Managerial Imagination

Managerial imagination is a fundamental aspect to develop a success project. As the times change, people needs change; therefore, flexibility and creativity are two concepts managers must have to continue providing high quality service. The value of imagination for whoever is filling a manager position in any organization has been clearly explained in Moore's book Creating Public Value: Strategic Management in Government by using a librarian as a public manager. The librarian had faced a situation where she thought it was not a part of her job to perform. At the beginning, she processed the situation from a fixed librarian perspective, which was the library function is store books for the public use. As a manager she had the power to enforce the organization's original policy, but she thought about improving the type of service her organization provided to the public. As a manager, she thought out of box to expand the library's regular visitors and how to provide quality service to the both her new and regular visitor. The librarian's creative imagination transformed the library from a destination for one type of visitors to a destination to different categories in the community (1995, 13-18). She had expanded her job's responsibilities from maintaining a quiet atmosphere to adult readers, which is the main function of the public library, to become a social association to the entire community.

According to Moore, as a public manager "one of her [the librarian] task … is to find the most valuable use of … [public] resources" (Moore 1995, 16). Theoretically, Moore's statement is correct, but in reality it rarely occurs in public organizations. Although, in the past public organizations has provided the best services to the communities. Nowadays private organizations' performances have exceeded the public organizations’ performances for an extra cost. The reason is the fact that the public organization’s managers’ role is to maximize the value of different resources at the lowest cost, private organization’s managers’ role is to maximize customers’ satisfaction for an extra cost. Furthermore, an article published in 1944 by Ghoshal and Bartlett under the titled Linking Organizational Context and Managerial Action: the Dimensions of Quality of Management stated "the performance of a firm is influenced by its relative position in the industry and by its stock of relevant, valuable and unique resources" (91).  Although, public organizations provide services at the lowest cost and they are the basics of every organization in the industry, they are exposed to negative public reactions. For example, a public hospital was the only destination for ill people to go to get well. Nowadays different medical parties can provide the service. Beside, the public hospitals, there are different private hospitals, clinics, practices, and institutions. They provide the same service as the public hospitals but for an extra cost. The main cause of the expansion in health care field, as well as every other filed, is the growth of communities. For instance, the United States population in 1950 was 151,868,000 and in 2011 it was 311,050,977 (U.S. Census Bureau 2011). Nevertheless, in this particular example people who could afford the extra cost of the service go to the private hospitals. On the other hand, those who cannot afford it go to the public hospitals, even though the service quality might vary. In other words, at the beginning of any organization, the employees expand their job’s responsibilities to provide the maximum value for their clients, but with limited resource, their development would be limited. As a result, the private organizations were created, which made the public organizations provide the basic service, and let the private organizations’ create and develop their services.

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