Is our civil service fit for purpose? Michael Coolican takes John Reid's damning statement about the Home Office as his point of departure for a comprehensive overview and evaluation of the machinery behind the government and the people who make public services work on a daily basis. Beginning with Henry VIII's chief minister Thomas Cromwell, Michael Coolican takes us on an odyssey through the history of the British civil service, starting with a time when public positions were sold and traded through Royal Warrant. Coolican examines the radical reforms of the Victorian era which entrenched a culture of elitism, misogyny and distrust of high-quality data as a basis for decision making, that, in some areas, persists to this day. A former high-level civil servant with forty years of experience, Coolican has produced a pithy and, where necessary, ruthless analysis of the civil service and its relationship with government, especially at Cabinet level, bringing to bear detailed and extensive research informed by a true insider.

This open access book presents an alternative to capitalism and state socialism through the modelling of a post-market and post-state utopia based on an upscaling of the commons, feminist political economy and democratic and council-based planning approaches. It discusses the left's need to explore non-capitalist modes of production, the inability of green or socialist market economies to produce real social and ecological change, and the need to look beyond traditional ideas of reform and revolution. The book discusses how a socio-economic organisation beyond money, wage labour, patriarchal division of work and centralised state planning may look like. It develops an approach to societal transformation based on seed forms of commons practices and social movements. This book will be relevant to activists, students and researchers interested in fundamental social change, political economy and feminist and Marxist economics. This is an open access book.

"Ethics in Public Administration" provides public administrators with a theoretical knowledge of ethical principles and a practical framework for applying them. Sheeran reviews the place of ethics in philosophy, links it to political and administrative theory and practice, and analyzes the ethical theories and concepts from which ethical principles are derived.

Before delving into ethics as part of philosophy, Sheeran provides the reader with a brief overview of philosophy and its principal subjects, including ontology, epistemology, and psychology. He offers several definitions of ethics, and discusses both the objectivist (absolutist) and interpretivist (situation ethics) perspectives. Sheeran focuses on the subject matter of ethics, human actions, and their morality, exploring Natural Law, man-made law, and conscience as sources for determining the morality of human action. In later chapters, he applies his discussion of ethics to such controversial policy issues as suicide, murder, abortion, sterilization, capital punishment, war, lying, and strikes. Recommended for graduate and upper division undergraduate courses in public administration, public policy, management, and administrative behavior.

This highly topical book explores key issues in evaluating the long-run implications of population ageing for pensions, taxation, intergenerational equity and social welfare. Societies face long-term phenomena, such as demographic change and climate change that impose costs and benefits far into the future. These present challenges for policymakers in planning intertemporal consumption paths that balance the goals of efficiency and equity. An exploration of these issues, with respect to population ageing in particular, is the primary motivation for this book. John Creedy and Ross Guest evaluate these problems with a particular focus on the role of concepts, assumptions and value judgements. This book will be a fascinating read for researchers interested in the social evaluation of population ageing and climate change. Public policy makers and advisers will find the analysis of practical policy questions such as alternative regimes for taxing public pensions of special interest. Graduate students of macroeconomics and public economics will also find helpful discussions of social discounting, the efficiency and equity effects of tax smoothing, and potential new effects of population ageing on labour productivity.

The book Profiles of Anthropological Praxis is something of a sequel to Anthropological Praxis: Translating Knowledge into Action, published in 1987 (Westview Press). As a casebook of anthropological projects, the new version shares a fascinating breadth of award-winning projects undertaken by applied anthropologists to address the needs of an array of stakeholders and situations. Each chapter will describe a problem and how a project attempted to address it with the following structure: Problem Overview, Project Description, Anthropologist's Role and Impact, Outcomes, and the Anthropological Difference - that is, how the unique approaches of anthropology were effectively applied to address human problems.

The authors provide a fresh and accessible multi-disciplinary perspective on public management reform in this study. The work includes a broad survey of the paradigms and patterns that have shaped and differentiated the reform process in different countries. The book focuses on two themes not usually considered together. First, the scope and limits of the role economists have played in reform processes, not simply in terms of providing analytical models but in the actual leadership required to advance reform coherently. Secondly, the authors examine the importance of developing leadership at all levels of the public sector to take advantage of the opportunities reforms have generated, and to create new sources of public value. In bringing these themes together they uniquely show how the family of economic theories (public choice, agency theory and new institutional economics) can be adapted to explain why there might be a demand for developing public sector leadership that reflects an 'appreciative' managerial style as opposed to the hard-edged contractualism often associated with public management reform.

This edited volume discusses the rise, positioning and role of small-scale, voluntary development organisations in the Global North. This book presents and reflects upon unique data and analyses of a growing global community of researchers involved in this field of study located in a diverse set of countries in the Global North and South. This book presents a multi-cited perspective on this alternative development actor. The first part of the book starts from a northern perspective and from an analysis of how and why citizens actively engage in the field of international development. Starting from this understanding of this particular development actor, the second part will delve into the role of these actors in the global south, particularly related to topics as partnerships, embeddedness, legitimacy, accountability, exit strategies, sustainability and solidarity; all themes central to debates in the field of development. Through examples from different countries in the Global South, part 2 explores these themes from different standpoints and thus also provides the reader with thick descriptions.

Several Supreme Court battles during the Warren-Burger era finally brought public sector employees under constitutional protection, setting forth a new legal framework for personnel management. This new framework requires administrators to manage personnel foremost in compliance with the established constitutional principles without necessarily sacrificing efficiency. "Public Personnel Administration and Constitutional ValueS" is a sketch of this new framework in which constitutionalism and judicial accountability become defining characteristics.

In the text the author provides, for the first time, a comprehensive review of case law principles in non-technical terms that are central to today's personnel management and decision-making: First Amendment freedoms, procedural due process, equal protection of the laws with respect to anti-discrimination, affirmative action, and compensation, and governmental and official liability. The author concludes that although excessive legalism may undoubtedly cause administrative timidity, a constitutionally competent administrator should be able to overcome this timidity; more important, a democratic administration grounded in constitutional values promises the best of all possible alternatives. This book is an invaluable addition to education and training for the students of public administration, as well as public administration practitioners at all levels in the United States. It also provides an important insight for the scholars of public administration in other parts of the world.

• 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

This book compares contemporary civil service systems across East and Southeast Asia, a dynamic region of greater diversity in local administrative tradition, imported models of modern administration, and the character of prevailing political institutions. Featuring chapters on Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines, this book provides a detailed analysis of key aspects of the civil service system, including centralization, recruitment, classification, openness of positions, performance assessment, promotion, training, and senior civil service. It distinguishes four modes of public employment, namely, bureaucratization, professionalization, politicization, and marketization, to develop a conceptual framework for comparing the civil service system at the operational level. The region's contemporary civil service systems appear to be hybrid systems that combine, at varying degree, these modes of public employment, responding to administrative reform pressures. The patterns of public employment across East and Southeast Asia reflect local administrative traditions, imported Western models of administration, and the relative timing of democratization and bureaucratization. With contributions from leading local experts across the region, this book will be invaluable to students, scholars, and practitioners interested in Asian public administration, especially civil service systems.

State and Local Public Finance provides a comprehensive and sophisticated analysis of state and local government public finance practices and issues, using the basic tools of economics. This fifth edition maintains its focus on key local services such as education, health care, and transportation and brings in new coverage of land use and housing, applications from behavioral economics, and more international comparisons. This textbook provides an examination and analysis of public finance practices and problems in a federal fiscal system, focusing on the fiscal behavior and policies of state and local governments. Modern economic theory is applied to examine the way key institutions are used to produce and finance services and to provide evaluation of alternative policies. This stalwart text will continue to be invaluable reading for those who study public finance, local government finance, urban economics, public policy, and public administration.

State and Local Public Finance provides a comprehensive and sophisticated analysis of state and local government public finance practices and issues, using the basic tools of economics. This fifth edition maintains its focus on key local services such as education, health care, and transportation and brings in new coverage of land use and housing, applications from behavioral economics, and more international comparisons. This textbook provides an examination and analysis of public finance practices and problems in a federal fiscal system, focusing on the fiscal behavior and policies of state and local governments. Modern economic theory is applied to examine the way key institutions are used to produce and finance services and to provide evaluation of alternative policies. This stalwart text will continue to be invaluable reading for those who study public finance, local government finance, urban economics, public policy, and public administration.

This book provides a comprehensive examination of the police role from within a broader philosophical context. Contending that the police are in the midst of an identity crisis that exacerbates unjustified law enforcement tactics, Luke William Hunt examines various major conceptions of the police-those seeing them as heroes, warriors, and guardians. The book looks at the police role considering the overarching societal goal of justice and seeks to present a synthetic theory that draws upon history, law, society, psychology, and philosophy. Each major conception of the police role is examined in light of how it affects the pursuit of justice, and how it may be contrary to seeking justice holistically and collectively. The book sets forth a conception of the police role that is consistent with the basic values of a constitutional democracy in the liberal tradition. Hunt's intent is that clarifying the police role will likewise elucidate any constraints upon policing strategies, including algorithmic strategies such as predictive policing. This book is essential reading for thoughtful policing and legal scholars as well as those interested in political philosophy, political theory, psychology, and related areas. Now more than ever, the nature of the police role is a philosophical topic that is relevant not just to police officials and social scientists, but to everyone.

Nonprofit community-based social services teams deliver programs and resources to communities facing the greatest symptoms of inequality in this country. We are fortunate that front-lines professionals triage high-risk situations and cultivate opportunities for generational healing. Yet their work has not been comprehensively explored in the science on workplace chronic stress and vicarious trauma (CSVT). Few know that among tested teams, 52% of individuals face work-based chronic stress and 24% experience vicarious trauma. This work starts a public and transparent conversation about nonprofit community-based social services professionals, their important work, their suffering and the need to mitigate CSVT. In order to make a change, this book contextualizes why CSVT is left primarily unmitigated and unacknowledged in community-based organizations. The science covered in this book demonstrates that the very job duties that require highly adept and empathetic skills pull the professionals closest to the stress and trauma of those who they serve. Social science research also directs attention to nonprofit sector culture and norms that perpetuate inequality internally, further creating an employment context of suffering. Shedding light on the factors that create unmitigated and unacknowledged CSVT allows for the implementation of both short-term and long-term solutions.

Fully updated edition of the bestselling book in healthcare operations. Practical case studies are used throughout to provide invaluable resources for training students and practitioners in healthcare. An ideal resource for students of healthcare management at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. It can also be used by practitioners. The book translates complex operational models for busy practising healthcare professionals so that the methods can be easily applied to a workplace scenario.

This book provides the reader with the basis for a theoretical understanding of public-sector finance in general - and more specifically, a comprehensive, policy-oriented application of that understanding to Japanese public finance. Particular emphasis is placed upon developing tools which can be used both theoretically and empirically to clarify essential economic concerns in Japan's public sector. These include the macroeconomic incidence of fiscal decentralization, dependence on government bonds for covering fiscal deficits, and social security reform. In analyzing Japan's underperforming public sector, the authors develop and recommend policy solutions aimed at achieving Japan's growth potential, improving the quality of the public sector, and strengthening the sector's contribution to the Japanese economy. Guiding the reader toward an overall understanding of public-sector reforms, decentralization and fiscal policy in Japan, this book will strongly appeal to academics, students and researchers with an interest in modern public finance theory and macroeconomic analysis.

This timely Handbook addresses the concepts of stress and well-being among workers in various public sector roles and occupations across the globe. Emphasizing the importance of well-being and stress prevention initiatives in ever-changing workplace environments, this Handbook highlights successful organizational initiatives and provides insight into best practice for promoting healthy employees and workplaces. Chapters analyze the new and ongoing challenges public sector organizations face such as: cost cutting, pressures to improve performance, changes in societal and workplace demographics, and increasing levels of stress and strain amongst their employees. This wide-ranging Handbook utilizes empirical research, literature reviews and case studies to draw greater attention to these and other challenges. Containing contributions from leading international experts in their respective fields, the contributors hope that this multidisciplinary Handbook will help to enhance the health and well-being of public sector employees and the sector's performance and contribution to society. The Handbook of Research on Stress and Well-Being in the Public Sector will be of value to researchers and practitioners interested in the public sector and both individual and organizational health and performance. This will also be a key resource for public sector and government professionals responsible for human resource management and work and health.

This book is a stepping stone toward solving public sector human capital challenges in Zimbabwe as it equips human capital managers with solutions to key issues in the public sector. In Zimbabwe, the public sector human capital drives the economy as over half of the population access their services through public enterprises. Government is the major agent in economic and infrastructure development as well as the production of goods and services. However, Zimbabwe's public service is underperforming due to poorly motivated and managed employees who do not respond to the needs of its clients. This is a cause of concern as the public sector human capital is central to the overall performance of the public sector. Often public sector managers and leaders lack advanced, relevant, and dynamic skills and knowledge to deal with human resource challenges within the New Public Management environment. It is critical for the public sector to transform its human resource management to suit twenty-first-century needs. Effective human resource management in the public sector leads to economic growth and therefore the achievement of the Zimbabwe National Vision 2030. Therefore, this book serves as a guide for public sector managers and those directly or indirectly involved in human capital management. It provides in-depth knowledge and guidance in effective human capital management within the context of the public sector in Zimbabwe.

To stay ahead of the competition, the public sector has to ensure an effective talent management strategy to attract, develop and retain talents. Effective talent management is about aligning the organisation's approach to talent with the strategic aims and purpose of the organisation. This book adopts a comparative country analysis, which takes into account the institutional emphasis, organisational configuration and unique characteristics of the public sector. Against the backdrop of three major stages of administrative development, i.e., the colonial, postcolonial and modern periods, this book unpacks how the talent schemes have been shaped by the reforms, experiences, cross-country knowledge transfers and evolved over time responding to globalisation and digitalisation in Southeast Asia. This book will be of great interest to scholars and public managers working on public administration and civil service reforms in Asia towards developing a contextualised understanding of talent management and leadership development in the region.

Trust, Power and Public Sector Leadership: A Relational Approach provides a critical theoretical treatment of trust in the realm of public management and governance. The public trust agenda is an antidote to rampant bureaucratic control and, in particular, the marketization and instrumentalization associated with New Public Management. The book approaches trust from a relational perspective that draws on insights from trust research, modern sociology and organization and management theory, while lending support to developments in New Public Governance. It provides a theoretical framework that distinguishes between institutional, economic, moral and relational trust and shows how a relational perspective is able to incorporate insights from the other paradigms in an inclusive approach to trust processes. Apart from providing a theoretical reading of the workings of trust in public organizations, the book addresses how trust relates to power and control along with notions of debureaucratization, post-bureaucratic organization and post-heroic leadership. It also shows how the trust agenda, in theory and practice, is related to social capital and thus efforts to strengthen social relations and collaboration in and around public organizations. Speaking of practice, the book takes its empirical point of departure in the Danish public sector. However, the aim of the book is not to promote the High trust Danish case as a benchmark or best practice. The aim is to theorize and help make sense of this particular experience by applying general theory to it and extracting general insights - with broader application - from its particular manifestations and outcomes. There is a need for more elaborate theorizing about trust and power in a public sector setting, and the Danish experience is useful as a starting point for this ambition.

The globally spreading privatisation wave that occurred in the 1990s deeply changed the structure of economic institutions worldwide. This turmoil overturned not only economic institutions, but shared cultural and societal institutions as well. This book is the result of an investigation into the history of the privatisation of the steel industry in Italy, completed between 1994 and 1995. It explores the history of the Italian steel industry by looking at the interplay of local intertwined interests, political relations, and ideological formations that characterised an idiosyncratic hegemonic historical bloc. Rather than stigmatising this pattern as the legacy of a dysfunctional provincialism, the authors mobilise Gramsci's theory of hegemony to explain how the Italian privatisation process unfolded to accommodate economic pressures, political interests, and ideological constraints of a hegemonic social group, or aggregation of social groups. Thus, in reconstructing the privatisation of Italian steel, this book proposes a hegemony theory of privatisation and, more generally, describes a model that explains how political and cultural dynamics give rise to idiosyncratic local variations in globally spreading policies. It will be of interest to researchers, academics, and students in the fields of business history, economics, sociology, and political science.

Since the height of the privatization debate in the 1990s, changes in government policy have resulted in significant transformation in the public sector. Some organizations have made the transition from government bureaucracy to business venture successfully; others have struggled to relinquish their traditional bureaucratic culture. In this book, Pillay and Bilney explore the cultural changes occurring within the public sector and the effects that government mandated change initiatives have actually had. The culmination of this book was due to the subject expertise and guidance of Professor Robert Jones at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia. It provides perspectives on the efficacy of cultural change in the Australian public sector, and explores the practical implications for society and government as it seeks to entrench the culture of the citizen as customer. It is particularly useful for researchers and organizations searching for ways to improve service delivery within the confines of particular market positions.

1) This book examines the lives and challenges faced by women civil servants in India. 2) It looks at thier work conditions; job satisfaction; degrees of authority; self-perception, besides the troubles they have to face with sexual harassment; equality; availability of facilities and safety; and the proverbial glass ceiling. 3) This book will be of interest to departments of gender studies, public administration, and management across UK and USA and to organizations working on issues of equal opportunity in employment, positive discrimination, and reservations in public institutions.

In 1972 the United States Congress established the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) as a small analytical agency to become better informed about implications of new and emerging technologies. OTA's principal products - technology assessments - were designed to inform Congressional deliberations and debates about issues that involved science and technology dimensions but without recommending specific policy actions.
OTA's unique governance by a bicameral and bipartisan board of House and Senate Members helped ensure that issues the agency addressed were tightly aligned with the Congressional agenda and that assessments were undertaken with partisan and other stakeholder bias minimized. Over a span of 23 years OTA completed 755 reports on a wide range of topics including health, energy, defense, space, information technology, environment, and many others until Congress terminated the agency's annual appropriation of funds to operate in 1995 as one of a series of budget austerity measures. A number of organizations have sought to fill the gap left in the wake of OTA's closure, but with mixed results to date.
Congress' Own Think Tank recaps the OTA experience - it's creation, operation, and circumstances of its closure - and that of organizations attempting to fill the gap since OTA's closure as well as a number of new forces shaping the current context for science and technology issues facing the Congress. All these factors are important to consider in fashioning new or adapting existing sources of science and technology advice for the Congress.

* Addresses a gap in the current strategy textbook offering by combining theoretical grounding with tools for practical implementation, applied specifically to public sector strategic management * Clear step-by-step approach rich with international case studies and real-life examples, as well as a substantial offering of complementary online resources * Suitable for both advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of Public Sector Strategy and Strategic Management, as well as practitioners and consultants working within public sector organisations * Supports readers in understanding strategic management and its basic concepts, whilst contextualising thoroughly to the public sector and taking the reader further into more up-to-date evaluations and analysis within strategic management than the current textbook offering