The Labour Government has introduced legislation to place a new duty of Best Value on local authorities, and abolish compulsory competitive tendering. This work identifies the differences between the two systems and evaluates the development of the new regime, using case studies.

Provides an analysis of the restructuring of public service employment relations in six European countries: Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Denmark and the UK. Each of the chapters on national systems is written by leading experts in the field and is organized around a set of themes and policy issues. These include: the impact of fiscal crises, and increasing macro-economic integration within the European Union, on the scope and organization of public services; changes in the patterns and status of public service employment; the shift from centralized administration to new models of devolved management; changes in the organization and policies of public service trade unions; reforms in the structure, process and outcome of collective bargaining; patterns of conflict and co-operation between unions, managers and the state.

Participation Beyond the Ballot Box is a welcome addition to the literature on democracy and the role of civil society. It demonstrates that new mechanisms being introduced in Western Europe can and do offer the potential to significantly strengthen the democratic process.

In the 1990s, considerable changes in the political and social world have impacted on the character of both public and private organizations. At a time of increased uncertainty and insecurity in these organizations, new ways of managing and being managed have emerged. Recognising that organizational life is part reflective and determined by dominant social discourses, factors of gender will inevitably be central to the dynamics of organizational change. This book addresses theoretical ideas and mythologies in the examination of gendered organizations. The need to examine men in relation to family, law and society in general is growing, and this book extends this interrogation to work and organizational life. It will be of interest to students in management studies, public sector management and those involoved in public policy making as well as students and academics within gender studies and sociology.

Almost a fifth of all employees work in the public sector. Employees working in the civil service, NHS, local government, education, the police and fire services also represent a large and growing body of students taking degree courses at universities. Exploring this important and rapidly changing area, this book outlines the main developments in the public sector since 1979, including topical issues such as the rise of new public management, decentralisation and contracting out. Themes which currently affect public sector employees are examined, including:

* decentralization
* contracting out
* fragmentation and the growth of individualism in the employment contract.

This stimulating, up-to-date and intellectually rigorous text is thematic, rather than sector specific, and reflects the way this subject is taught in a range of courses. It will complement alternative texts in this area and will be a valuable resource for students of public policy, public sector management, human resource management, employee and industrial relations.

The public sector is one of the largest employers in the UK. Employees working in the NHS, local government, education, the police and fire services also represent a large and growing body of students taking business degree courses at universities.
This book also looks at the issue of employee relations in the public services. Starting from a legal, economic and financial context, Corby and White outline the main developments in the public sectors, decentralisation, contracting out, fragmentation and the growth of individualism in the employment contract.
The contributors then develop and analyse the themes which are currently affecting public sector employees - pay, equal opportunities, competitive tendering, flexibilities, quality and the position of trade unions.
This is a stimulating, up-to-date and intellectually rigourous text which will be essential reading for students of public policy, public sector management, human resource management, employee and industrial relations. The thematic approach will compliment many alternative texts which are more descriptive and focused on individual services.

Examines the balance between the market, government and civic sectors and makes comparisons with other postcommunist countries.

Through its budgetary, managerial and regulatory review mandates, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in the US can function as an "enforcer" with a significant impact on public policy and its implementation. This is a study of the OMB and its significant role within the American government.

Widespread sexual harassment in the public sector makes implementing sexual harassment policy a decidedly necessary task. In this book, the authors focus on the implementation of policy in public sector organizations using an analysis of case studies and survey data. The authors identify four major challenges to implementing sexual harassment policies and examine each starting with a description and concluding with specific recommendations for overcoming the challenges in policy making.

This study, with contributions from both scholars and practitioners, examines the theory and practice of public sector ethics across a broad range of environments.

Examining public service from the perspective of the worker, this book provides a new framework for understanding the roles and responsibilities of front-line public servants and assessing the appropriateness of their actions. Public employees who work at street level face some of the most intractable, pervasive, and complex problems in contemporary society. Drawing on more than 1500 hours of observation of police officers and social service workers in four states, this book explores the types of situations they confront, the factors they consider, and the hard choices they make. Presenting numerous cases of how these individuals acted in various situations, the authors show how public servants translate the expectations of administrators and others into legitimate street-level action. Vinzant and Crothers propose the concept of leadership as a positive and realistic framework for understanding what these public servants do and how they can successfully meet the daily challenges of their very difficult and complex jobs. They show how changing the theory and language we use to describe street-level work can encourage decisions that are responsive both to the needs of the clients being served and to the broader community's need for accountability. They also examine how street-level leadership can change the way agencies recruit, train, and manage these employees and how society defines their role in governance. This book offers valuable insights for those working in or studying public administration, policy analysis, criminal justice, and social work.

This volume uses original research to assess the innovative capacity of voluntary organizations. It provides:
* a conceptual framework for understanding the innovative capacity of voluntary organizations
* empirical evidence detailing the nature and extent of innovation
* an analysis of successful innovators in personal social services
* the applicability of the for-profit model of innovation to non-profit organizations
* an account of the contingent nature of voluntary organizations' relationship to their external environment and particularly their main funders.
The development of a theory of innovation in non-market and non-profit conditions makes this volume an important addition to organizational studies literature.

eBook available with sample pages: EB:0203068017

The main focus of downsizing has shifted from the private to the public sector. The cutbacks began in the Department of Defense. Now the goal is a federal civilian workforce reduction of 12 percent by the year 2000.

This pioneering study looks at the management of workforce reductions in the public sector both in theory and in practice. Three case studies -- of the Defense Logistics Agency, the Bureau of Reclamation, and the Food and Drug Administration -- illustrate the organizational, managerial, and human dimensions of attempting to improve performance with reduced resources. The author draws on extensive interviews with senior executives and middle managers in the three agencies; at the General Accounting Office, the Office of Personnel Management, and the National Performance Review; the Senior Executives Association and the Federal Managers Association; and scholars and researchers.

In a larger sense, this work pushes the boundaries of knowledge concerning organizational change and makes a significant contribution to organization theory. It offers important new insights not only for public sector managers but for organization theorists and management specialists whose work on downsizing has been presumed but not shown to be applicable to the public sector.

The main focus of downsizing has shifted from the private to the public sector. The cutbacks began in the Department of Defense. Now the goal is a federal civilian workforce reduction of 12 percent by the year 2000. This pioneering study looks at the management of workforce reductions in the public sector both in theory and in practice. Three case studies -- of the Defense Logistics Agency, the Bureau of Reclamation, and the Food and Drug Administration -- illustrate the organizational, managerial, and human dimensions of attempting to improve performance with reduced resources. The author draws on extensive interviews with senior executives and middle managers in the three agencies; at the General Accounting Office, the Office of Personnel Management, and the National Performance Review; the Senior Executives Association and the Federal Managers Association; and scholars and researchers. In a larger sense, this work pushes the boundaries of knowledge concerning organizational change and makes a significant contribution to organization theory. It offers important new insights not only for public sector managers but for organization theorists and management specialists whose work on downsizing has been presumed but not shown to be applicable to the public sector.

In the public sector at the moment resources are scarce - or at the very least finite and limited - how they are allocated is therefore of crucial importance.
This book analyses this process and examines the competing values that underlie the public service ethic, including the role of markets and quasi-markets, in the delivery of public services.
Topics discussed include:
* whether people should be denied the public services they need because public bodies are short of money
* what balance we should strike between markets and public organisations to provide public services
* whether the use of markets has gone too far and whether we need to return to a public service ethic

The widespread restructuring and privatization of UK public services has fundamentally changed the nature of society. This text is an examination of all aspects of public sector management. It includes: recent developments in the public sector and policy making; analysis of the role of markets and quasi markets in the allocation and delivery of public services; the heuristics and dialectics of resource allocation; news stories from the press, such as the story of "child B" to illustrate arguments; and two diagnostic inventories "Monksbane and Feverfew" and "RAPS" which readers can use to assess their own values about public services.

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) occupies a critical juncture in relations between the office of the President, the Executive Branch, and Congress. Through its budgetary, managerial, and regulatory review mandates, it can function as an "enforcer" with a significant impact on public policy and its implementation_ Despite this, OMB has maintained a low profile in recent years, and has eluded focused attention. Remarkably, this is the fast study of OMB to appear in nearly two decades-a time of momentous change both in presidential-congressional relations and in U.S. budgetary politics, including the short-lived line-item veto. The book will be extremely useful not just to students of public policy but to anyone trying to work effectively with federal, state, or local budget offices.

Battery Park City in Manhattan has been hailed as a triumph of urban design, and is considered to be one of the success stories of American urban redevelopment planning. The flood of praise for its design, however, can obscure the many lessons from the long struggle to develop the project. Nothing was built on the site for more than a decade after the first master plan was approved, and the redevelopment agency flirted with bankruptcy in 1979.
Taking a practice-oriented approach, the book examines the role of planning and development agencies in implementing urban waterfront redevelopment. It focuses upon the experience of the central actor - the Battery Park City Authority (BPCA) - and includes personal interviews with executives of the BPCA, former New York mayors John Lindsay and Ed Koch, key public officials, planners, and developers. Describing the political, financial, planning, and implementation issues faced by public agencies and private developers from 1962 to 1993, it is both a case study and history of one of the most ambitious examples of urban waterfront redevelopment.

For civil servants who take an oath to uphold the Constitution, that document is the supreme symbol of political morality. Constitutional issues are addressed by civil servants every day, whenever a policeman arrests a suspect or members of different branches of government meet. But how well do these individuals really understand the Constitution's application in their jobs?

This book encourages civil servants to reflect on specific constitutional principles and events and learn to apply them to the decisions they make. Twenty seminal articles by a preeminent scholar seek to legitimate public service by grounding its ethics in constitutional practice.

John Rohr stresses that ethical practice demands an immersion in the specifics of our constitutional tradition, and he offers a guide to attaining a greater sense of those constitutional principles that can be translated into action. Along the way he considers such timely issues as financial disclosure, the treatment of civil servants as second-class citizens, and instances of civil servants caught between executive and legislative forces.

Rohr's opening essays demonstrate that responsible use of administrative discretion is the key issue for career civil servants. Subsequent sections examine approaches to training civil servants using constitutional principles; character formation resulting from study of the constitutional tradition; and the ethical choices that are sometimes posed by separation of powers. A final group of chapters shows how a study of other countries' constitutional traditions can deepen an understanding of our own, while a closing essay looks at past issues and future prospects in administrative ethics from the perspective of Rohr's long involvement in the field.

Throughout this insightful collection, Rohr seeks to remind public servants of the nobility of their calling, reinforce their role in articulating public interests against the excesses of private concerns, and encourage managers to make greater use of constitutional language to describe their everyday activities. Although his work focuses on the federal career civil servant, it also offers valuable lessons applicable to state and local civil servants, elected officials, judges, military personnel, and those employed in the nonprofit sector.

Private prisons have become an integral part of the penal system in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. There already are over 100 such prisons in these countries, and with the number of prisoners continuing to increase rapidly, the trend toward privatization seems irreversible. In this context, Richard Harding addresses the following issues: the contributions, positive or negative, that private prisons make to providing custody for offenders; whether or not private prisons stimulate improvement within the public prison system; and the difficulties with the regulation and accountability of private prisons.

This book sets out to explore the contribution of private prisons to custodial practices, standards, and objectives. Many experts believe that, properly regulated and fully accountable, private prisons could lead to improvement within the public prison system, which has long been degenerate and demoralized. Harding sees the total prison system as a single entity, with two components: public and private. He relies upon extensive fieldwork and draws upon published literature as well as in-house documentation, discussions with public and private authorities, and a range of government documents.

Key issues covered in Private Prisons and Public Accountability are: overcrowding, program delivery, prisoners' rights, quality of staff, and financial control. This volume will be a significant addition to the criminal justice literature, but it will also appeal to sociologists, policymakers, and scholars interested in the privatization of various institutions in our society.

This text argues that policy has become an increasingly central concept and instrument in the organization of contemporary societies, and that it now impinges on all areas of life so that it is virtually impossible to ignore or to escape its influence. Applying their fieldwork theme of "treating the familiar as strange", and by focusing on Europe and North America, the contributors provide anthropological insights into the new structures through which it is articulated. The text addresses both a practitioner and academic audience, it should find its readership in anthropology, development studies, public administration and management theory.

The authors argue that policy has become an increasingly central concept and instrument in the organization of contemporary societies and that it now impinges on all areas of life so that it is virtually impossible to ignore or escape its influence. This book shows how the study of policy leads directly to issues at the heart of anthropology.

This second edition reviews recent reforms and the likely impact of future developments in management and competition in the NHS. In particular, it reflects the growing importance of primary care and the continuing debates about health care rationing. It concentrates on the realities and how they can be interpreted to help strategists, managers, clinicians, students and those supplying the NHS understand the mechanism of efficient health care delivery.

* A practical introduction to the business of management for doctors and managers at all levels * This simple guide provides easy-to-use tools and techniques * It explains jargon, presents managerial tasks in context and provides managerial models

This study examines management systems and their appropriateness to the National Health Service. The text considers the role of clinicians in management, recommending increased involvement by clinicians, and arguing that they must take on a greater management role in the reformed health service. The author suggests that conultants are best placed to manage the NHS efficiently and cost-effectively. In a system where non-clinical staff have come to dominate NHS management, and where purchasers determine what services are to be provided and the Patient's Charter defines the parameters of practice, doctors have genuine reasons to be hostile to the idea of involvement in hospital management. However, the author of this book warns of the danger to the health service and to patient care if consultants are sidelined. He considers management systems and the most suitable roles of clinicians in practice. In proposing models for change, he aims to transform the professional lives of clinicians.