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Books > Business & Economics > Industry & industrial studies > Civil service & public sector
In this wide-ranging selection of papers, distinguished economists, public policy advisers and political theorists contribute to the debate on public goods. The studies cover topics in the conceptualization, classification and stratification of public goods. Also examined are public institutional design, global economic institutions and partnership typologies. Individual papers address the financing, regulatory, organizational and legal aspects relating to services of general interest in Europe. The dynamics of global public good production, including monopolies, patents, scientific uncertainty and market failures, are discussed. Empirical research on the state, profit and non-profit sectors is presented. Providing numerous examples of specific public goods, the contributions also highlight the impact of macroeconomic policies on provision. The book presents a broad diversity of new approaches to global public goods within the framework of mixed economies, beyond the standard economic analysis of public services. Academics, researchers and policymakers in the area of global public goods and services will find this volume of great interest.
In the 21st century governments are increasingly focusing on designing ways and means of connecting across boundaries to achieve goals. Whether issues are complex and challenging climate change, international terrorism, intergenerational poverty or more straightforward - provision of a single point of entry to government or delivering integrated public services - practitioners and scholars increasingly advocate the use of approaches which require connections across various boundaries, be they organizational, jurisdictional or sectorial. Governments around the world continue to experiment with various approaches but still confront barriers, leading to a general view that there is considerable promise in cross boundary working, but that this is often unfulfilled. This book explores a variety of topics in order to create a rich survey of the international experience of cross-boundary working. The book asks fundamental questions such as:
By scrutinizing these questions, the contributing authors examine: the promise; the barriers; the enablers; the enduring tensions; and the potential solutions to cross-boundary working. As such, this will be an essential read for all those involved with public administration, management and policy.
A typical image of the making and administration of policy suggests that it takes place on an incremental basis, involving public servants, their ministers and, to a more limited extent, a variety of interest groups. Yet, much policy making is based on similar policy developed in other jurisdictions and in the major international organizations such as the WTO and the OECD. In other words, significant aspects of nationally developed policies are copied from elsewhere in what is described as a process of policy transfer and learning. Hence, studies of policy transfer have pointed to a distinct limitation in most existing theoretical and empirical explanations as to how policy is made and implemented through their neglect of the role of policy transfer and learning. Moreover, policy transfer is not only a concern of academics, but a growing concern for governments. The latter are concerned to improve the performance of their policy and several have placed a greater, more systematic focus on policy transfer as a means to increasing performance. This book presents a variety of cases from differing national and international contexts that enable a valuable, comparative analysis that is absent from most literature currently available and that suggest a number of exciting research directions with implications for policy making, transference and implementation in the future.
The book is the first of its kind to attempt to deal with the economics of pensions and ageing on the basis of a rigorous theoretical framework alternative to neoclassical economics. Sergio Cesaratto breaks the dominant conformism in the current pension debate and explains that the strength of the various reforms proposed depends on the validity of the economic theories on which they are respectively based. He also illustrates the relevance of the Sraffian criticism to undermine the theoretical core of the mainstream proposals. Academics and practitioners interested in the pension debate, welfare state, income distribution and institutions will find Pension Reform and Economic Theory of great interest, as will demographers, political scientists and mainstream economists open to dissenting views in economic analysis and interested in understanding the economic foundations of pension reform proposals.
Managing the Next Generation of Public Workers is a fresh and energetic look at the changing climate of diversity in the public and nonprofit workplace. The workforce of the twenty-first century represents unparalleled complexity: Baby Boomers, GenX, GenY, and Millennials. Although that diversity may be challenging and often overwhelming for public managers, Madinah Hamidullah emphasizes the potential strengths that can be drawn from complex multigenerational relationships. This handbook offers public and nonprofit managers the tools necessary to address generational differences and questions such as: * How do the newer generations in the workplace differ on such fundamentals as work ethic, family values, and retirement horizons? * Are they recruited differently and do they expect a different mix of benefits-perhaps a better work-life balance as a tradeoff for a lower salary? * How can diverse, generational perspectives in the workplace add value by questioning old, traditional assumptions? * Will approaches to organizational decision making necessarily change as new generations take over? The book is for public and nonprofit managers who recognize the challenges of managing a multigenerational workforce, and are therefore seeking helpful insights. This volume is a roadmap not only for human resource (HR) managers, but for all managers who must address the complexities of the human condition-complexities that are complicated by the most rapid succession of workforce generations that we have yet seen.
Civil services in Western liberal democracies have undergone significant changes since the early 1980s, so much so that many of the traditional assumptions underpinning their role and operating practices have been fundamentally questioned. This volume explores a number of themes inherent in this transformation process and the significant problems encountered in modernizing civil services. The commitment to modernizing public services has been a constant trend of Western governments and has encompassed many approaches under a variety of labels, such as new public management and reinventing government. As a result of such developments, the public services of many countries have been transformed, with civil services being singled out for particular attention. This book critically examines the application of the modernization agenda in the old Commonwealth, the USA and Western Europe, including the institutions of the EU. Particular attention is given to developments in the British civil service, including the implications of devolved government, human rights legislation, and the Blair government's attempts to improve the policy process. For students and academics of public administration, public policy and comparative politics, this book will provide unrivalled coverage of one of the most critical issues in contemporary public management and policy.
A favorable reputation is an asset of importance that no public sector entity can afford to neglect because it gives power, autonomy, and access to critical resources. However, reputations must be built, maintained, and protected. As a result, public sector organizations in most OECD countries have increased their capacity for managing reputation. This edited volume seeks to describe, explain, and critically analyze the significance of organizational reputation and reputation management activities in the public sector. This book provides a comprehensive first look at how reputation management and branding efforts in public organizations play out, focusing on public agencies as formal organizations with their own hierarchies, identities, and cultures - existing in a network of other public organizations with similar or different functions, power, and reputation. From this unique organizational perspective, the chapters in this volume examine issues such as organizational identity, power, conflict, politics, culture, and symbolism within the public sector. Paying specific attention to strategies and processes, and illustrating with examples from the countries of Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Ireland, Israel, Italy, and Sweden, the book deepens our understanding of reputation management efforts at various levels of government.
Innovation is seen as an interactive process that involves many actors within and across organizational boundaries. In public sector services, innovation is a frequent, often holistic, and multi-layered process that involves many actors and many services at the same time. However, most of the existing literature on innovation in public sector services is based on the economics of innovation, which is heavily influenced by investigations of the private sector. Innovation in the Public Sector develops a more context-sensitive and rich approach in order to explore the different logics of innovation that prevail here. Rather than presenting a general theory of innovation, the book specifies how innovation and value creation are interconnected with social and institutional elements. Analytical constructs, including dynamic capability, absorptive capacity, and practice-based approaches, are reviewed and anchored in the organizational context of public sector services. Such a perspective on innovation can help us develop new understandings of the process and history of innovation, contributing to processual organizational analysis in a broader sense, and further developing present theories of organizational change.
Designed as a comprehensive overview of public sector compensation, the book addresses strategies for change, with the author warning that failure of the profession to address this issue will ultimately lead to citizens taking matters in their own hands. The author's issues-oriented approach addresses his core messagethat the escalation of public sector compensation is impacting the ability of government to meet its core responsibility and the failure of government to address this has serious consequences. Not just a critique, it presents context, analysis, and suggestions for reform.
Sweeping changes have taken place in many parts of the world in the provision and organisation of health care, welfare and other 'public' services. The UK's National Health Service (NHS) has been a prime example of this. This multi-disciplinary collection of essays reviews recent evidence from a major research programme, commissioned by the Economic and Social Research Council (ERSC), into the evolution and impact of contracting in the NHS. Each chapter examines a particular aspect of health and social care, including competition between hospitals and the effects of GP fundholding, and discusses the important theoretical implication of experience in the NHS quasi-market. It will be essential reading for anyone interested in the contemporary debate surrounding the issues.
When the State Meets the Street probes the complex moral lives of street-level bureaucrats: the frontline social and welfare workers, police officers, and educators who represent government's human face to ordinary citizens. Too often dismissed as soulless operators, these workers wield a significant margin of discretion and make decisions that profoundly affect people's lives. Combining insights from political theory with his own ethnographic fieldwork as a receptionist in an urban antipoverty agency, Bernardo Zacka shows us firsthand the predicament in which these public servants are entangled. Public policy consists of rules and regulations, but its implementation depends on how street-level bureaucrats interpret them and exercise discretionary judgment. These workers are expected to act as sensible moral agents in a working environment that is notoriously challenging and that conspires against them. Confronted by the pressures of everyday work, they often and unknowingly settle for one of several reductive conceptions of their responsibilities, each by itself pathological in the face of a complex, messy reality. Zacka examines the factors that contribute to this erosion of moral sensibility and what it takes to remain a balanced moral agent in such difficult conditions. Zacka's revisionary portrait reveals bureaucratic life as more fluid and ethically fraught than most citizens realize. It invites us to approach the political theory of the democratic state from the bottom-up, thinking not just about what policies the state should adopt but also about how it ought to interact with citizens when implementing these policies.
With contributions from nearly 80 international experts, this comprehensive resource covers diverse issues, aspects, and features of public administration and policy around the world. It focuses on bureaucracy and bureaucratic politics in developing and industrialized countries and emphasizing administrative performance and policy implementation, as well as political system maintenance and regime enhancement. The book covers the history of public administration and bureaucracy in Persia, Greece, Rome, and Byzantium and among the Aztecs, Incas, and Mayas, public administration in small island states, Eastern Europe, and ethics and other contemporary issues in public administration.
"Worth a read for anyone who cares about making change happen."-Barack Obama A powerful new blueprint for how governments and nonprofits can harness the power of digital technology to help solve the most serious problems of the twenty-first century As the speed and complexity of the world increases, governments and nonprofit organizations need new ways to effectively tackle the critical challenges of our time-from pandemics and global warming to social media warfare. In Power to the Public, Tara Dawson McGuinness and Hana Schank describe a revolutionary new approach-public interest technology-that has the potential to transform the way governments and nonprofits around the world solve problems. Through inspiring stories about successful projects ranging from a texting service for teenagers in crisis to a streamlined foster care system, the authors show how public interest technology can make the delivery of services to the public more effective and efficient. At its heart, public interest technology means putting users at the center of the policymaking process, using data and metrics in a smart way, and running small experiments and pilot programs before scaling up. And while this approach may well involve the innovative use of digital technology, technology alone is no panacea-and some of the best solutions may even be decidedly low-tech. Clear-eyed yet profoundly optimistic, Power to the Public presents a powerful blueprint for how government and nonprofits can help solve society's most serious problems.
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.
Truth in Public Life explores the difficulty in defining truth, its critical importance in civilised society and the challenges and threats to telling the truth in different public service settings. Three leading experts reflect on subjects related to truth in public life. Vernon White, in his essay 'Truth Pursued, or Being Pursued by Truth', shows that absolute truth exists and explains why and how it matters morally. In 'Truth Sustained', Stephen Lamport describes why truth is important to sustaining civilised society and argues that truth is central to other essential qualities, such as objectivity, honesty, openness, leadership, selflessness, integrity and accountability. In her essay 'Truth Told', Claire Foster-Gilbert explores the challenge of truth-telling for public servants: for politicians, who are routinely not believed; for civil servants, whose ministers may only want to hear those facts that support their policy ideas; for journalists, tempted to tell the story that is 'too good to check'; for judges, who may suffer from unconscious bias; for police officers, who must win the trust of the public by believing accusers, without jeopardising justice for the alleged perpetrators. This short book is a potent reminder of how important truth is, even as it is threatened afresh.
Jeff Luke's book is simply outstanding and a must read for those public leaders interested in advancing the common good. This groundbreaking guide presents a new kind of leadership that addresses the complex problems facing today's public leaders. These issues?such as economic development, homelessness, teen pregnancy, and many others?are interconnected in nature and have no quick fix solutions. Leaders in federal, state and local agencies must reach out beyond their boundaries to engage a much broader group of stakeholders to create sustainable strategies to address them. The catalytic leader brings together diverse individuals from multiple agencies to address interconnected public problems and work together toward solutions. Filled with case studies, real-world examples, and many other hands-on resources, Catalytic Leadership is written for the true public leaders?citizens from all walks of life, working together to tackle the toughest public problems.
In times of rising expectations and decreasing resources for the public sector, performance management is high on the agenda. Increasingly, the value of the performance management systems themselves is under scrutiny, with more attention being paid to the effectiveness of performance management in practice. This new edition has been revised and updated to examine: performance in the context of current public management debates, including emerging discussions on the New Public Governance and neo-Weberianism; the many definitions of performance and how it has become one of the most contested agendas of public management; the so-called perverse effects of using performance indicators; the technicalities of performance measurement in a five step process: prioritising measurement, indicator development, data collection, analysis and reporting; and the future challenges and directions of performance management Performance Management in the Public Sector 2nd edition offers an approachable insight into a complex theme for practitioners and public management students alike.
Praise for Leading Across Boundaries "Leading Across Boundaries is a terrific resource for nonprofit
leaders. It is filled with great stories of collaboration, and also
with the how-to's to make them work " "Linden illustrates the importance of collaboration, but drives
further into issues of networks to teach us valuable lessons about
core interests, trust, leadership, and success. This book is a very
valuable and timely resource for practitioners who seek to produce
more value from effective collaboration." "Linden provides a fresh, practitioner-oriented perspective on the topic of collaboration-especially for those in the public and nonprofit sectors wanting to benefit from Web 2.0 and social-networking technologies. It's a gem of a book and a terrific road map for leading change." -Warren Master, president and editor-in-chief, The Public Manager "Linden uses fabulous examples to illustrate the essential ideas
for collaboration and for effective leadership. His discussions of
political acumen and the interpersonal side of collaboration are
especially enlightening. I've been a manager for a long time, and
wish I'd read this book earlier in my career " "Trust, transparency, and relationships are keys to successful
collaboration. Linden takes these concepts and more and constructs
a masterful lesson plan for us to follow." ..".an invaluable contribution to anyone charged with shaping organizations, big and small."-Don Kettl, author, The Next Government of the United States Note: CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of eBook file.
The administrative state is the nexus of American policy making in
the postwar period. The vague and sometimes conflicting policy
mandates of Congress, the president, and courts are translated into
real public policy in the bureaucracy. As the role of the national
government has expanded, the national legislature and executive
have increasingly delegated authority to administrative agencies to
make fundamental policy decisions. How this administrative state is
designed, its coherence, its responsiveness, and its efficacy
determine, in Robert Dahl s phrase, who gets what, when, and how.
This study of agency design, thus, has implications for the study
of politics in many areas.
Digital Government: Managing Public Sector Reform in the Digital Era presents a public management perspective on digital government and technology-enabled change in the public sector. It incorporates theoretical and empirical insights to provide students with a broader and deeper understanding of the complex and multidisciplinary nature of digital government initiatives, impacts and implications. The rise of digital government and its increasingly integral role in many government processes and activities, including overseeing fundamental changes at various levels across government, means that it is no longer perceived as just a technology issue. In this book Miriam Lips provides students with practical approaches and perspectives to better understand digital government. The text also explores emerging issues and barriers as well as strategies to more effectively manage digital government and technology-enabled change in the public sector. Digital Government is the ideal book for postgraduate students on courses in public administration, public management, public policy, political science and international relations, and e-government. It is also suitable for public service managers who are experiencing the impact of digital technology and data in the public sector.
In this major work, Bourdieu examines the distinctive forms of power - political, intellectual, bureaucratic and economic - by means of which contemporary societies are governed. What kinds of competence are claimed by the bureaucrats and technocrats who administer our societies? And how do those who govern come to gain the recognition of those who are governed by them? Bourdieu examines in detail the work of consecration which is carried out by the educational system - and especially in France by the grandes "ecoles," The work of consecration can be seen in operation in different historical periods, whenever a nobility is produced. Today the socially recognized groups function according to a logic similar to that which characterized the divisions between high and low in the "ancien regime." Today this state nobility is the heir - structural and sometimes even genealogical - of the "noblesse de "robe which, in order to consolidate its position in relation to other forms of power, had to construct the modern state and the republican myths, meritocracy and civil service which went along with it. Bourdieu examines the mechanisms which produce the kind of nobility displayed by those who govern, and the recognition granted to them by those who are governed by them.
'Carrera and Dunleavy provide a crystal clear and comprehensive account of the complex issues involved in how best to improve the productivity of government services. They offer a nuanced but powerful explanation of productivity puzzles, conundrums and dilemmas in the public sector. But they also offer solutions to many of these problems. Finally, I have found a text on public economics that makes sense, gives genuine management insights and offers real suggestions to practitioners as to what to do next.' - Barry Quirk, Chief Executive, London Borough of Lewisham, UK'This book presents a welcome and sobering analysis of productivity performance in UK central government - a subject that has received remarkably little serious academic attention up to now, in spite of decades of general commentary on managerialism.' - Christopher Hood, All Souls College, UK 'Leandro Carrera and Patrick Dunleavy have performed an amazing feat in this book through their rigorous examination of a thorny topic that has dogged pundits and academics alike. Just how efficient is government and how well does it do its job? As a result of an impressive - but accessible - set of data analyses, the authors make an authoritative attack on the proponents of the New Public Management, and offer some clear recommendations for reform based on better use of new technology.' - Peter John, University College London, UK Productivity is essentially the ratio of an organization's outputs divided by its inputs. For many years it was treated as always being static in government agencies. In fact productivity in government services should be rising rapidly as a result of digital changes and new management approaches, and it has done so in some agencies. However, Dunleavy and Carrera show for the first time how complex are the factors affecting productivity growth in government organizations - especially management practices, use of IT, organizational culture, strategic mis-decisions and political and policy churn. With government budgets under stress in many countries, this pioneering book shows academics, analysts and officials how to measure outputs and productivity in detail; how to cope with problems of quality variations; and how to achieve year-on-year, sustainable improvements in the efficiency of government services.
The State of New York is now building one of the world's longest, widest, and most expensive bridges - the new Tappan Zee Bridge - stretching more than three miles across the Hudson River, approximately thirteen miles north of New York City. In Politics Across the Hudson, urban planner Philip Plotch offers a behind-the-scenes look at three decades of contentious planning and politics centered around this bridge. He reveals valuable lessons for those trying to tackle complex public policies while also confirming our worst fears about government dysfunction. Drawing on his extensive experience planning megaprojects, interviews with more than a hundred key figures - including governors, agency heads, engineers, civic advocates, and business leaders - and extraordinary access to internal government records, Plotch tells a compelling story of high-stakes battles between powerful players in the public, private, and civic sectors. He reveals how state officials abandoned viable options, squandered hundreds of millions of dollars, forfeited more than three billion dollars in federal funds, and missed out on important opportunities. Faced with the public's unrealistic expectations, no one could identify a practical solution to a vexing problem, a dilemma that led three governors to study various alternatives rather than disappoint key constituencies. Politics Across the Hudson continues where Robert Caro's The Power Broker left off and illuminates the power struggles involved in building New York's first major new bridge since the Robert Moses era. Plotch describes how one governor, Andrew Cuomo, shrewdly overcame the seemingly insurmountable obstacles of onerous environmental regulations, vehement community opposition, insufficient funding, interagency battles, and overly optimistic expectations.
This book makes a unique contribution in advancing understanding of the fiscal condition and growth potential of the New Member States of the European Union. It provides new data, policy evaluation, and offers national and regional perspectives. The core research questions are the effect of public investment in the context of macroeconomic disequilibrium and how it is possible to finance capital accumulation in the present and future conditions of mounting public sector debt. The contributors reveal that there is now a convincing case for public investment as an essential driver of convergence and growth in Europe. However, a new international and inter-generational fiscal pact to frame a more optimistic view of the role of government is needed. This book explores how public investment matters for growth, how fiscal conditions may support investment, and the role EU regional policy can have in terms of structural change and investment needs. Public Investment, Growth and Fiscal Constraints provides new data analyses on the EU New Member States in Central and Eastern Europe making it an essential tool for academics, students and practitioners interested in public finance and European Economics. The structural and public finance issues in these former transition economies raised in this book will also strongly appeal to policymakers, officials and consultants. The book is based on an independent research project of the University of Milan, supported by the European Investment Bank. |
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