EXTERNAL GROUPS, WORKING WITH LEGISLATIVES

 Public and nonprofit managers face challenges while working with special interest group. The latter is involved in the decision-making process and they influence the public policy through lobbying government members (Cohen & Heikkila, 2013). It is important to understand that challenges arise because there is no transparency and the process of decision making may lead to administration corruption especially when policy-makers favor the special interest group. Indeed, special interest groups focus on interfering wkith the legislation action and they use different mechanism such as direct communication with government officials, media comment and more. The first major challenge related to working with extern groups is undue influence will results to state capture. Special interest groups   put more influence on policy-making and create disproportionate and unregulated authority through developing a ‘sense of reciprocity (Cohen & Heikkila, 2013)’. This process creates a second challenge which is known as  state capture which means that  the special interest group will influence  the government decision making and  enjoy advantage in own economic positions.  

 As a public or nonprofit manager, these challenges can be addressed through employing different approaches. First, as a leader I must ensure that there is transparency and this can only be achieved through creation and implementation of regulations. In this case, I would ensure there is lobbying regulation (Cohen & Heikkila, 2013). This regulation will create transparency and accountability of the activities done by the interest groups.  As a leader, I also support effective implementation through public disclosure of financial information, issue areas and more.  The second approach is ensuring transparency through preventing conflict of interest and this is done by creating laws and internal rules and these will promote transparency and accountability. Finally, as leader I would ensure transparency in decision making process (Cohen & Heikkila, 2013). For example, citizen participation and consultative decision-making will control the influence of special interest groups’ decision.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reference

Cohen, S., Eimicke, W. B., & Heikkila, T. (2013). The effective public manager: Achieving

success in government organizations.