This volume analyzes changing work and employment in British public services. In doing so, it begins by critically engaging with debates around the ideological, regulatory and social drivers of change, and their impact on workforce composition, service ethos, equality, and the role of trade unions. It then analyzes employment relationships within fluid organisational boundaries, tackling the key issues of partnership and trust, pay and rewards and employment security. The concluding section reflects on public service productivity and its comparative context.

This book provides practical insights into improving the effectiveness of labour negotiations in the public sector. It outlines the common conceptions, goals, needs, and obligations the different parties involved in public sector labour negotiations bring with them to negotiations. It also offers useful guidelines for all participants in negotiations - showing, for example, how management can assess the added cost of a proposed employee contract, how unions can most effectively prepare a case for arbitration, and how employees can best handle strikes should negotiations break down.

Many changes are taking place in the public sector across Europe as emphasis is being placed on the efficient use of resources, the way that public organisations are managed and their relationship with clients and customers. Post-bureaucratic structures are being introduced and a more managerialist culture is being established. A new type of public servant is emerging - the public manager. This book consists of three theoretical chapters and nine case studies of public managers, which examine these changes amongst member states of the European Union. The concluding chapter identifies common trends and explains similarities and differences in terms of the constitutional, political, cultural and economic contexts.

Well-traveled throughout China and well-published on its political, cultural, and business aspects, the editors of this unusual new book and their contributing authors give a systematic analysis of public sector management--as it is now and as it is emerging--in a country of massive size, now in retreat from a centrally planned economy. Many features of the new reforms parallel the movement toward new public management in the West. Functions have been transferred away from China's public sector, including the government, and into the private sector, and many of the managerial tools common in the private sector have been introduced into the public sector. The book thus analyzes the logic, mechanisms, and designs of new public management in China. It examines context-bound issues, in the light of the legacies of massive state intervention, the transition away from centralized planning, the structure of the Leninist party-state, and Chinese bureaucratic culture. Finally it discusses and illustrates events in a variety of policy areas, and in doing so, draws upon unique interviews and field studies developed personally by each contributor. The result is an important insight into China and how its public sector operates, one that will have special value for professionals in international development, finance, banking, government, economics, politics, and for their academic colleagues as well.

In political science and sociology, great controversies exist concerning the desirable balance between national and local power, the relevant factors in sub-national decision making, and the social consequences of centralization and decentralization. "Regionalism and Regional Devolution in Comparative Perspective" explores these controversies and the elements which give rise to them. Students of comparative politics, political sociology, Western European history, international affairs, or comparative social institutions can turn to this book for a balanced assessment of the alternative structures of decentralized political power which are emerging in various Western democracies.

Regardless of where we live, the management of the public sector impacts on our lives. Hence, we all have an interest, one way or another, in the achievement of efficiency and productivity improvements in the activities of the public sector. For a government agency that provides a public service, striving for unreasonable benchmark targets for efficiency may lead to a deterioration of service quality, along with an increase in stress and job dissatisfaction for public sector employees. Slack performance targets may lead to gross inefficiency, poor quality of service, and low self-esteem for employees. In the case of regulation, inappropriate policies can lead to unprecedented disasters. Examples include the decimation of fish stocks through mismanagement of fisheries, and power blackouts through inappropriate restrictions on electricity generators and distributors. Efficient taxation policies minimise the tax bill for citizens. In all of these cases, efficient management is required, although it is often unclear how to assess this efficiency. In this volume, several authors consider various aspects and contexts of performance measurement. Hence, this volume represents a unique collection of advances in efficiency assessment for the public sector by leading researchers in the field. Efficiency in the Public Sector is divided into two sections. The first is titled "Issues in Public Sector Efficiency Evaluation" and comprises of chapters 1-4. The second section is titled "Efficiency Analysis in the Public Sector - Advances in Theory and Practice." This division is somewhat arbitrary, in the sense there are significant overlapping themes in both sections. However, it serves to separate chapters that can be characterised as dealing with broader issues (Section I), from chapters that can be characterised as focusing on specific theoretical problems and empirical cases (Section II).

Transport policy has dramatically changed over the last ten years with major regulatory reforms and privatisation of transport enterprises. Part 1 presents an authoritative statement of the theoretical arguments for and against regulatory reform, the changing political scene in North America and the different mechanisms that can be used to return state-owned monopolies to the private sector. Part 2 presents the empirical evidence on ten years of airline deregulation in the United States and this review is matched by an assessment of the different situation in Europe where national governments are under pressure to follow the same path.

Defining planning as an inherent aspect of human life, Branch presents conclusions reached from 20 previous volumes dealing with different aspects and applications of planning, as well as from actual professional planning experiences. He shows how planning has been a directive force during human evolution and an intrinsic element in human reactions, actions, and activities.

Focusing on the existing situation in the United States, he examines the major difficulties confronting the country with respect to planning: problems of communication, poor legislative performance, educational deficiencies, and cultural materialism. Branch presents the fullest explanation available in the literature today of planning and its place in society, and he concludes with an examination of the potentialities and limitations of existing planning in America and its relation to human behavior.

Drawing upon experts in Asian economics, public management, law, and the physical and political sciences from leading universities around the world, the editors of this unusual volume examine the critical challenges now facing this important sector of the world: growth, income security, and fiscal reform; governance and public management; and technological innovation and the environment. The contributors address these policy questions from a variety of perspectives, recognizing their complexity and multidisciplinary implications. The result is a balanced mix of theory, applications, and case studies, providing depth and substance in a readable manner. Specialists in public policy and international commerce in fields of government and business will find this wide-ranging book, with its many challenging conclusions, to have broad, useful relevance to their studies and applications to their work.

For thirty years, Asia has been experiencing rapid economic growth and transformation. Higher standards of living, social and demographic transitions, and rising expectations have had a profound impact on many aspects of public policies in the region. Policy makers have found some issues, such as government finance and poverty reduction, easier to address, while issues such as the need for social safety nets, economic competition, and corporate governance have been relatively neglected. The 1997 economic crisis, the causes and implications of which are still being debated, complicated matters significantly and raised the stakes in the task of solving public problems. It is in this context that comparative public policy with an Asian focus has emerged as a subject of study in its own right. And it is that which the volume editors and their contributors explore now. In doing so they help to set an agenda for the worldwide policy debate already looming.

This important book presents new work by respected scholars in the field of public administration in Europe, and evaluates both American and European approaches to public sector management and administrative reform.The book begins with introductory chapters examining public management in Europe and the United States and explores the paradoxes that exist in administrative reform. Part two presents a wide range of case studies of European management reforms including the United Kingdom, France, Austria, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland. It offers a balanced view of the managerial trend which appears to be sweeping across Western Europe. This is achieved by presenting the full spectrum of case studies from success to failure. Balance is created by presenting counter-arguments and criticisms of the prevailing trend of reform. The third part considers management, legal state and democracy. Finally, the volume concludes with a North American perspective on the administrative reform in Europe. Public Management and Administrative Reform will be indispensable to academics, policymakers and management practitioners in the public sector, especially those working within Europe.

"Change (Transformation) in Government Organizations" discusses recent efforts to bring about change in government organizations. The book brings together contributions by a number of managers, practitioners, academics and consultants in the study of international, federal, state, and local government efforts to respond to increased calls for change (transformation) in public sector organizations. Each contributor describes their work in this area using as a backdrop the fact that public sector organizations continue to be under new and substantial pressures to change and transform themselves. Hence a collection of current contributions such as those in this book are intended to add to the ongoing debates and rewriting of the success and failures of change in public sector organizations. The ultimate purpose of this book is to further our knowledge about the related issues and current efforts to bring about change or transformation in public sector organizations. The contributors, all experts with extensive experience as change agents in both public and private sector organizations not only support their analyses and discussions of specific cases and change (transformation) management issues but also provide practical tools, ideas and lessons learned, intended to be generalizable to other public sector agencies and helpful to those responsible for developing, implementing and evaluating similar efforts in the years to come. The audience for the book will be government managers, scholars and others interested in undertaking or learning about such efforts.

The sound management of public finances is, in Williams' view, the most important factor in attaining the twin objectives of economic growth and improvement in the standard of living in small open developing economies. While looking at the challenges of public finance management in small states, with a focus on Barbados, this book suggests strategies of fiscal and microeconomic management for small economies that will permit them to ensure macroeconomic stability while promoting economic growth and development. In discussing the philosophy of public finance, it examines small size and openness, using both traditional criteria and modern perspectives of liberalized systems. It deals with the challenge of avoiding overly expansionary budgets and the need for counter cyclical policies in relation to macroeconomic objectives.

This book also discusses state involvement in commercial types of enterprise and the implications for efficiency and economic growth. The Keynesian approach to fiscal spending is compared with the structuralist approach, which takes into account initial conditions and inflexibilities facing small developing economies. The government's role in financing accelerated economic development, its social responsibility, and the balancing need for fiscal discipline are also considered. The public finance performance of governments is seen as facing important challenges to its capacity to champion economic development given the increasing global perception of a mostly regulatory and stabilizing role of government.

This study offers an unprecedented examination of the state, politics, and bureaucracy from a historical and comparative perspective. Case histories of a wide variety of bureaucratic traditions are provided in an effort to text a new theoretical approach in which the theory of the state and the theory of bureaucracy, both of which have so far developed without systematic interaction, are merged. Beginning with a chapter elucidating the editor's theoretical framework, the volume proceeds to compare state tradition and bureaucratic structures in both developed countries. Essays are included on nonstate societies--the United States and Great Britain--as well as classical state societies such as France and Germany.

Reductions in public sector spending mean voters will face a period of austerity, higher taxes and declining availability of public sector services. Prevailing public sector management philosophies are no longer applicable. To optimise future service provision with fewer resources will demand a reformation in organisational thinking and values.

• References hundreds of cases and civil liability suits against police and corrections agencies, including the latest U.S. Supreme Court decisions • Documents recent trends in litigation and financial penalties, including research findings • Includes current approaches to avoiding lawsuits through training and policy development • The most up-to-date and authoritative text available

A market economy and a more liberal society have brought great challenges to China 's outdated governance structure and personnel management. To improve decision-making in government and reshape the management system in face of a more complex economy, post-Mao authorities have implemented a number of administrative reforms, including civil service reform which emphasized on selecting and promoting public officials based on their capability and work performance. Thousands of positions have been filled since the civil service system was implemented nationwide in 1993. The Chinese civil service reform is of far-reaching significance because it had the potential to be a departure from the established structure of cadre personnel management system developed in the 1950s. However, after several years of policy development, scholars observe that the new reforms have done little to undermine the old cadre system. Is this true? Or does this conclusion over-simplify the complicated implementation of the reforms?

This book examines the implementation and performance of the on-going civil service reforms in China. Using the principal-agent framework, the author draw upon key case studies showing how the reforms affect civil servants incentives and behavior in the local context and the Chinese leadership 's control over the bureaucracy. China 's reform experience speaks directly to many Asian countries facing urgent need to improve state capacity as the global financial crisis unfolds.

Women remain dramatically underrepresented in elective office, including in entry-level political offices. While they enjoy the freedom to stand for office and therefore have an equal legal footing with men, this persistent gender imbalance raises pressing questions about democratic legitimacy, the inclusivity of American politics, and the quality of political representation. The reasons for women's underrepresentation remain the subject of much debate. One explanation-that the United States lacks sufficient openings for political newcomers-has become less compelling in recent years, as states that have adopted term limits have not seen the expected gains in women's office holding. Other accounts about candidate scarcity, gender inequalities in society, and the lingering effects of gendered socialization have some merit; however, these accounts still fail to explain the relatively low numbers. This book argues that a major problem with current accounts exists in their underlying assumption that there is a single model of candidate emergence. The prediction is that women's office holding will rise automatically as women acquire the same backgrounds as men and assimilate to men's pathways to office. In this view, the main reasons for women's political underrepresentation can be found in society rather than in politics. Carroll and Sanbonmatsu argue for a new approach that considers women on their own terms and that focuses on the political origins of women's representation. Drawing upon an original and comparative survey of women state legislators across all fifty states, from 1981 and 2008, and follow-up surveys after the 2008 elections, the authors find that gender differences in pathways to the legislatures, first evident in 1981, have been surprisingly persistent over time. They found that, while the ambition framework better explains men's decisions to run for office, women are much more reliant on the existence of organizational and party support. By rethinking the nature of women's representation, this study calls for a reorientation of academic research on women's election to office and provides insight into new strategies for political practitioners concerned about women's political equality.

First published in 1973, Efficiency Criteria for Nationalised Industries asks by what criteria we should judge the efficiency of nationalised industries, what we mean by saying they should be run commercially and where the public interest should lie. In this work, Professor Nove believes we answer these questions incorrectly due to a lack of understanding of economic theory and a desire to relate real world economics to that of the text book. The author says many economists, in a world of indivisibilities, complementarities and systems, persist in thinking in terms of one-dimensional, fragmented marginalism. Professor Nove, who is known for his writings on the Soviet economy, raises many points relevant to the East as well as the West. His work contributes to the economics of socialism, while also making the case for greater realism in economic theory in general.

First published in 1984, this book examines the style of leadership amongst senior civil servants and its impact on administrative reform by investigating the work of Sir Percival Waterfield who was First Civil Service Commissioner from 1939 to 1951. He was responsible for setting up the Civil Service Selection Board which was the key institution in the pioneering new approach to personnel selection initiated in Britain after the Second World War. It has been regarded as the model for personnel recruitment in other contexts and for civil service recruitment in other countries. The book raises fundamental questions about the criteria for recruitment and promotion of leading officials in British central government and offers a rare glimpse of the day to day work of top civil servants and the administrative culture in which they operate.

The private sector involvement in public service is intended to achieve efficiency gain and better service quality through increasing private sector finance and expertise. However, these benefits are most often not achieved in developing countries due to investment risk of private finance, and problems of capacity and regulation of the private sector. This book examines private sector involvement (PSI) in solid waste collection by exploring the influence of private sector capacity and Local Governments regulations on private sector performance in terms of productivity and service quality. PSI in public service provision evolved to deal with market and government failures, so this study uses market and regulatory theories to explore the gaps in policy and practice of PSI and the factor explaining private sector performance in five cities in Ghana.

The study shows there were weak regulatory practices and non-adherence to contractual obligations (unsigned contracts and delayed payment of subsidy), and consequently led to disincentives for full cost recovery and better service quality. However, there is now a gradual well functioning system being put in place with the recent competitive bidding in two cities with signing of contracts and city-wide user charging. This study concludes that the solutions to the problem of solid waste collection and management in developing countries hinge on adherence to formal rules of regulation, use of appropriate cost recovery mechanism for low income group, and restructuring of institutional arrangement to enforce legislation.

This straightforward and practical guide outlines a strategic approach to public involvement in government decision making. Prepares public managers for the difficult task of involving citizens more fully in the affairs of government while maintaining effectiveness and efficiency. Written in easy-to-understand terms, Public Participation in Public Decisions presents the Effective Decision Model of Public Involvement that managers will find to be an invaluable asset when making decisions about when and how to involve the public.

This multiauthor reference handbook gives a detailed, objective picture of the evolution, structure, and processes of public administration in representative Third World countries. Written by an international group of specialists with first-hand knowledge of the subject, it presents empirical studies of developing nations in Asia, the Middle East, North and Sub-Saharan Africa, the West Indies, and Latin America. The resulting data are shaped by the editor into a theoretical framework delineating the complex relationships of state, bureaucracy, and class in the Third World.

SubramaniaM's introduction provides a critical overview of development literature in the field. Each case study begins with an historical introduction and discusses the political, executive, and the administrative structures and processes. Among the specific topics covered are public enterprises, administrative departments, personnel, financial administration, and regional and local administrative units. The majority of the systems studied are affected by the unregulated power of public enterprises, the persistence of colonial legacies, and the elitism of the bureaucracy. The concluding section relates these common elements to the sociohistorical characteristics of the middle-class groups that dominate both politics and public administration. Offering new research findings and a useful theoretical synthesis, this study will promote a clearer understanding of the internal political processes of Third World nations and be of compelling interest to specialists and students concerned with Third World political economy, comparative government, and international political economy.