company, the concept of social  costs and benefits will applicable. In Hong Kong although both regular police and auxiliary police are prohibited to form any union, private company is not. Therefore, the staffs of the contracting company can form a labour union to fight for their welfare and benefit. In order to fight for their welfare and benefit, the services provided by the Hong Kong Auxiliary Police may be interrupted by the action taken by the labour union such as work-to-rule, refuse to work, demonstration, sit-in and strike etc. As a result, the public confidence in police may be undermined and jeopardized.     Apart from the social costs and benefits, John A O’Looney further states that political costs and benefits also play a very important role in outsourcing the public service. He has mentioned two political factors to affect the outsourcing. The first factor is some contractors will bet heavily to some political parties in order to retain or gain the contract. This political factor has limited impact in Hong Kong context. In Hong Kong, only 24 out  of 60 members of Legislative Council are elected through direct election. The rest come either from functional constituencies or from the members of an Election Committee. The political parties have very limited power to influence the government policy. The second political factor stated by John A O’Looney is some elected officials will make good use of the cost saved by outsourcing as a political tool to assist them in the next election. According to Basic Law Annex I : Method for the selection of the Chief Executive of The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, the Chief Executive is elected by a broadly representative Election Committee in accordance with the Basic Law and appointed by the Central People’s Government[2]. In other words. The Chief Executive is not elected through universal suffrage. In addition, the principal officials of the HKSARG is appointed by the Chief Executive with the approval from the Central People’s Government. Although both the Chief Executive and the Principal Officials are not elected through universal suffrage, they are accountable to the HKSAR and Legislative Council. After the change of sovereignty in 1997, the Government has made several policy blunders, like the Airport Fiasco, Penny Stock Incident, legislation of Basic Law Article 23 and SARS outbreak, making the public lose the confidence in government. In addition, the Government is now facing a serious fiscal deficit. Under such an unstable political and economic climate, the Government can use outsourcing to gain the public confidence in governance. In the Chief Executive’s Policy Address, the Chief Executive repeatedly addresses the civil service reform by re-engineering, privatization and etc. In his Policy Address 2003, he further emphasizes the philosophy of ‘Big Market, Small Government’ as the goal of civil reform to gain the public support and confidence in governance.     Although service outsourcing can help the government in some forms, the question of can outsourcing the services provided by the Hong Kong Auxiliary Police bring political benefits to the government is another issue. Police officer not only represents authority but also justice and impartiality. Despite the facts no data to show the public opinion regarding outsourcing police services, outsourcing the services provided by the Hong Kong Auxiliary Police will definitely cause the community to concern whether justice, public safety and law and order can be maintained. More importantly, the issues of corruption and leaking of confidential or e en secret information to the private sector are other crucial matters need to be considered thoroughly. Outsourcing the core competencies of police has great impact on the public and raises the debate among the community.   To conclude, outsourcing the services provided by the Hong Kong Auxiliary Police has limited social and political benefits to the Government. In addition, the social and political costs may be larger than what has been gained.     [1] John P. Burns. “Government Capacity and The Hong Kong Civil Service”, (2004) P. 323   [2] The Basic Law, Annex I   Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com

The Condition of The Political And Social Costs and Benefits of Marking The Change

John A O’Looney reminds the public managers that apart from the financial costs and benefits, the political and social costs and benefi...