FINANCE FOR THE FIELD The Partnership Imperative: Differentiating the Provision and the Production Decisions By John L. Crompton, Ph.D.
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nderstandably, but incorrectly, a popular perception is that government is what it does rather than what it decides. Peter Drucker, who was perhaps the most influential figure in business management thinking in the latter half of the 20th century, was the first to articulate the distinction in one of his many books, The Age of Discontinuity, published in 1969.
In the book, Drucker argues that the decision making and the “doing” roles of government should be differentiated. It is remarkable how infrequently separation of this duality of roles is overtly discussed and how powerful the implications are once their independence is recognized. The word government is derived from a Greek word, meaning helmsman. The job of a park and recreation manager is to steer the ship, not to man the oars. The first decision is: Should a service be delivered? If the
answer to that question is affirmative, then the second and independent decision is: Who should provide it? Drucker likens government’s role to that of an orchestra conductor: “The conductor himself does not play an instrument. He need not even know how to play an instrument. His job is to know the capacity of each instrument and to evoke optimum performance from each. Instead of being the performer, he has become the conductor. Instead of doing, he leads.”
Partnerships between P&R agencies and other groups allow agencies to meet policy objectives through supplementing limited resources with resources that partners supply.
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Parks & Recreation
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This insight has transformed how park and recreation services have been delivered in the past halfcentury. Partnerships with other public entities, commercial organizations, nonprofits and individual volunteers are now the norm. An agency seeks to meet policy objectives through supplementing its limited resources with resources that partners supply. One of the striking characteristics of our field is the plethora of organizations that produce recreation services in the public, commercial and nonprofit sectors. Most communities are likely to have entities that, in a defined program area, can offer more financial resources, managerial expertise, technological innovation and business acumen than are available within the park and recreation agency. Hence, instead of being the first choice for delivering a program, the contemporary model is for agencies to be the option of last resort — directly delivering a program only if there is no viable alternative in a community. With this model, P&R agencies have shifted departments from being primarily sellers of services to being primarily facilitators or buyers of services. Management’s role shifts from operational issues to monitoring the nature and quality of what is delivered. Three types of benefits may emerge from a partnership, in addition to financial efficiencies. First, efficiencies may occur by removing service duplication or using com-
