Creating citizen-consumers::changing publics and changing public services

Book review - The article has no abstract

Competence requirements for managing supply in interorganizational networks

The authors address the growing call for research into the management of supply networks serving the public sector. Building on prior action research, this empirical paper focuses on the management of supply in interorganizational, health sector networks identifying the competence requirements (skills, knowledge, traits, and behavioural indicators) associated with effective team performance. Drawing on empirical data, the authors present a competence framework that aims to capture a team’s tacit understanding of strategic supply management. Competence indicators are organized into six themes: network understanding; developing network position; relationship management; learning, knowledge and knowledge management; strategy formulation; strategy implementation. Finally, the relevance of the framework to boundary spanning personnel outside the purchasing function and to other organizations is considered.

Promoting competitive markets:the role of public procurement

The study presented here examines how public procurement agencies address establishing and maintaining competitive markets; a topic still in its academic infancy. Cases are used to address impediments and improve understanding of strategic priorities in managing for competitive markets. Public policy academics have observed many competing policies in the wider public sector. Specifically, this paper identifies a need for research on supplier incentives at a market level, on the post contract management of suppliers and as an important sub-set, key supplier relationship management, along with professional development.

London's Olympic ambassadors:a legacy for public policy implementation

As a contribution to current discussions about securing a legacy from the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, this article considers whether there are lessons for public policy implementation around volunteer involvement. Drawing on the case of the Team London Ambassadors Programme which encompassed 8,000 volunteers during the Games period, the article considers the scope for an expanded role for UK public sector organisations in the recruitment, training and management of volunteers in the future.

Reporting and managing risk:a look at current practice at Tesco, RBS, local and central government

These case studies from CIMA highlight the need to embed risk management within more easily understood behaviours, consistent with the overall organisational culture. In each case, some form of internal audit team provides either an oversight function or acts as an expert link in that feedback loop. Frontline staff, managers and specialists should be completely aligned on risk, in part just to ensure that there is a consistency of approach. They should understand instinctively that good performance includes good risk management. Tesco has continued to thrive during the recession and remains a robust and efficient group of businesses despite the emergence of potential threats around consumer spending and the supply chain. RBS, by contrast, has suffered catastrophic and very public failures of risk management despite a large in-house function and stiff regulation of risk controls. Birmingham City Council, like all local authorities, is adapting to more commercial modes of operation and is facing diverse threats and opportunities emerging as a result of social change. And DCMS, like many other public sector organisations, has to handle an incredibly complex network of delivery partners within the context of a relatively recent overhaul of central government risk management processes. Key Findings: •Risk management is no longer solely a financial discipline, nor is it simply a concern for the internal control function. •Where organisations retain a discrete risk management cadre – often specialists at monitoring and evaluating a range of risks – their success is dependent on embedding risk awareness in the wider culture of the enterprise. •Risk management is most successful when it is explicitly linked to operational performance. •Clear leadership, specific goals, excellent influencing skills and open-mindedness to potential threats and opportunities are essential for effective risk management. •Bureaucratic processes and systems can hamper good risk management – either as a result of a ‘box-ticking mentality’ or because managers and staff believe they do not need to consider risk themselves.

Eredményes projektszervezet kialakítása funkcionális, hierarchikus szervezetek esetén: egy példa az államigazgatásból (Development of effective project organization in functional, hierarchical organizations: an example from public administration)

Az államigazgatásban – itthon és külföldön is – a projektek jelentős százaléka időben csúszik, nem azt eredményezi, amit eredetileg elvártak, a szakmai résztvevők szerint túladminisztrált, a munkatársak tevékenysége nem áttekinthető. Ezeknek a problémáknak a nagy része a projektszervezet és a hierarchikusfunkcionális- hivatali szervezet egymás mellett éléséből és a nehezen szinkronizálható együttműködésből fakad. A cikkben egy, a gyakorlatban bevált módszertant mutat be a szerző, amely adott feltételrendszer mellett nagymértékben kiküszöböli a fent említett hiányosságokat és a szervezet napi működésébe illeszkedő tevékenységek sorozatára vezeti vissza a projekttevékenységeket. A módszer egy gyakorlati problémából – a volt APEH-es és VP-s rendszerek integrálása a NAV-ba – indult ki, azonban a szerző véleménye szerint alkalmazható más, funkcionális alapokon felépülő szervezetnél is. _____ The high percentage of public sector projects slips in time, the result is not that what was expected initially, those are overadministrated by according to the professional participants’ opinion, and the activity of staff does not clear. In this article the author describes a best practice methodology, which led the project activities to series of activities which fit to the organization’s daily operations. The method started from a practical problem, but according to the author’s opinion it can be applied to other structured functional basis organizations.

Winners and Losers in the Liberalized Energy Retail Sector in Hungary:A Co-evolutionary Approach

This paper examines the recent history of the Hungarian energy trading market in a co-evolutionary framework. Hungary is characterized by a mixed ownership structure with mainly multinational incumbents in energy retail and distribution, while the wholesale is dominantly owned by state-owned companies. The legal framework also has dual characteristics, with free-market regulation for industrial consumers and a regulated price regime for households. Our research method follows a longitudinal approach from the period of market liberalization in 2008 until 2013. We identified strong relationship between the individual and sector performance of the trading companies and the current political ideology and institutional regime.

New Public Management Reforms: Institutions matter!

New Public Management (NPM) has played a decisive role and has had a radical effect on the productivity and efficiency of the public sector in the Anglo-Saxon countries. However, the effective introduction of the NPM reforms is not an easy task. The scientific community is zealously analyzing the experiences of the developing countries. The stories, they tell, are full of failures, and ineffective reforms. The goal of the current study is to uncover the factors that might influence the successful implementation of the NPM reforms. In our analysis, by relying on the theories of new institutional economics, we developed a model with which we wish to prove that in regards to the success of the reforms the informal and the formal institutions characteristic of the given country are the decisively determining factors. When answering the question, we introduced a new indicator based on public choice theory – the politicians’ interest index – by which we could measure the success of the NPM. We tested our hypothesis by a comparative statistical analysis using the data from 31 countries. Based on our results, we find that informal institutions, the culture shared by the members of society, fundamentally determine the probability of the successful implementation of the NPM reforms, these results having a significant practical relevance.

The influence of HOPE VI public housing on public schools

In the United States, public school enrollment is typically organized by neighborhood boundaries. This dissertation examines whether the federally funded HOPE VI program influenced performance in neighborhood public schools. In effect since 1992, HOPE VI has sought to revitalize distressed public housing using the New Urbanism model of mixed income communities. There are 165 such HOPE VI projects nationwide. Despite nearly two decades of the program's implementation, the literature on its connection to public school performance is thin. My dissertation aims to narrow this research gap. There are three principal research questions: (1) Following HOPE VI, was there a change in socioeconomic status (SES) in the neighborhood public school? The hypothesis is that low SES (measured as the proportion of students qualifying for the Free and Reduced Lunch Program) would reduce. (2) Following HOPE VI, did the performance of neighborhood public schools change? The hypothesis is that the school performance, measured by the proportion of 5th grade students proficient in state wide math and reading tests, would increase. (3) What factors relate to the performance of public schools in HOPE VI communities? The focus is on non-school, neighborhood factors that influence the public school performance. For answering the first two questions, I used t-tests and regression models to test the hypotheses. The analysis shows that there is no statistically significant change in SES following HOPE VI. However, there are statistically significant increases in performance for reading and math proficiency. The results are interesting in indicating that HOPE VI neighborhood improvement may have some relationship with improving school performance. To answer the third question, I conducted a case study analysis of two HOPE VI neighborhood public schools, one which improved significantly (in Philadelphia) and one which declined the most (in Washington DC). The analysis revealed three insights into neighborhood factors for improved school performance: (i) a strong local community organization; (ii) local community's commitment (including the middle income families) to send children to the public school; and (iii) ties between housing and education officials to implement the federal housing program. In essence, the study reveals how housing policy is de facto education policy.

Municipal accountability: Should regulations similar to the Sarbanes -Oxley Act apply to the local sector?

As America moved into the 2lst century financial scandals associated with large publicly traded corporations brought widespread concern about the reliability of financial reporting. In response the U.S. Congress adopted the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX). Undergirding SOX was the belief that improvements in the reliability of an organization's financial disclosures would lead to increased trust in the issuing organization. While SOX is aimed at publicly traded private sector organizations, the value of adopting SOX-like practices in the public and the nonprofit sectors have been recognized. Although SOX-like auditing practices have not at the time of this research become part of the auditing regime for municipalities, the results of this research provide a baseline "read" of municipal finance officers' perceptions of the value and obstacles associated with adoption of two major components of SOX: Principal Officer(s) Certification (POC) and the Independent Audit Committee (IAC) requirements. The author mailed surveys to all finance officers of municipalities in Florida and Ohio with populations of 10,000 or greater which did not contract out the operation of their finance departments. Post-survey "elite" interviews were conducted in an effort to obtain a deeper understanding of revealed issues and contradictions found in the analysis of the results of the mails survey. The findings suggest municipal finance officers are willing to adopt POC but have reservations about implementing IAC. With both POC and IAC the respondents appeared to consider intangible, non-pecuniary consequences as much or more than tangible, pecuniary consequences. Consistent with prior research, attitudes regarding POC and IAC were found to be unrelated to prior adoptive behavior, or personal and organizational demographic variables. Although accounting and auditing are inexorably intertwined, views of the recently implemented GASB 34 reporting model were found to be unrelated to the willingness to adopt POC or IAC. Findings dovetail with current discourse in public sector accounting suggesting local finance professionals may see benefits—both tangible and intangible—to some but not all accounting practices adopted in the private sector. This is consistent with the commonly accepted belief that public sector accounting maintains fundamental differences from its private counterpart.

Public Service Motivation in Public and Nonprofit Service Providers: The Cases of Belarus and Poland

The work motivation construct is central to the theory and practice of many social science disciplines. Yet, due to the novelty of validated measures appropriate for a deep cross-national comparison, studies that contrast different administrative regimes remain scarce. This study represents an initial empirical effort to validate the Public Service Motivation (PSM) instrument proposed by Kim and colleagues (2013) in a previously unstudied context. The two former communist countries analyzed in this dissertation—Belarus and Poland— followed diametrically opposite development strategies: a fully decentralized administrative regime in Poland and a highly centralized regime in Belarus. The employees (n = 677) of public and nonprofit organizations in the border regions of Podlaskie Wojewodstwo (Poland) and Hrodna Voblasc (Belarus) are the subjects of study. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed three dimensions of public service motivation in the two regions: compassion, self-sacrifice, and attraction to public service. The statistical models tested in this dissertation suggest that nonprofit sector employees exhibit higher levels of PSM than their public sector counterparts. Nonprofit sector employees also reveal a similar set of values and work attitudes across the countries. Thus, the study concludes that in terms of PSM, employees of nonprofit organizations constitute a homogenous group that exists atop the administrative regimes. However, the findings propose significant differences between public sector agencies across the two countries. Contrary to expectations, data suggest that organization centralization in Poland is equal to—or for some items even higher than—that of Belarus. We can conclude that the absence of administrative decentralization of service provision in a country does not necessarily undermine decentralized practices within organizations. Further analysis reveals strong correlations between organization centralization and PSM for the Polish sample. Meanwhile, in Belarus, correlations between organization centralization items and PSM are weak and mostly insignificant. The analysis indicates other factors beyond organization centralization that significantly impact PSM in both sectors. PSM of the employees in the studied region is highly correlated with their participation in religious practices, political parties, or labor unions as well as location of their organization in a capital and type of social service provided.

Making the governance of public bodies work : chair-chief executive relationships in practice

The authors gratefully acknowledge a grant from the British Academy (SG10591) and an award from the University of Aberdeen Knowledge Exchange and Transfer Fund.

Making the governance of public bodies work : chair-chief executive relationships in practice

The authors gratefully acknowledge a grant from the British Academy (SG10591) and an award from the University of Aberdeen Knowledge Exchange and Transfer Fund.

A voice for change? Trust relationships between ombudsmen, individuals and public service providers

There has been a debate for years about what the role of the ombudsman is. This article examines a key component of the role, to promote trust in public services and government. To be able to do this, however, an ombudsman needs to be perceived as legitimate and be trusted by a range of stakeholders, including the user. This article argues that three key relationships in a person’s complaint journey can build trust in an institution, and must therefore be understood as a system. The restorative justice framework is adapted to conceptualize this trust model as a novel approach to understanding the institution from the perspective of its users. Taking two public sector ombudsmen as examples, the article finds that voice and trust need to be reinforced through the relationships in a consumer journey to manage individual expectations, prevent disengagement, and thereby promote trust in the institution, in public service providers, and in government.

Policy Transfer and the Sustainability of Public Private Partnership in Ireland::A conceptual analysis

There has been private sector involvement in the delivery of public services in the Irish State since its foundation. This involvement was formalised in 1998 when Public Private Partnership (PPP) was officially introduced. Ireland is a latecomer to PPP and, prior to the credit crisis, was seen as a ‘rapid follower’ relying primarily on the UK PPP model in the procurement of infrastructure in transport, education, housing/urban regeneration and water/wastewater.  PPP activity in Ireland stalled during the credit crisis, and some projects were cancelled, but it has taken off again recently with part of the Infrastructure and Capital Investment Plan 2016 – 2021 to be delivered through PPP showing continuing political commitment to PPP.  Ireland’s interest in PPP cannot be explained by economic rationale alone, as PPP was initiated during a period of prosperity. We consider three alternative explanations: voluntary adoption – where the UK model was closely followed; coercive adoption – where PPP policy was forced upon Ireland; and institutional isomorphism – where institutional creation and change was promoted to aid public sector organisations in gaining institutional legitimacy. We find evidence of all three patterns, with coercive adoption becoming more relevant in recent years. Ireland’s rapid uptake of PPP differs from other European countries, mostly because when PPP was introduced in 1998, the Irish State was in an economic position where it could have directly procured necessary infrastructure. This paper therefore asks why PPP was adopted and how this adoption pattern has affected the sustainability of PPP in Ireland.  This paper defines PPP; examines the background to the PPP approach adopted in Ireland; outlines the theoretical framework of the paper: transfer theory and institutional theory; discusses the methodology; reports on findings and gives conclusions.