The subject of this book is one of the most central and timely in Public Administration - how to make sense of critical theory, and (especially) how to assess its implications for everyday practice. Charles Frederick Abel and Arthur Sementelli argue that Evolutionary Critical Theory - a synergistic employment of the methodologies of traditional social science, institutionalism, and hermeneutics - provides fresh insights into the core issues of Public Administration theory and practice. While some may argue that public administration theory is an oxymoron, this ground-breaking volume explodes that notion and argues that Evolutionary Critical Theory is an especially helpful and powerful tool for administrative scholars and practitioners in their quest to realize good government.

Municipal Services and Employees in the Modern City considers the roles played by local institutions and particular processes that shaped the urban fabric. It rediscovers from models and maps the constituent dynamics of cities since the beginning of the nineteenth century, and demonstrates how patterns evolved in the way services and locations were organized; how urban transformation was underpinned by structural development, and how the municipal workforce became an integral part of the agencies of change. Municipal Services and Employees in the Modern City suggests that municipal experiences are central to the development of urban studies. Its focus of analysis ranges across Europe and the Americas from high-ranking bureaucrats to firefighters, engineers to accountants, and town clerks to public servants. Each essay provides detailed information on how change was formulated or resisted within the administrative apparatus, offering insight into a sector of the 'white-collar' class and the degree of commitment to public values often at times of social and political upheaval. They explore the course of relationships between local and central government, and the shifting bounds of municipal interventionism over a broad period; whilst incorporating a social history approach to interpret the day-to-day responsibilities and routine of administration.

The readings in this collection provide a comprehensive guide to the established knowledge and emerging issues regarding democratizing public bureaucracies by making them socially representative. The book includes both classic and cutting-edge works, and presents a contemporary model for analyzing representative bureaucracy that focuses on the linkages between social origins, life experiences, attitudes, and administrators' decision making. The selections address many of the leading concerns of contemporary politics, including diversity and equal opportunity policy, democratic control of administration, administrative performance, the pros and cons of the new public management, and reinventing government. Many of the field's most cited works are included. Each chapter starts with an introductory summary of the key questions under consideration and concludes with discussion questions. With it's extensive selection of classic and contemporary readings, the book will have wide application for courses on bureaucracy, public administration, and public sector human resource management.

The readings in this collection provide a comprehensive guide to the established knowledge and emerging issues regarding democratizing public bureaucracies by making them socially representative. The book includes both classic and cutting-edge works, and presents a contemporary model for analyzing representative bureaucracy that focuses on the linkages between social origins, life experiences, attitudes, and administrators' decision making. The selections address many of the leading concerns of contemporary politics, including diversity and equal opportunity policy, democratic control of administration, administrative performance, the pros and cons of the new public management, and reinventing government. Many of the field's most cited works are included. Each chapter starts with an introductory summary of the key questions under consideration and concludes with discussion questions. With it's extensive selection of classic and contemporary readings, the book will have wide application for courses on bureaucracy, public administration, and public sector human resource management.

Based on new field research, this book assesses the current state of governance and public sector reforms in eleven Asian countries and jurisdictions, especially in the wake of the recent regional financial crisis that seriously affected some of them. It analyses reform efforts comparatively against a backdrop of governance problems, and seeks to establish whether these efforts represent a substantive shift in attitudes towards reform or whether they serve simply to reinforce existing practices. The authors explore a number of important themes that are central to governance and public sector reform issues. These include the role of the state, the success or failure of organizational reforms, corruption, the applicability of the new public management model in the Asian context, and the governance values and reform models promoted by regional and international agencies.

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The revolution in public management has led many reformers to call for public managers to reinvent themselves as public entrepreneurs. Larry D. Terry opposes this view, and presents a normative theory of administrative leadership that integrates legal, sociological, and constitutional theory.

Social work has become a business. The traditional distinction drawn between social work as a non-commercial activity in the public and voluntary sectors of the welfare state and private commercial activities driven by the market's profit motive has largely disappeared. In The Social Work Business John Harris addresses the introduction and consolidation of business thinking and ways of operating in social work and considers the consequences for service users, carers, voluntary organisations and social workers.
The book traces the development of the social work business from its establishment under Thatcherism to its modernisation under New Labour. It looks in detail at the use of capitalist sector methods - the heightened use of surveillance, the increase in managerial control, changes in work practices - and how this is being reflected in social work education.
The Social Work Business provides a radical reappraisal of the far-reaching changes the profession has undergone. The sources of uneasiness experienced by many social workers, faced with a transformation in the organisational culture in which they work, are thrown into sharp relief and opened up for debate.

Social work has become a business. The traditional distinction drawn between social work as a non-commercial activity in the public and voluntary sectors of the welfare state and private commercial activities driven by the market's profit motive has largely disappeared. In The Social Work Business John Harris addresses the introduction and consolidation of business thinking and ways of operating in social work and considers the consequences for service users, carers, voluntary organisations and social workers.

The book traces the development of the social work business from its establishment under Thatcherism to its modernisation under New Labour. It looks in detail at the use of capitalist sector methods - the heightened use of surveillance, the increase in managerial control, changes in work practices - and how this is being reflected in social work education.

The Social Work Business provides a radical reappraisal of the far-reaching changes the profession has undergone. The sources of uneasiness experienced by many social workers, faced with a transformation in the organisational culture in which they work, are thrown into sharp relief and opened up for debate.

The nation's federal, state, and local public service is in deep trouble. Not even the most talented, dedicated, well- compensated, well-trained, and well-led public servants can serve the public well if they must operate under perverse personnel and procurement regulations that punish innovation and promote inefficiency. Many attempts have been made to determine administrative problems in the public service and come up with viable solutions. Two of the most important--the 1990 report of the National Commission on the Public Service, led by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul A. Volcker, and the 1993 report of the National Commission on the State and Local Public Service, led by former Mississippi Governor William F. Winter--recommended " deregulating the public service." Deregulating the public service essentially means altering or abolishing personnel and procurement regulations that deplete government workers' creativity, reduce their productivity, and make a career in public service unattractive to many talented, energetic, and public-spirited citizens. But will it work? With the benefit of a historical perspective on the development of American public service from the days of the progressives to the present, the contributors to this book argue that deregulating the public service is a necessary but insufficient condition for much of the needed improvement in governmental administration. Avoiding simple solutions and quick fixes for long-standing ills, they recommend new and large-scale experiments with deregulating the public service at all levels of government. In addition to editor John DiIulio, the contributors are Paul A. Volcker, former chairman of the FederalReserve, now at Princeton University; former Mississippi Governor William F. Winter; Gerald J. Garvey, Princeton; John P. Burke, University of Vermont; Melvin J. Dubnick, Rutgers; Constance Horner, former director of the Federal Office of Personnel Management, now at Brookings; Mark Alan Hughes, Harvard; Steven Kelman, Harvard; Donald F. Kettl, University of Wisconsin at Madison; Mark H. Moore, Harvard; Richard P. Nathan, State University of New York at Albany; Neal R. Peirce, The National Review; and James Q. Wilson, UCLA.

This engaging book presents a model for personal reflection on what a career in public service means. It's designed not to convince the reader to take up a public service career, but rather to invite him or her to explore the implications for one's identity that are inherent in the public service life. Lively and anecdotal, Invitation to Public Administration directly confronts the various difficult issues involved with a public service career even as it evokes self-reflection. It is equally useful for undergraduate through Ph.D. level readers, and it is ideal supplemental reading for any foundational course in Public Administration. The book will also stimulate public service professionals seeking fresh insights for their own careers.

To keep government operating smoothly, changes in public management policy and strategy usually follow the old rule of change--that it must evolve in a systematic and incremental fashion. But in today's unpredictable world of shrinking budgets, demands for better service, and greater accountability, playing by the old rules just doesn't make sense.
In this book, L. Douglas Kiel presents a framework that addresses the new chaotic reality of public management and the need for responsive change and innovation. By acknowledging the potential for positive change and renewal that can arise from uncertainty and instability, Kiel offers managers a paradigm for transforming government performance.
In easy to understand terms, the author offers an overview of the concepts of chaos theory and the science of complexity and he demonstrates how public administrators can apply these concepts to create a new vision of organizational change. The book presents a range of both traditional and innovative management techniquesshaping organizational cultures, flattening hierarchies, and re-engineering work--and evaluates their capacity to allow organizational systems to respond to change.
Written for public administrators and the faculty and students of public management, this book describes the importance of disorder, instability, and change and examines how new chaos theories are applied to public management. Drawing on data from the author's case studies, the book is filled with charts, graphs, and practical computer spreadsheet exercises designed to give public managers and students of public management hands-on experience to meet the challenges of organizational change.

Routledge Library Editions: Public Enterprise and Privatization (14 Volume set) presents titles, originally published between 1933 and 1991. The set covers both public enterprise and privatization and the impact they have had in the developed and developing world from the start of the twentieth century through to the early 1990s. Written by key figures in the field, it will be of particular interest to students of business, economics, finance and industry.

The Conservative's privatisation programme was one of the most ambitious aspects of their attempt to redraft the political and economic map of the United Kingdom. Originally published in 1988, this book explores the processes of privatisation from a variety of standpoints. Its contributors include academics, enterprise executives and government officials, many of whom had been closely involved in the programme. Fiscal, legal and social aspects of privatisation are explored but the book treats the subject as more than an immediate political issue and takes the opportunity to discuss the success - or otherwise - of public enterprise and to explore the implication of the UK experience for other countries which have an interest in privatisation.

Originally published in 1959, the author has observed at first hand the workings of public enterprise in Britain. He has coupled objectivity with an acute sense of economic perception and has produced a clear and ordered study of the workings of nationalization in industry at the time. His book does not contain an argument on whether nationalization is desirable or not. On the assumption that there is nationalization he attempts to discuss certain important problems raised by it in the fields of management, pricing, resource allocation and public control. He hopes that a discussion of this nature will contribute towards ensuring the most satisfactory results from nationalization.

Originally published in 1986, this volume brings together papers on the organisational structure of select public enterprises from nine countries, developed and developing. They are set in different forms, work in different sectors and have diverse experiences, often on similar issues. The papers are written by top executives of the respective enterprises and, therefore, contain an authentic presentation of the problems and processes of organisation. The editor has included, at the beginning, an analytical review on certain fundamental aspects of organisational structure which, for the purpose of this volume, has been conceived in wide terms. Every one of these aspects is not exactly covered by every empirical paper. At the end he has provided a comparative review, trying to keep to a minimum repetition of material from the papers.

Originally published in 1971, when nationalized industries employed about 7 per cent of the national labour force, created about 10 per cent of the gross domestic product and had annual investment programmes which were equal to those of all private manufacturing put together. Even this understates the scope of public enterprise at the time, since there were many other organizations, ranging from the BBC to the Public Trustee, which were semi-autonomous public enterprises, but not nationalized industries. Moreover, the public enterprise sector continued to grow, even under Conservative governments, and there were many reasons for thinking that no government would succeed in reversing this trend, for it was felt unlikely that, as government became more complex, it would disgorge many new activities which would be given a semi-autonomous, that is, public enterprise status. The author, drawing on personal experience, shows that the facts of ministerial and parliamentary control were very different from what the public and Parliament thought at the time. He describes the very great practical independence of the Boards and also how much Ministers had come to rely on persuasion (which not only can impose serious waste of time and money on both Boards and Government but is also inefficient). Ministers have least power where the aims of public enterprise are social rather than commercial. If there were no changes, the growth of public enterprise to achieve social purposes would mean an important decline in the power of Parliament and Ministers. This book explores solutions to this problem and concludes that the government must build up a cadre and capacity for financial control which at the time were lacking to it.

Public enterprises have played a central part in the development of all mixed economies in the post-war period, but they are now in a crisis phase. Privatisation has pushed back the level of public enterprise almost throughout the world. Where public enterprises remain, they are being brought under significant reforms. Originally published in 1991, this book presents a comprehensive critique of public enterprise, analysing why its performance has fallen far short of expectations. Part one is concerned with the establishment of public enterprises: the case for them, the circumstances in which they emerged, the extra enterprise objectives attached to them, and the decisions on their investment feasibility and capital structure. Part two looks at the working of public enterprises: the state of their financial performance, the peculiarities of pricing, the determination of targets which they should meet, the continuous monitoring and evaluation of their operations. Macro concerns are the focus of Part three. Among the issues addressed are the level of indirect taxation and subsidisation implicit in the pricing structures of public enterprises, the links between public enterprise and the public exchequer and the implications of their operations for distributional equity. In Part four the extent to which privatisation can solve the problems of public enterprise is discussed. The book ends with some broad conclusions on the future of public enterprise. Throughout, the approach is analytical, but the arguments are supported by extensive examples from both developed and developing economies.

New public management is a topical phrase to describe how management techniques from the private sector are now being applied to public services. This book provides a completely up-to-date overview of the main theoretical models of public sector management, and examines the key changes that have occurred as more and more public services are contracted out to private organisations, as the public sector itself grapples with 'internal markets'. Drawing on economics, organisational theory and poliltics, Jan-Erik Lane presents new public management from an analytical perspective. This book uses game theory and empirical studies in order to assess the pros and cons of new public management.

For the public sector, which is globally the largest employer of people and repository of information, managing information and knowledge is an extremely problematic area to address. The essence of both resources is that they are intangible, their impact and value cannot be measured through traditional accounting methods, yet they are also, paradoxically, where the greatest value and potential for improvement is located. In this book Eileen Milner introduces the reader to the concepts of information and knowledge and explores a variety of tools and techniques which may be usefully adopted in actively managing and developing these resources. Wherever possible real-life public sector case studies and examples are used to illustrate good practice, as well as some of the pitfalls of poor application. Down-to-earth and taking into account the critically important characteristics unique to public services, this will be an illuminating text both for managers and policy makers already working in the public sector and for those considering doing so.

Author Biography:
Eileen Milner is a Principal Lecturer in Information Management at the University of North London

Cost control and cost planning are an integral part of quantity surveying and construction management courses.
This new book on building design uses programmed learning to demonstrate the ideas of cost control and cost planning, from first principles through practice. Worked examples are used throughout the concise and easily accessible text.

New public management is a topical phrase to describe how management techniques from the private sector are now being applied to public services. This book provides a completely up-to-date overview of the main theoretical models of public sector management, and examines the key changes that have occurred as more and more public services are contracted out to private organisations, as the public sector itself grapples with 'internal markets'. Drawing on economics, organisational theory and poliltics, Jan-Erik Lane presents new public management from an analytical perspective. This book uses game theory and empirical studies in order to assess the pros and cons of new public management.

Public administration is commonly assumed to be a young discipline, rooted in law and political science, with little history of its own. Likewise, teaching and scholarship in this field is often career oriented and geared either toward the search for immediately usable knowledge or guidelines and prescriptions for the future. Although most administrative scientists would acknowledge that their field has a history, their time horizon is limited to the recent past. Raadschelders demonstrates that public administration has in fact a long-standing tradition, both in practice and in writing; administration has been an issue ever since human beings recognized the need to organize themselves in order to organize the environment in which they lived. This history, in turn, underlines the need for administrators to be aware of the importance and contemporary impact of past decisions and old traditions. In seeking to go beyond the usual problem-solving and future-oriented studies of public administration, this volume adds greatly to the cognitive richness of this field of research. Indeed, the search for theoretical generalizations will profit from an approach that unravels long-term trends in the development of administration and government.

"Raadschelders approaches public administration history from a dual perspective, as trained historian and professor of public administration.... The volume is appropriately called a aehandbook' in view of its methodical listing of the literature on administrative history, together with summaries of numerous authors' principal theories. The second chapter is an essay on sources in the field, including an extended bibliography.... These parts of the book alone make it useful to scholars in the field.... Raadschelders is helpful in other ways as well. The third and fourth chapters offer a highly sophisticated discussion of methodological problems encountered in writing administrative history, including the issue of perceiving 'stages.' Other chapters discuss leading substantive issues such as the development of bureaucracy and citizenship. The author combines his own history-telling with more bibliographic commentary.

Contracting out public sector services and divesting public enterprises are reforms that have enjoyed widespread global popularity in recent years. Better services, lower prices and greater accountability are the promises made by politicians, senior executives, and investment companies when functions are moved from the public sector to private enterprise. But in Privatization, Graeme A. Hodge challenges these assumptions. Through an examination of hundreds of international studies on the performance of privatization activities, Hodge demonstrates that privatizing public services is often not the guaranteed panacea portrayed by its political supporters. Importantly, privatization activities can lead to modest gains, but there are also winners and losers in this reform. It therefore deserves far more care and balanced debate than it usually attracts.