Responding to the public concern caused by recent hospital scandals and accounts of unintended harm to patients, this author draws on her experience of analysing the health care systems of over a dozen countries and examines whether greater regulation has increased patient safety and health care quality. The book adopts a new approach to mapping developments in health care systems in Europe, North America and Australia and pieces together evidence of which regulatory strategies and mechanisms work well to ensure safer patient care. It identifies the regulatory bodies, the regulatory principles and the implementation strategies adopted to improve governance in health care systems and suggests a conceptual framework for responsive regulation. The book will be of interest to government actors, health care professionals and medico-legal scholars.

After a quarter century of almost general condemnation and rebuttal of the entire nationalization experience, it appears that there are second thoughts about governmental direct intervention in the economy. Reappraising State-Owned Enterprise deals with a topic often undervalued in the past decade but which now, with the crisis of 2008-2009, calls for greater attention: the direct intervention of the State as Entrepreneur. The collection of essays in this volume -- prepared by some of the leading authorities in the field -- offers a contribution to this debate by providing a balanced assessment of two of the most relevant experiences of mixed economies, the United Kingdom and Italy. In this respect, a comparison between these two countries is very much appropriate since in both nations the State played an important role as "Entrepreneur" starting in the early 20th century. In Great Britain and Italy, the heyday of the "State as Entrepreneur" was in the years right after WWII when it was used as a tool for promoting a modern society in which citizens acquired a stronger sense of belonging to their nations. The UK and Italy saw the State take on a too-pervasive role in the 70s; the two nations responded in different ways. In the 1980s Great Britain embarked on a harsh process of privatizations while Italians struggled on until finally submitting to privatizations in their nation in the following decade. The deep crisis of the final years of the 21st century forced both nations to reconsider State interventions as an appropriate tool in order to protect the wellbeing of the national economy.

'This is an excellent 'do-it-yourself' introductory study to public sector management, covering a wide range of issues, including recent public service reforms. I recommend it to anyone interested in the practice and study of public sector management.' - Tony Ayers, National President, Institute of Public Administration Australia The traditional view of public sector management is under challenge. The shifting boundaries of the public-private sector are transforming the nature of the public sector in the 21st century and placing increasing demands on managers. This user-friendly handbook examines the changes that have taken place over the last twenty years and addresses the practical issues faced by public servants today. It makes abundant use of exhibits, case studies and real world examples to illustrate key concepts in public sector management. By including many 'points for reference', the authors challenge readers to apply both theory and practice to those public services situations with which they are familiar. Australian Handbook of Public Sector Management is a unique blend of academic and practical approaches to current management practices in the public sector. It has been designed to assist students and those new to the public sector to develop the knowledge and skills they require to provide high quality public services.

The statutory duty of public service ombudsmen (PSO) is to investigate claims of injustice caused by maladministration in the provision of public services. This book examines the modern role of the ombudsman within the overall emerging system of administrative justice and makes recommendations as to how PSO should optimize their potential within the wider administrative justice context. Recent developments are discussed and long standing questions that have yet to be adequately resolved in the ombudsman community are re-evaluated given broader changes in the administrative justice sector. The work balances theory and empirical research conducted in a number of common law countries. Although there has been much debate within the ombudsman community in recent years aimed at developing and improving the practice of ombudsmanry, this work represents a significant advance on current academic understanding of the discipline.

This book analyses the effectiveness of district administration from critical management perspective. Using classical organizational theory and leadership competency framework, the authors conducted a comparative study of two exemplary districts with distinctive traits in India a rural district in the developed state of Maharashtra and an urban district from the underdeveloped state of Madhya Pradesh. The book delves into the dynamics of district administration by breaking down the processes further and mapping the role of the district magistrates on the UNDP competency framework. Given the changing scope and challenges of public service, this comparative analysis of the two districts would provide insights into district administration and would be of significant relevance to administrators and management professionals across the globe in assessing their effectiveness. The book provides an eclectic framework for public administration from an overall sustainability perspective

The Public Policy Process is essential reading for anyone trying to understand the process by which public policy is made. Explaining clearly the importance of the relationship between theoretical and practical aspects of policymaking, the book gives a thorough overview of the people and organisations involved in the process. Fully revised and updated for an eighth edition, The Public Policy Process provides: Clear exploration, using many illustrations, of how policy is made and implemented; Examines challenges to effective policy making in critical areas - such as inequality and climate change - including the influence of powerful interests and the Covid-19 pandemic; New material on unequal democracies, interest groups influence, behavioural policy analysis, global policies and evidence-based decision making; Additional European and comparative international examples. This text is essential reading for students of public policy, public administration and management, as well as more broadly highly relevant to related courses in health and nursing, social welfare, environment, development and local government.

Local government innovation has become one of the most important topics on China's policy agenda in recent decades. This book explains why some local governments are more innovative than others. This book uses a novel theoretical framework and points out that in China's multi-level government structure, the administrative hierarchy and the span of control could shape local governments' innovation motivation, innovation capability, and innovation opportunity, thus influencing local government innovativeness. The author systematically analysed the 177 winners and finalists of the biennial Innovations and Excellence in Chinese Local Governance (IECLG) Awards Programme from 2001 to 2015 to provide convincing empirical evidence to support this theory. This book adopts an institutional approach to explaining local government innovativeness in China and may be a useful reference to help us learn more about local government decisions and behaviours.

Patients are increasingly encouraged to take an active role in managing their health and health care. New technologies, cultural shifts, trends in healthcare delivery, and policies have brought to the forefront the "work" patients, families, and other non-professionals perform in the pursuit of health. This volume closely examines notable application areas for the emerging discipline of Patient Ergonomics - the science of patient work. The Patient Factor: Applications of Patient Ergonomics, Volume II reviews the definition of Patient Ergonomics and discusses the application of Patient Ergonomics across contexts. It analyzes patient work performed in emergency departments, transitions of care, home and community settings, retail pharmacies, and online communities. It also examines applications to groups including veterans, pediatric patients, older adults, the underserved, and people engaged in health promotion. The Patient Factor is ideal for academics working in health care and patient-centered research, their students, human factors practitioners working in healthcare organizations or at technology companies, frontline healthcare professionals, and leaders of healthcare delivery organizations.

That public services exhibit unpredictability, novelty and, on occasion, chaos, is an observation with which even a casual observer would agree. Existing theoretical frameworks in public management fail to address these features, relying more heavily on attempts to eliminate unpredictability through increased reliance on measurable performance objectives, improved financial and human resource management techniques, decentralisation of authority and accountability and resolving principal-agent behaviour pathologies. Essentially, these are all attempts to improve the 'steering' capacity of public sector managers and policy makers.

By adopting a Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) approach to public services, this book shifts the focus from developing steering techniques to identifying patterns of behaviour of the participants with the ultimate objective of increasing policy-makers' and practitioners' understanding of the factors that may enable more effective public service decision-making and provision. The authors apply a CAS framework to a series of case studies in public sector management to generate new insights into the issues, processes and participants in public service domains.

Patients are increasingly encouraged to take an active role in managing their health and health care. New technologies, cultural shifts, trends in healthcare delivery, and policies have brought to the forefront the "work" patients, families, and other non-professionals perform in pursuit of health. Volume I provides a theoretical and methodological foundation for the emerging discipline of Patient Ergonomics - the science of patient work. The Patient Factor: Theories and Methods for Patient Ergonomics, Volume I defines Patient Ergonomics, explains its importance, and situates it in a broader historical and societal context. It reviews applicable theories and methods from human factors/ergonomics and related disciplines, across domains including consumer technology, patient-professional communication, self-care, and patient safety. The Patient Factor is ideal for academics working in health care and patient-centered research, their students, human factors practitioners working in healthcare organizations or at technology companies, frontline healthcare professionals, and leaders of healthcare delivery organizations.

Managing Professionals deals with the tensions between managers and professionals within organizations, such as hospitals, universities, banks and judicial organizations. Often managers rely heavily on the skills and expertise of the professionals in their organizations, yet these professionals consider management a source of bureaucracy and paperwork.

This tension is explored head on in order to answer the question of how to manage an organization effectively. With numerous real-world examples, the book analyzes the problems and complexities of management in professional organizations and makes recommendations on how to manage professionals. The book focuses on a number of key issues, including:

• Management as a problem
• Management as a solution
• Knowledge and innovation
• Strategy
• Cooperation
• Performance

Managing Professionals presents an empirical analysis of the problems and offers solutions to the tension between management and professionals and will be of interest to managers and to students of management, organizational behaviour and business administration.

In the last two decades, the quest for a widely accepted definition of social enterprise has been a central issue in a great number of publications. The main objective of the ICSEM Project (on which this book is based) was to show that the social enterprise field would benefit much more from linking conceptualisation efforts to the huge diversity of social enterprises than from an additional and ambitious attempt at providing an encompassing definition. Starting from a hypothesis that could be termed "the impossibility of a unified definition", the ICSEM research strategy relied on bottom-up approaches to capture the social enterprise phenomenon in its local and national contexts. This strategy made it possible to take into account and give legitimacy to locally embedded approaches, while simultaneously allowing for the identification of major social enterprise models to delineate the field on common grounds at the international level. Social Enterprise in Central and Eastern Europe - the last volume in a series of four ICSEM-based books on social enterprise worldwide - will serve as a key reference and resource for teachers, researchers, students, experts, policy makers, journalists and others who want to acquire a broad understanding of the social enterprise and social entrepreneurship phenomena as they emerge and develop in this region.

Never before has there been such strong recognition of the importance of community-based green spaces to local communities and urban redevelopment. This book is an autoethnographic account of the challenges and breakthroughs of learning to lead together. The interwoven stories provide first-hand, evocative examples of how an ecological and community approach to organisational development and urban regeneration helped shift the business as usual paradigm. It will help you identify and step beyond individualistic and 'heroic' notions of leadership, and will inspire you to find your own way of embracing natural and shared authority. The book focuses on the experiences of developing an environmental education charity in London; Global Generation. It shows how action research, nature practice and storytelling has successfully grown shared purpose, trust and collaboration, both within Global Generation and in the wider community. The style and structure of the book reflects the participatory approach that it presents. The author, Jane Riddiford, deliberately challenges the norms of authorship, which is shaped by the dominant Western narrative - objective, authorless and 'othered'. This book goes beyond this narrow framework, combining different styles of writing, including traditional and autobiographical storytelling, diary entries and co-writing. Along with practice accounts of what happened, challenges raised and lessons learned, each chapter will also include other people's descriptions of their experience of being involved in the process.

This book argues that the international community has a moral duty to intervene on behalf of a population affected by a natural hazard when their government is either unable or unwilling to provide basic, life-saving assistance. The work draws on law, international relations theory, and political philosophy to articulate that non-response to a natural hazard is unethical. In providing policy suggestions the author articulates what should happen based on an ethical analysis. Readers will thus gain an ethical lens with which to view intervention in the aftermath of a natural hazard. The book encourages readers to consider the nuances of arguments from various disciplines about whether or not intervention is appropriate. Whilst arguing throughout that an intervention policy in response to natural hazards should be developed by the international community, the study also accounts for why intervention should only be used in very limited situations. This interdisciplinary approach makes the book essential reading for researchers, academics and policy-makers working in the areas of international law, humanitarian studies, human rights, international relations and political science.

How does a medical practice thrive in a business environment where the margin of management error has all but disappeared? Profit margins are being squeezed by declining reimbursement rates, capitation plans, gamesmanship on the part of the payors, and increasing operating costs. Addressing the specific needs of today's medical practice, Medical Practice Business Plan Workbook, Third Edition supplies a detailed and ordered work plan to tackle some of the most pressing issues facing the field.Peter D. Lucash delves into decades of experience helping physician groups develop business plans to guide you along the process of building the profitable practice you want and deserve. This updated edition of a bestseller begins with a review of the fundamentals, including the questions your plan should answer, how to get started, how to organize and develop your plan, and the staff support and resources you will need. Complete with a wealth of helpful sample plans and worksheets, this workbook: Reflects recent changes in the healthcare industry, including federal healthcare reform Offers a one-of-a-kind design and approach tailored to the medical practice Covers conceptualization, organization, and implementation of your business plan This updated edition reflects current and forecasted challenges for practices, including the Affordable Care Act, data security, and quality and outcome measures. It supplies detailed coverage of the different types of organizations, governance and management, personnel needs, key business relationships and contacts, demographics and economic factors, patients as customers, competitor analysis, marketing, information technology, disaster and business continuity planning, and financial strategies. The final section outlines a process for implementing your plan. Sticking to this process will help ensure your plan covers what is needed to succeed in today's complex

This book brings together public services policy and public services management in a novel way that is likely to resonate with academics, policy makers and practitioners engaged in the organization of public services delivery as it is from a perspective that challenges many received ideas in this field.

Starting from the perspective of critical management studies, the contributors to this volume embed a critical perspective on policy orthodoxy around critical public services policy and management studies (CPPMS). In so doing the authors bring together previous disparate fields of public services policy and public services management, but more importantly, debate and present what 'critical' constitutes when applied to public services policy and management. This edited collection presents chapters from a broad range of public services domains including health, education, prisons, local and central government and deals with a range of contemporary issues facing public services managers are examined, including regulation of professions, risk management, user involvement, marketing and leadership.

Despite predictions that 'new public management' would establish itself as the new paradigm of Public Administration and Management, recent academic research has highlighted concerns about the intra-organizational focus and limitations of this approach. This book represents a comprehensive analysis of the state of the art of public management, examining and framing the debate in this important area.

The New Public Governance? sets out to explore this emergent field of research and to present a framework with which to understand it. Divided into five parts, the book examines:

• Theoretical underpinnings of the concept of governance, especially competing perspectives from Europe and the US
• Governance of inter-organizational partnerships and contractual relationships
• Governance of policy networks
• Lessons learned and future directions

Under the steely editorship of Stephen Osborne and with contributions from leading academics including Owen Hughes, John M. Bryson, Don Kettl, Guy Peters and Carsten Greve, this book will be of particular interest to researchers and students of public administration, public management, public policy and public services management.

Trust has been the subject of empirical and theoretical inquiry in a range of disciplines, including sociology, economics, psychology, philosophy, public policy and political theory. The book approaches trust from a multi-disciplinary scope of inquiry. It explains why most existing definitions and theories of trust are inadequate. The book examines how trust evolved from a quality of personal relationships into a critical factor in political institutions and representation, and to an abstract and impersonal factor that applies now to complex systems, including monetary systems. It makes a distinctive contribution by recasting trust conceptually in dialectical and pragmatic terms, and reapplying the concept to our understanding of critical issues in politics and political economy.

Insights in Global Health: A Compendium of Healthcare Facilities and Nonprofit Organizations is the most comprehensive index of critical information on healthcare facilities and nonprofits in 24 of the lowestincome countries as classified by the World Bank. Presented in an easily accessible format and organized in 24 country chapters, the compendium allows stakeholders to better identify where healthcare services are available and where additional resources are needed. Key Features: * Brief country overviews, key statistics, and country maps depicting the locations of healthcare facilities. * Curated lists of healthcare facilities as well as nonprofits, accompanied by brief descriptions and relevant medical specialties, for each country. * QR codes associated with each listing linking to a companion web platform, providing access to further information about the organizations as well as the ability to interact with the data in a customizable manner.

Many books on performance management or evaluation are about the public sector in general or specifically about some programs or organizations. Only a few of them target the public institutions. This book addresses what types of challenges that performance evaluations of public institutions actually face and how to overcome them through the analysis of Korea's three-decade long experiences. This book provides detailed descriptions on how performance evaluations of public institutions have been implemented in Korea. At the same time, it provides comprehensive analyses on theoretical issues such as validity analysis performance measure, the dynamic change of efficiency of public institution, impact of price regulation on profits, and qualitative approaches for evaluating governance. Each chapter contains vivid theoretical debates and diverse views on performance evaluation and practical challenges, making the book a useful reference on managing and evaluating public institutions.

Public value theory has advanced over the past 30 years, but there is a need to extend its boundary outwards into new contexts and update its discourse to reflect new social challenges. We are now trying to create value in a globalized world, with supranational entities, with new international alliances and institutions, in a frightening post-truth era. How can public managers grapple with these emerging realities? This book seeks to provide answers to such public value questions by applying powerful budgeting perspectives. Using case studies of independent budget offices, key fiscal instruments, and leading public value frameworks, this book stands out in its use of budgetary lenses to answer pertinent questions about the multidimensional processes of value creation by and for a wider society. Pushing the debate on public value forward and taking it onto the global stage, the book asks whether public value (and other public administration theories) are applicable beyond the traditional context of the pro-globalization Western liberal democracies in which they were conceived. It does this by exploring the realms of developing countries, supranational entities, and post-Communist societies, among others. Finally, it presents these explorations in light of very recent sociopolitical trends and phenomena, including the growth of civil society, the global financial crisis, the illiberal democracy, and the post-truth era. Tailored to an audience comprising public administration scholars, students of government, budget practitioners, and social scientists interested in contemporary problems of values in society, this book helps to advance public administration thought by extending public value theory into new contexts and relating it to the growing global challenges of public life.

This unique book enhances our understanding of the links between professions, the state and the market - and their implications for the public in terms of professional practice. In so doing, the book adopts a neo-Weberian perspective, in which professions are seen as a form of exclusionary social closure based on legal boundaries established by the state. To illustrate the overarching theme, the book considers how healthcare in general, and medicine in particular as a form of professional work, is organized in public and private arenas in three societies with different socio-political philosophies - namely, Britain, the United States and Russia. As such, it examines the varying extent to which the development of independent professional organizations has been enhanced or restricted in public, as compared to more privatized social contexts. The comparative perspective adopted in this book thereby provides insight into the organization of professional work in different contexts and the all-important effects of this on delivery to the public. This book will be of particular interest to scholars, researchers and students of Management, Public Policy and Health Care.

It is widely known today that not only are the aged ageing, or the old getting older, but they are also increasing in number the world over. At the same time, proper care and support for our aged is increasingly at risk. Without some form of support, the quantitative extension of life cannot be matched by a qualitative one. This may mean that the opportunity provided by a longer life is squandered, and life itself, of course, is nothing if not opportunity. Societies find that self-sufficiency and independence not only contribute to individual well-being, but are also economically desirable due to the resultant increase in productivity. The challenges of daily living for a growing population of the aged form the basis of the independent living platform, the AGE@HOME platform, which is described in this book. The platform combines both existing and emerging technologies suitable for the home. Its use and application is considered in the wider context of Web 2.0, the internet of things, and other elements of the burgeoning digital world. It is time that a holistic and multi-disciplinary approach to this constantly enlarging area of human existence is taken. This book is written for researchers and designers of wireless tools, analog and digital circuits as well as academics who are active in the various fields of Human Sciences. Foreword "This book appears at the right moment when several developments have made age and its consequences an important element of human existence. It makes for informative reading, being based on considerations related to independence for the aged and the application of emerging technologies to enhance this independence......." From the foreword by: Houlin Zhao Deputy Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication Union

First published in 1998, this book sets out to shed sociological light upon the much under-researched realm of day-to-day child care practice. The text broke new ground when first published in 1987 and there have been few, if any, similar books that adopt an ethnographic approach to statutory child care practice. A second edition would still 'speak' to this rarely analysed occupational world. However, it would enjoy greater resonance when up-dated with practitioner viewpoints on the extent to which the findings remain pertinent today - which is likely to be the case. The book offers no conclusions other than it demonstrates that the 'invisible' world of practice cannot be readily understood or changed unless grasped through an interactionist sociology. The book is aimed at a social work/social welfare market as well as a sociology of profession/organization readership.

State Management offers a comprehensive yet concise introduction to the new field of state management, presenting an analysis of basic questions within the theories of bureaucracy, policy-making, principal-agent modelling and policy networks. Focussing upon recent state transformation, it illuminates public sector reform strategies such as New Public Management as well as incorporation, tendering and bidding, decentralization, team production and privatization.

This book argues that we should look upon the variety of models or approaches to public management or public administration as all belonging under "state management." The so-called "working state" in a well-ordered society involves government delivering services, paying for social security and respecting the rule of law. In this text, Jan-Erik Lane systematically examines the key approaches to the study of how government attempts to achieve these goals, discussing the pros and cons of alternative frameworks of analysis.

Each chapter discusses a different issue within state management that is integral to the broader debate, including:

• Public regulation
• The relationship between the law and the state
• Combining ecology and policy making
• Multi-level governance
• The virtues and vices of public-private partnerships
• Policy implementation

Presenting a clear overview of how the state operates when government sets out to deliver public services, and generating questions to encourage new research, State Management is a valuable new text for both undergraduate and postgraduate courses in political science, public administration and public management.