Making a Common Cause: Public Management and Bangladesh pursues a management approach to the country’s public sector, situates public management in a context of underdevelopment, systems theory and mobilization, underwrites that management is not only instrumentalist but also essentialist, and humanizes and opens the public domain. Paralleling this strand, several research issues – development, management and populism – are trailed, which are, in many respects, empowerment issues. With Bangladesh morphing through fragile, and yet challenging time, where neither publicness nor management is appreciated as expected, the multifacetedness of public management as a discipline and as a profession serves as an enabler and as a bulwark. By focusing on social policy, industrial policy, agricultural development, economic development, energy regulation, telecommunication regulation and managerialization, and conducting a focus group survey and presenting survey evidence, an effort is made to make people, customers, organizations, media and decision-makers genuinely excited about public sector and country development, dispel the misgivings that public management is trite, humdrum and mirthless, and posit that management is not only about power, authority, control and regulation but also about growth, development, distribution, fairness, access, representation and participation. Going still further, appropriate policies, faster decisions, proper resource allocation, competent personnel, timely output generation and delivery, regular enforcement and capable implementation, effective monitoring and evaluation, continuous measurement and quantification, authentic communication and wide-ranging dissemination, relevant education and training, meticulous accountability and transparency and periodic reform and renewal provide some of the sturdy bastions of public management in the country. While analysis pulls together the discourse, brings up analytical issues that are germane to the theory and practice of public management in Bangladesh and speaks not only to the challenges but also the promises of development, management, populism and empowerment, findings accent the misuse and underutilization of public management in the country’s organizational approaches. Synergistic tenor, resolute leadership, correct policy decisions and a systemically-configured management system can go a long way to improving the existing managerial and operational flaws. The work takes a stand against self-colonization and dependency, self-devouring practices, lethal partisan rancour, outrageous gaffs, outlandish behaviour, boorish skulduggery, a vertiginous rise of dysfunction and all the perfidy and indifference of the elite groups. For millions in the country, some public sector interactions and experiences are like a bad meal which takes long to digest and even longer to forget, making people look for a break.
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