01380pab a2200157 454500 180718b1997 xxu||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d Gregory, Robert The peculiar tasks of public management: toward conceptual discrimination 1997 p.41-63 Jul-Sep Recent contributions to AJPA have suggested new conceptual directions for public management in response to the stand-off between managerialists and their critics. In emphasising the inherent political dimensions of public management, this article seeks to build on these contributions. It does so by combining some of the insights of previous contributors with a simple matrix devised originally by American scholar James Q Wilson. The central proposition is that attempts to render public management more like private management have been too far-reaching, and do not adequately appreciate the intractable difficulties that stem from the types of task that are peculiar to public organisations. It is suggested that there should be less reliance on dubious metaphors borrowed from the business domain. Instead, a greater degree of theoretical eclecticism and conceptual discrimination should be used in understanding and developing public management. - Reproduced Public administration Management in Government 37069 37069 37069 0 0 0 0 IIPA IIPA 2018-07-19 Volume no: 29, Issue no: 2 AR37400 2018-07-19 2018-07-19 AR