Investigating Barriers to the Promotion of Productivity In Public Sector

This paper aims to identify the barriers of improving the productivity in public sector. According to the theoretical studies and the interviews with several senior managers of public sector, 28 items were detected as the obstacles of improving the productivity in public sector. These items were classified under three categories of environmental, organizational and individual barriers based on Ammons’ studies. Then a questionnaire was developed in order to reveal the views of managers in public sector about the influence of each item on productivity. The findings show that the public sector is faced with numerous barriers in improving productivity, a major part of which is related to personality, attitude and leadership skills of the public sector managers. The other part of it relates to the internal and environmental problems such as lack of a proper appraisal system, tendency to keep the status quo and extreme conservatism, lack of accountability system, lack of cost accounting systems, the political pressures that influence decisions, low importance of the issue of productivity compared with the political interests, shortage of analyst staff, lack of competitive market pressures, and the complex process of bureaucracy.