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.

Public service values are too rarely discussed in public administration courses and scholarship, despite recent research demonstrating the importance of these values in the daily decision making processes of public service professionals. A discussion of these very tenets and their relevance to core public functions, as well as which areas might elicit value conflicts for public professionals, is central to any comprehensive understanding of budget and finance, human resource management, and strategic planning in the public sector. Public Service Values is written specifically for graduate and undergraduate courses in public administration, wherever a discussion of public service ideals might enrich the learning experience and offer students a better understanding of daily practice. Exploring the meaning and application of specific values, such as Neutrality, Efficiency, Accountability, Public Service, and Public Interest, provides students and future professionals with a 'workplace toolkit' for the ethical delivery of public services. Well-grounded in scholarly literature and with a relentless focus on the public service professional, Public Service Values highlights the importance of values in professional life and encourages a more self-aware and reflective public practice. Case studies to stimulate reflection are interwoven throughout the book and application to practice is cemented in a final section devoted to value themes in professional life as well as a chapter dedicated to holding oneself accountable. The result is a book that challenges us to embrace the necessity of public service values in our public affairs curricula and that asks the important questions current public service professionals should make a habit of routinely applying in their daily decision making.

The best healthcare organizations have developed effective approaches to develop compelling strategic visions and strategies based on long-term thinking and continue to apply Lean principles across their organizations to create a culture of continuous improvement. Establishing effective strategies and Toyota style Hoshin Kanri enables healthcare organizations to align everyone in the organizations and creates a unique competitive advantage. This book follows a regional hospital's journey through the creation of long-term strategic goals and Toyota Style strategy deployment.

The Routledge Handbook of International Local Government conducts a rigorous, innovative and distinctive analysis of local government within a comparative, international context. Examining the subject matter with unrivalled breadth and depth, this handbook shows how different cultures and countries develop different institutions, structures and processes over time, yet that all have some features in common - the most obvious of which is the recognition that some decisions are better made, some services better delivered, and some engagement with the state better organised if there is structured organisational expression of the importance of the local dimension of all these factors . Thematically organised, it includes contributions from international experts with reference to the wider context in terms of geographies, local government modes, recent developments and possible further lines of research. It has a wide academic appeal internationally and will steer a course between the two dimensions of mono-jurisdictional studies and 'cataloguing' forms of comparison. The Routledge Handbook of International Local Government will be essential reading and an authoritative reference for scholars, students, researchers and practitioners involved in, and actively concerned about, research on local 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.

Developed by D. Don Welch during his 28 years of teaching ethics and public policy, the rationale behind A Guide to Ethics and Public Policy is to present a comprehensive guide for making policy judgments. Rather than present specific cases that raise moral issues or discuss the role a few concepts play in the moral analysis of policy, this book instead provides a broad framework for the moral evaluation of public policies and policy proposals. This framework is organized around guiding five principles: benefit, effectiveness, fairness, fidelity, and legitimacy. These principles identify the factors that should be taken into account and the issues that should be addressed as citizens address the question of what the United States government should be able to do. Organized by concept, with illustrations and examples frequently interspersed, the book covers both theory and specific issues. A Guide to Ethics and Public Policy outlines a comprehensive ethical framework, provides content to the meaning of the five principles that comprise that framework through the use of illustrations and examples, and offers guidance about how to navigate one's way through the conflicts and dilemmas that inevitably result from a serious effort to analyze policies.

Network governance has received much attention within the fields of public administration and policy in recent years, but surprisingly few books are designed specifically to help students, researchers, and practitioners examine key concepts, synthesize the growing body of literature into reliable frameworks, and to bridge the theory-practice gap by exploring network applications. Network Governance: Concepts, Theories, and Applications is the first textbook to focus on interorganizational networks and network governance from the perspective of public policy and administration, asking important questions such as: How are networks designed and developed? How are they governed, and what type of leadership do they require? To whom are networks accountable, and when are they effective? How can network governance contribute to effective delivery of public services and policy implementation? In this timely new book, authors Naim Kapucu and Qian Hu define and examine key concepts, propose exciting new theoretical frameworks to synthetize the fast-growing body of network research in public policy and administration, and provide detailed discussion of applications. Network Governance offers not only a much-needed systematic examination of existing knowledge, but it also goes much further than existing books by discussing the applications of networks in a wide range of management practice and policy domains-including natural resource management, environmental protection, public health, emergency and crisis management, law enforcement, transportation, and community and economic development. Chapters include understudied network research topics such as power and decision-making in interorganizational networks, virtual networks, global networks, and network analysis applications. What sets this book apart is the introduction of social network analysis and coverage of applications of social network analysis in the policy and management domains. PowerPoint slides and a sample syllabus are available for adopters on an accompanying website. Drawing on literature from sociology, policy sciences, organizational studies, and economics, this textbook will be required reading for courses on network governance, collaborative public management, cross-sector governance, and collaboration and partnerships in programs of public administration, public affairs, and public policy.

GOING PUBLIC is a character-driven narrative centered on the last five years of unparalleled change in how technology startups sell shares to the public. Initial public offerings, or IPOs, are typically the first time retail investors can own a piece of the New Economy companies promising to rewire economic rules. Selling IPOs is also one of the most profitable businesses for Wall Street investment banks, who have spent the last 40 years protecting their profits. In an era when algorithms and software have made the financial markets more efficient, the pricing of IPOs still relies on human judgment. In 2016, executives at music-streaming service Spotify sought to upend the status quo. Led by a trim and understated CFO, Barry McCarthy, and a shy but brilliant founder, Daniel Ek, they took a wild idea and forged something new. GOING PUBLIC explores how they got comfortable with the risk, and how they lobbied securities watchdogs and exchange staff to rewrite the regulations. Readers will meet executives at disruptive companies like Airbnb, DoorDash, and data miner Palantir, venture capitalists, and even some bankers who seized on Spotify's labor and used it to knock Wall Street bankers off the piles of fees they'd been stacking for so long. GOING PUBLIC weaves in earlier attempts to rethink the IPO process, introducing readers to one of Silicon Valley's earliest bankers, Bill Hambrecht, whose invention for selling shares online was embraced by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they auctioned their shares in 2004. And it examines the recent boom in blank-check companies, those Wall Street insider deals that have suddenly become the hottest way to enter the public markets. GOING PUBLIC tells stories from inside the room, and more.

The long-awaited new edition of this highly praised text includes full coverage of policy issues and professional practice in nonprofit organizations, as well as at federal, state, and local levels of government. Retaining its accessible writing style, this sixth edition: examines the latest management theories (such as employee engagement and motivation) and current issues including disability, privatization, merit systems, and family and medical leave; roots the discussion in public policy issues, providing students with a better understanding of the actors involved and the broader context of personnel administration; provides abundant pedagogical tools, including learning objectives, summaries, and discussion questions, to guide student understanding and foster critical thinking; includes exercises and case studies throughout the book for individual or group work, helping students apply public personnel management concepts to real world situations. In addition to full coverage of the increasingly important role of personnel management in nonprofit organizations, this new edition has been thoroughly updated to include timely material on the effects of the 2008 global recession, public service contracting, public sector unions, security concerns, performance measurement, remote management, management of volunteers, the challenges and opportunities of developing an organizational culture, and lessons from the experiences of countries around the world. This is a textbook that is ideally suited to prepare students to manage people, effectively, whether in government, nonprofit organizations, NGOs, or in the private sector.

While many introductory public administration textbooks contain a dedicated chapter on ethics, The Public Administration Profession is the first to utilize ethics as a lens for understanding the discipline. Analyses of the ASPA Code of Ethics are deftly woven into each chapter alongside complete coverage of the institutions, processes, concepts, persons, history, and typologies a student needs to gain a thorough grasp of public service as a field of study and practice. Features include: A significant focus on "public interests," nonprofit management, hybrid-private organizations, contracting out and collaborations, and public service at state and local levels. A careful examination of the role that religion may play in public servants' decision making, as well as the unignorable and growing role that faith-based organizations play in public administration and nonprofit management at large. End-of-chapter ethics case studies, key concepts and persons, and dedicated "local community action steps" in each chapter. Appendices dedicated to future public administration and nonprofit career management, writing successful papers throughout a student's career, and professional codes of ethics. A comprehensive suite of online supplements, including: lecture slides; quizzes and sample examinations for undergraduate and graduate courses containing multiple choice, true-false, identifications, and essay questions; chapter outlines with suggestions for classroom discussion; and suggestions for use of appendices, e.g., how to successfully write a short term paper, a brief policy memo, resume, or a book review. Providing students with a comprehensive introduction to the subject while offering instructors an elegant new way to bring ethics prominently into the curriculum, The Public Administration Profession is an ideal introductory text for public administration and public affairs courses at the undergraduate or graduate level.

Prevailing models of organisation divide people into owners, managers and employees, forcing especially the latter to obey, to behave, and to function well within a hierarchical and managerial pecking order. However, there is no natural law suggesting the need for such organisations, not in market economies and definitely not in modern democratic societies - and there is no justification for such types of organisation. Arguing that most current organisations are orthodox, hierarchical, anti-democratic, oppressive, unfair, and unjust, this book presents a viable alternative, a better type of organisation - the democratic organisation. Diefenbach develops and provides step by step a systematic, comprehensive, thorough, and detailed general model of the democratic organisation. He describes the democratic organisation's fundamental principles, values, governance, management, structures, and processes, and the ways it functions and operates both within the organisation and towards others and the environment. Crucially, and most importantly, the democratic organisation provides the institutions and organisational context for individuals to maintain and pursue their fundamental freedoms, inalienable rights, and dignity; to manage organisations in democratic, participative, and cooperative ways; and to conduct business in considerate, balanced, and sustainable ways. This book will be of interest to researchers, academics, practitioners, and students in the fields of management, organisation studies, strategic management, business ethics, entrepreneurship, and family business.

Public administration and policy analysis education have long emphasized tidiness, stages, and rationality, but practitioners frequently must deal with a world where objectivity is buffeted by, repressed by, and sometimes defeated by value conflict. Politics and policy are "messy" and power explains much more about the policy process than does rationality. Public Policy Praxis, now in a thoroughly revised fourth edition, uniquely equips students to better grapple with ambiguity and complexity. By emphasizing mixed methodologies, the reader is encouraged, through the use of a wide variety of policy cases, to develop a workable and practical model of applied policy analysis. Students are given the opportunity to try out these globally applicable analytical models and tools in varied case settings (e.g., county, city, federal, international, plus urban and rural) while facing wide-ranging topics (starving farmers and the red panda in Nepal, e-cigarettes, GMOs, the gig economy, and opioid abuse) that capture the diversity and reality of public policy analysis and the intergovernmental and complex nature of politics. The fourth edition expands upon its thorough exploration of specific tools of policy analysis, such as stakeholder mapping, content analysis, group facilitation, narrative analysis, cost-benefit analysis, futuring, and survey analysis. Along with teaching "how to," the authors discuss the limitations, the practical political problems, and the ethical problems associated with different techniques and methodologies. Many new cases have been added, along with clear instructions on how to do congressional research and a Google Trends analysis. An expanded online Teaching Appendix is included for adopters, offering original cases, answers to problems, alternative approaches to case use, teaching exercises, student assignments, pedagogical ideas, and supplemental material directly tied to concepts covered in the text. With an easily accessible and conversational writing style, Public Policy Praxis is an ideal textbook for undergraduate and graduate courses in public policy analysis, community planning, leadership, social welfare policy, educational policy, family policy, and special seminars.

An in-depth introduction, Lean Six Sigma for Engineers and Managers: With Applied Case Studies presents a detailed road map and industry examples to help you understand and implement the LSS system. It discusses the LSS process to define improvement needs, measure current business performance, analyze performance results using statistical tools, improve business and financial results, and control peak business performance. It shows you how to realize the customer satisfaction benefits of Six Sigma and the cost reduction benefits of Lean manufacturing. A practical and technical guide to fully understanding and implementing LSS for any organization, from manufacturing to service facilities, this book is based on concepts related to total quality management, data analysis, and statistical process control. It details an LSS process that has been applied and refined during the past 10 years on more than 20 LSS projects around the globe. The book includes a framework for implementing LSS, discusses LSS strategies, and includes case studies from service and manufacturing organizations. The need for LSS has been brought on by increased global competition, sustained financial crises, and increased consumer expectations for higher quality and lower costs. Technologically complex products and processes combined with global supply chains have intensified the need for LSS. The benefits of focusing on LSS by individual organizations can lead to enhanced economic performance, strong levels of customer satisfaction, and higher market shares. With discussions of statistical analysis, training, implementation, common pitfalls, and best practices, this book gives you the edge in increasing your organization's competitiveness in the rapidly evolving global market.

First published in 1998, this timely study of an American acute care hospital examines decision making by patients and their families along with a cost analysis of social work services. The first part focuses on the patient's experience of acute hospital care and the second part examines the factors which influence the use of social work resources in providing services to acute hospital patients. Patients were asked about the treatment and discharge decisions made, the agreements that occurred and the problems they experienced while they were in the hospital and after discharge. Surprisingly, the patients reported little difficulty with the decision making environment although it was evident that many experienced a high level of difficulty once discharged. The second part focuses on the utilization of social work resources for these patients. The study uses an activity based framework to examine the cost drivers for social work intervention. It is the first example of the application of ideas from activity based costing to analysis of social work services in hospital settings. Patricia Hansen's interviews enable us to listen to the voices of those using social work services and the influences on their decision making, presenting a ground-breaking analysis of social work drivers. The findings question what can truly be achieved in such a brief period of time and Hansen presents several sound suggestions to provide comprehensive and effective psychosocial services for patients and families. Her study serves as a gold standard for future social work research on this issue.

As a community, aligning efforts across a community to support the safety and well-being of vulnerable and underserved individuals is extraordinarily difficult. These individuals suffer disproportionally from health issues, job loss, a lack of stable housing, high utility costs, substance abuse, and homelessness. In addition to medical care, these individuals often critically need access to community social sector organizations that provide a distinct and complementary set of services, such as housing, food services, emergency utility assistance, and employment assistance. These services are just as vital as healthcare services to these individuals' long-term health and well-being, with data suggesting that 80-90% of health outcomes can be attributed to factors beyond direct medical intervention. This book proposes a novel approach to the coordination of medicine and social services through the use of people, process, and technology, with the goal being to streamline coordination between medical and Community-Based Organizations and to promote true cross-sector patient and client advocacy. The book is based on the experience of Dallas, TX, which was one of the first metropolitan regions to develop a comprehensive foundation for partnership between a community's clinical and social sectors using web-based information exchange. In the 5 years since the initial launch, the authors have been able to provide seamless connection, communication, and coordination between healthcare providers and a wide array of community-based social service organizations (a/k/a Community-Based Organizations or CBOs), criminal justice entities, and various other community organizations, including non-collegiate educational systems. This practical how-to guide is the codification of transferrable lessons from successes and challenges faced when working with clinical, community, and government leaders. By reading this playbook, leaders interested in building (or expanding) connected clinical-community services will learn how to: 1) facilitate cross-sector care coordination; 2) enable community care partners to better provide targeted services to community residents; 3) reduce duplication of services across partnering organizations; and 4) help to bridge service gaps in the currently fragmented system. Implementation of services, as recommended in this book, will ultimately streamline assistance efforts, reduce repeat crises and emergency funding requests, help address disparities of care, and improve the health, safety, and well-being of the most vulnerable community residents.

This book gives the reader an inside look at creating a new healthcare service using practical examples and scenarios one would face if doing it themselves. This workbook is a follow-up to the recently published, Lean Design in Healthcare and offers a tactical version of the principles provided in the book. It parses the dialogue out into detailed reasons for the Lean Design in Healthcare's position and principles. This workbook contains examples and many exercises for the reader to complete to begin their own innovation journey. Lean Design in Healthcare chronicles the journey of a fictitious healthcare delivery organization using the Simpler Design System principles based on Lean methodologies. While the characters and actual story is fictitious, it is based on the journey many healthcare systems and clients have taken, the issues they have faced, and the successes and failures they've had. This workbook takes the initial story further and includes leadership quotes and best practices to support the dialogue introduced in the first book. Exercises will be custom designed to match the story flow and provides practical information that readers can immediately apply in their work. Each chapter will start with an introduction and contain 10 exercises per chapter. Tools include those gleaned from actual application of Lean Product Development, Agile, Design for Six Sigma, and Design Thinking Principles.

This comprehensive text focuses on reasoning, critical thinking and pragmatic decision making in medicine. Based on the author's extensive experience and filled with definitions, formulae, flowcharts and checklists, this fully revised second edition continues to provide invaluable guidance to the crucial role that clinical epidemiology plays in the expanding field of evidence-based medicine. Key Features: * Considers evidence-based medicine as a universal initiative common to all health sciences and professions, and all specialties within those disciplines * Demonstrates how effective practice is reliant on proper foundations, such as clinical and fundamental epidemiology, and biostatistics * Introduces the reader to basic epidemiological methods, meta-analysis and decision analysis * Shows that structured, modern, argumentative reasoning is required to build the best possible evidence and use it in practice and research * Outlines how to make the most appropriate decisions in clinical care, disease prevention and health promotion Presenting a range of topics seldom seen in a single resource, the innovative blend of informal logic and structured evidence-based reasoning makes this book invaluable for anyone seeking broad, in-depth and readable coverage of this complex and sometimes controversial field.

Contemporary public administration research has marginalized the importance of "taking history seriously." With few exceptions, little recent scholarship in the field has looked longitudinally (rather than cross-sectionally), contextually, and theoretically over extended time periods at "big questions" in public administration. One such "big question" involves the evolution of American administrative reform and its link since the nation's founding to American state building. This book addresses this gap by analyzing administrative reform in unprecedented empirical and theoretical ways. In taking a multidisciplinary approach, it incorporates recent developments in cognate research fields in the humanities and social sciences that have been mostly ignored in public administration. It thus challenges existing notions of the nature, scope, and power of the American state and, with these, important aspects of today's conventional wisdom in public administration. Author Robert F. Durant explores the administrative state in a new light as part of a "compensatory state"-driven, shaped, and amplified since the nation's founding by a corporate-social science nexus of interests. Arguing that this nexus of interests has contributed to citizen estrangement in the United States, he offers a broad empirical and theoretical understanding of the political economy of administrative reform, its role in state building, and its often paradoxical results. Offering a reconsideration of conventional wisdom in public administration, this book is required reading for all students, scholars, or practitioners of public administration, public policy, and politics.

Why is there a need to 'innovate healthcare'? The basic reason stems from the sheer scale of the challenges now facing healthcare provision in the UK and across many other countries. The aim of this book is to interrogate past and current attempts to innovate in this arena and to draw-out the key lessons. Innovating Healthcare: The Role of Political, Managerial and Clinical Leadership presents the latest state of knowledge based on original data from a series of NIHR-funded research projects set in the context of a review of extensive secondary research. The book draws upon first-person verbatim accounts of change attempts made by doctors and other clinicians as well as upon research findings about the roles played by policy-makers and managers. The analysis draws upon theory and practice in leadership, innovation and institution-building. The mutually-reinforcing contributions of political, managerial and clinical leadership are at the core of the investigative narrative. This book will be of interest to students and researchers, clinicians and managers in the health and care sectors as well as policy-makers. While the focus in on healthcare, the book has wider relevance for students of management, leadership, innovation and organizational studies. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license

This book gives the reader an inside look at creating a new healthcare service using practical examples and scenarios one would face if doing it themselves. This workbook is a follow-up to the recently published, Lean Design in Healthcare and offers a tactical version of the principles provided in the book. It parses the dialogue out into detailed reasons for the Lean Design in Healthcare's position and principles. This workbook contains examples and many exercises for the reader to complete to begin their own innovation journey. Lean Design in Healthcare chronicles the journey of a fictitious healthcare delivery organization using the Simpler Design System principles based on Lean methodologies. While the characters and actual story is fictitious, it is based on the journey many healthcare systems and clients have taken, the issues they have faced, and the successes and failures they've had. This workbook takes the initial story further and includes leadership quotes and best practices to support the dialogue introduced in the first book. Exercises will be custom designed to match the story flow and provides practical information that readers can immediately apply in their work. Each chapter will start with an introduction and contain 10 exercises per chapter. Tools include those gleaned from actual application of Lean Product Development, Agile, Design for Six Sigma, and Design Thinking Principles.

Practitioners operate in a necessary reality. We work in a space where project performance is above theory or methodology. In the best environments, delivery and an affirmative culture are what matter most. In the worst, it is politics and survival. In any environment, we are challenged to adopt best practices and adapt our style to the environment in which the project is occurring. This is a book about those best practices and practitioner experiences. It is a must-have reference and guidebook for project managers, general managers, business leaders and project management researchers. This book is the result of the hard work and dedication of more than 35 authors from more than 15 countries across four continents. It brings a diversity of experience, professional and personal. It includes practitioners, leading academics, renowned theorists and many who straddle those roles. The chapters cover experiences in software, large-scale infrastructure projects, finance and health care, to name a few. The chapters themselves take many forms. Check out the Table of Contents to get a deeper sense of the topics included. All provide real-world guidance on delivering high-performing projects and show you how to build, lead and manage high-performing teams. The Practitioner's Handbook of Project Performance is complete in itself. It can also be an enticing start to an ongoing dialogue with the authors and a pleasurable path to get deeper into the subject of project performance. Find your favorite place to begin learning from these chapters, to begin taking notes and taking away nuggets to use in your everyday. But don't stop there. Contact information and further resources for this diverse team of experts are found throughout. The Practitioner's Handbook is a modern guide to the leading edge of project performance management and a path to the future of project delivery.

New edition of a classic guide to ensuring effective organizational performance

Thoroughly revised and updated, the second edition of "Managing and Measuring Performance in Public and Nonprofit Organizations" is a comprehensive resource for designing and implementing effective performance management and measurement systems in public and nonprofit organizations. The ideas, tools, and processes in this vital resource are designed to help organizations develop measurement systems to support such effective management approaches as strategic management, results-based budgeting, performance management, process improvement, performance contracting, and much more.

The book will help readers identify outcomes and other performance criteria to be measured, tie measures to goals and objectives, define and evaluate the worth of desired performance measures, and analyze, process, report, and utilize data effectively.Includes significant updates that offer a more integrated approach to performance management and measurementOffers a detailed framework and instructions for developing and implementing performance management systemsShows how to apply the most effective performance management principlesReveals how to overcome the barriers to effective performance management

"Managing and Measuring Performance in Public and Nonprofit Organizations" identifies common methodological and managerial problems that often confront managers in developing performance measurement systems, and presents a number of targeted strategies for the successful implementation of such systems in public and nonprofit organizations. This must-have resource will help leaders reach their organizational goals and objectives.

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.

First published in 1998, this timely study of an American acute care hospital examines decision making by patients and their families along with a cost analysis of social work services. The first part focuses on the patient's experience of acute hospital care and the second part examines the factors which influence the use of social work resources in providing services to acute hospital patients. Patients were asked about the treatment and discharge decisions made, the agreements that occurred and the problems they experienced while they were in the hospital and after discharge. Surprisingly, the patients reported little difficulty with the decision making environment although it was evident that many experienced a high level of difficulty once discharged. The second part focuses on the utilization of social work resources for these patients. The study uses an activity based framework to examine the cost drivers for social work intervention. It is the first example of the application of ideas from activity based costing to analysis of social work services in hospital settings. Patricia Hansen's interviews enable us to listen to the voices of those using social work services and the influences on their decision making, presenting a ground-breaking analysis of social work drivers. The findings question what can truly be achieved in such a brief period of time and Hansen presents several sound suggestions to provide comprehensive and effective psychosocial services for patients and families. Her study serves as a gold standard for future social work research on this issue.

Published in 1998. The industrial model of the labour process developed by Braverman was applied to social work in the radical social work literature. The book engages in a more critical examination of the application of the labour process perspective to social work, with particular reference to front-line management in a local authority context. It begins with a review of the labour process literature which demonstrates the extent to which the independence of Braverman's model on scientific management was undermined in the post-Braverman debate. The radical texts' orthodox Bravermanian approach to the social work labour process is considered. In those texts, the social work labour process is represented as having moved towards an industrial model which steadily encroached on the autonomy of front-line field social workers, through managers' wresting of control over their work. The book advances an alternative model of the social work labour process which takes account of the distinctive features of social work, as a state-mediated, bureau-professional labour process. Findings from a small-scale case study of a social services department are presented. Data from the study are used to test the bureau-professional model of the social work labour process against the orthodox Bravermanian model. Developments in the social services department's organizational structure are set out and the position of front-line managers is considered through an exploration of their identifications and commitments in relation to management and trade unionism. The data from their accounts support the bureau-professional model of the labour process and the position of front-line managers emerges as more ambiguous than the radical social work literature indicated. Front-line managers did not share global goals with senior management, nor were their interests merged straightforwardly with those of social workers.