The Future of Public Service: A Search for a New Balance

The proliferation of reforms in public administration based on the principles and instruments of the New Public Management (NPM) have triggered protest from and collective action by many professional groups in various sectors (healthcare, education, justice, social work, research.) and raised questions about the future of professionals working in the public service, particularly as concerns their autonomy. This exploratory study indicates that public administration in the 21st century is undergoing dramatic change, especially in advanced economies, but also in many parts of the developing world such as Nigeria. Globalization and the pluralization of service provision are the driving forces behind these changes. Policy problems faced by governmentsare increasingly complex, wicked and global, rather than simple, linear, and national in focus. And yet the prevailing paradigms through which public sector reform are designed and implemented are relatively static and do not fully encompass the significance or implications of these wider changes. While public sector reforms in the developing world such as Nigeria are influenced by policy experiments and organizational practices originating in OECD countries, they tend to operate within the traditional public administration paradigm. Consequently, there is often a discrepancy between the thrust of public sector reform efforts in developing country contexts and wider shifts in the nature of governance and contemporary approaches to public management grounded in OECD experience. It was concluded therefore that Nigeria has embraced the concept of new public management from their western originator but its core principles and tenets are not strictly applied in the management of public sector administration. It was recommended among others that for us to achieve the tenets of new public management in Nigeria, the government need to be honest, transparent, probity and accountability in the political leadership management including the managers in the public sector organizations.

The proliferation of reforms in public administration based on the principles and instruments of the New Public Management (NPM) have triggered protest from and collective action by many professional groups in various sectors (healthcare, education, justice, social work, research.) and raised questions about the future of professionals working in the public service, particularly as concerns their autonomy. This exploratory study indicates that public administration in the 21st century is undergoing dramatic change, especially in advanced economies, but also in many parts of the developing world such as Nigeria. Globalization and the pluralization of service provision are the driving forces behind these changes. Policy problems faced by governmentsare increasingly complex, wicked and global, rather than simple, linear, and national in focus. And yet the prevailing paradigms through which public sector reform are designed and implemented are relatively static and do not fully encompass the significance or implications of these wider changes. While public sector reforms in the developing world such as Nigeria are influenced by policy experiments and organizational practices originating in OECD countries, they tend to operate within the traditional public administration paradigm. Consequently, there is often a discrepancy between the thrust of public sector reform efforts in developing country contexts and wider shifts in the nature of governance and contemporary approaches to publicmanagement grounded in OECD experience. It was concluded therefore that Nigeria has embraced the concept of new public management from their western originator but its core principles and tenets are not strictly applied in the management of public sector administration. It was recommended among others that for us to achieve the tenets of new public management in Nigeria, the government need to be honest, transparent, probity and accountability in the political leadership management including the managers in the public sector organizations.

Citation (2023), "Prelims", Caruana, J., Bisogno, M. and Sicilia, M. (Ed.) Measurement in Public Sector Financial Reporting: Theoretical Basis and Empirical Evidence (Emerald Studies in Public Service Accounting and Accountability), Emerald Publishing Limited, Bingley, pp. i-xxiv. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80117-161-820231012

THE principal rationale for public policy intervention lies in the inadequacies of market outcomes. Yet this rationale is really only a necessary, not a sufficient, condition for policy formulation.1 Policy formulation properly requires that the realized inadequacies of market outcomes be compared with the potential inadequacies of nonmarket efforts to ameliorate them. The "anatomy" of market failure provides only limited help in prescribing therapies for government success.2 That markets may fail to produce either economically optimal or socially desirable outcomes has been elaborated in a well-known and voluminous

Public sector reforms tend to focus on restructuring public institutions and addressing dysfunctional operational systems without dealing with inefficiencies in records management. Such focus partly addresses the heart of the service delivery challenge in the public sector. Sometimes, the biggest challenge for people seeking particular services in public institutions is not necessarily impediments caused by dysfunctional structures, but lack of records to support citizens’ claims or inability by public officers to timeously track files and provide relevant information to clients on time. This qualitative study examines the public sector reforms in Malawi and advocates for the inclusion of records management into such reforms. The study is based on analysis of government reform reports, policy briefs, circulars, scholarly texts and media reports. While a wide variety of institutional reforms within the public sector are essential, it is important to recognise that without well-functioning records management systems, efficient delivery of public services will remain a challenge. The study established that public sector reforms that focus purely on restructuring public institutions and addressing dysfunctional operational systems without dealing with inefficient records management systems adversely compromise service delivery of the reformed institutions. The study further expounds that despite numerous attempts to reform the public sector in the country, records management remains a challenge evidenced by numerous malpractices. It is concluded that consistent with the objective of reforming public institutions, it is imperative when implementing institutional reforms in the public sector that they are integrated with reforms in records management systems.

This paper discusses issues arising in the measurement of productivity in public services. Compared to measuring productivity in the private sector difficulties arise because the output of public services is often unpriced and because some public services are consumed collectively. A key problem is measuring the full range of outputs and quality improvements delivered by public sector organizations that are valued by society. Without comprehensive measures of output, productivity statistics may be misleading. I outline methods used in the measurement of both private and public sector productivity and discuss the measurement of public sector productivity in practice. Finally I discuss studies that examine factors underlying productivity differences and productivity growth in public and private sector organizations. Public sector reforms and the use of pilot schemes in public sector organizations present opportunities for research to identify causal effects on productivity.

This study examined the challenges encountered in governance practice in Somali government public institutions, especially the deeply looked at the relationship between governance and debt relieving, and the role of governance in the performance of improving public institutions that enables successful administration should reward debt for governance. The study explores a mixed-methods approach involving both quantitative and qualitative research approaches. The population for this study was 300 from 8 public institutions in the federal government of Somalia, with the sample size of 171. The primary data was gathered through a questionnaire distributed to 171 participants using a face-to-face data collection tool, where 171 questionnaires were returned successfully, as well as a key informant interview with 15 top and senior managers. The data was analyzed with descriptive statistics using SPSS packages for social science, whereas qualitative data gathered through interview content was analyzed. The findings show that weak governance practices exist in Somali government public institution sectors; they have clear, consistent visions of governance through different levels of public institutions. The major challenges encountered in public sector institutions in governance practice were a lack of comprehensive engagement with different stakeholders, insufficient awareness, no patriotic politicians, poor social cohesion, a lack of adequate training of civil servants, inept visionary leadership, and an inflexible and top-down approach as major challenges in successful governance practices. The research highlighted that resource constraints, politician self-interest, and limited stakeholder involvement are other significant barriers to good governance planning in public institutions, mirroring our findings that deficiencies in stakeholder engagement and resource allocation are other major challenges in Somali government public institutions. The study recommends enhancing the involvement of different level stakeholders in setting governing politics, matching budget and strategic objectives, improving communication and trainings supporting adaptable leadership, finally implementing effective monitoring and evaluation mechanism to make ensure that governance objectives achieved to enhance good governance strategic management in Somali government public institution sectors.

The present paper argues that recent research on public sector reforms offers few contributions to the body of knowledge on this topic because it adds little to the conclusions drawn during the first generation of research in this area. Although these later studies have often been context-specific and have explored the details of the process of change in some depth, it is rather difficult to compare their results or to make reasoned judgements of the comprehensiveness and centrality of the analysed change. Although most public sector reforms that affect hospitals, schools or social services are initiated and designed by national governments, individual case studies of local administrations often fail to capture the generic traits of nationwide reforms. However, public sector change cannot be approached as if it comprises collections of nominally independent local events. The present paper argues for two new approaches to the study of public sector change: (i) the systematic categorization of the different forms of governmental intervention under study and (ii) analysis of the ways in which these forms of intervention are linked and interact. Based on extensive empirical research, this paper suggests a generic classification of these forms of intervention that can be used in empirical research on comprehensive public sector change. Consequently, five interventions in public sector organizations are suggested, namely political intervention, intervention by laws and regulations, intervention by audit and inspection, intervention by management and intervention by rationalizing professional practice. The model is particularly well suited to the longitudinal analysis of complex public sector reforms. This approach provides a conceptual tool to distinguish between interventions based on different forms of knowledge and to investigate how they are linked to each other vertically and horizontally. We demonstrate the usefulness of the model by analysing two empirical examples of reforms in which a variety of interventions were imposed at the local level, through legislation as well as a spectrum of voluntary measures proposed by government agencies, by national associations for local and regional councils and by other national or regional actors.

Accountability is one of the most widely discussed concepts of public administration research and teaching in the last decade. But why is this case? Obviously accountability is, like its counterpart transparency, a “magic concept”, and an indispensable part of the prominent and omnipresent discourse on “good governance” as well as a significant element in debates about public sector reform. The same holds true for performance, which has been a magic and contested concept ever since New Public Management (NPM) entered the discourse about “modern” processes and structures of the public sector. But the third term in the title of this paper, legitimacy, even though it is one of the basic concepts of political science and democracy and is at the heart of Max Weber's theory of bureaucracy, has been surprisingly absent from current debates about the challenges of modern public administration, and for that sake also about the future of the welfare state. This chapter argues that different concepts of legitimacy lie at the heart of most debates about accountability and performance (input, output and throughput legitimacy), and that a better understanding of the relationships between accountability, performance and legitimacy can clarify some of the puzzles of contemporary research.

Contemporary activities of both private and public sector enacts new methods and principles in terms of adapting to everyday market changes. Public sector organizations, including local self-government institutions, are challenged with new demands that are not always easily achieved. At such a time, the application of contemporary managerial concepts, such as New Public Management and Good Governance, are crucial for the efficiency and effectiveness of the public sector organizations. In transitional countries, and especially those that are candidates for accession to the European Union, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, the most demanding criterion is public administration reform. That reform includes improvement of organizational and functional efficiency and effectiveness, reorganizing public administration from the state level to local self-government level, and improvement of public services. In this regard, the paper focuses on research of the efficiency of the public sector in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the countries of the Western Balkans, with focus on citizen satisfaction with certain public sector services. Citizen satisfaction with public services and public institutions can be considered as a direct outcome of government’s policy and activities. Also, citizen satisfaction survey results can reveal a lot on the issues of how governments function, both in terms of citizen actual experiences and their expectations. The paper presents the results of Western Balkans countries compared with the results of European Union countries in terms of health services, education, ease of doing business and e-government. Western Balkans countries do not have a sufficiently developed system for monitoring the satisfaction of public service users and harmonizing reform measures, and also they have not developed well a system of functional cooperation with private and civil sectors in order to improve the quality of public services and citizen satisfaction.

The role of government in land registry and cadastre service in Turkey: Towards a government 3.0 perspective

PROTOCOL: Participation, inclusion, transparency and accountability (PITA) to improve public services in low- and middle-income countries: a systematic review.

This article examines how social collaborative technologies have changed the nature and scope of e‐participation, showcasing several popular modes of engagement. It argues that the main implementation barriers to social media adoption are not technological, but rather organizational, cultural, and administrative. While there is enormous potential for Web 2.0 and associated social media tools to expand public engagement, the design of such initiatives must recognize that in digital environments influence is earned through social reputation, not bureaucratic authority.SommaireCet article examine comment les technologies de collaboration sociale ont changé la nature et l'envergure de la participation en ligne, en mettant en valeur plusieurs modes populaires de mobilisation. Il fait valoir que les principaux obstacles à l'adoption des médias sociaux ne sont pas technologiques, mais plutôt organisationnels, culturels et administratifs. Alors que le Web 2.0 et les outils de médias sociaux connexes présentent un énorme potentiel d'accroître la mobilisation du public, la conception de telles initiatives doit reconnaître que dans les environnements numériques, on acquiert de l'influence grâce à sa réputation sociale et non à son autorité bureaucratique.

Despite an increasing number of studies on teamwork, no unifying work is focused on the measurement of the degree of difference in teamwork in a public sector organization and a private sector organization in the Indian context. Teamwork decreases job satisfaction, motivation and performance, and increases absenteeism and turnover intensions. We hypothesized that there is a significant difference in the degree of teamwork in public sector and private sector organization. Data were collected from 250 employees consisting of managerial and non-managerial staff from both public sector and private sector organizations. The results showed that employees in public sector organizations have a greater degree of teamwork in comparison to private sector employees. In addition job satisfaction increases or decreases with the increase or decrease in teamwork. The purpose of this study is to invoke teamwork in private sector organizations. Obtained results were in the line of the hypotheses. In terms of teamwork, a significant difference is noticed between public sector and private sector organizations. As expected, public sector employees have exhibited a higher degree of teamwork as compared to private sector employees. Most importantly, salary satisfaction is being proven as the catalyst for enhancing the job satisfaction level of employees.

This research uses a comprehensive bibliometric analysis to explore the literature on public sector accounting practices and their impact on accountability and transparency. The research used VOSviewer, a bibliometric analysis tool, to visualize and analyze the bibliometric network, revealing patterns of collaboration, influential publications, and key themes. The data collection process yielded 840 scholarly articles from leading academic databases, with a focus on English-language publications in the past decade. The results show six distinct publication clusters, each highlighting significant research themes. Cluster 1 emphasizes innovation and transparency, indicating the relevance of accounting change and performance measurement in public sector organizations. Cluster 2 centers on accounting reform and the adoption of accrual accounting practices, exploring the transition from cash-based to accrual-based accounting in the public sector. Cluster 3 studies forensic accounting and internal audit practices, reflecting the growing interest in fraud detection and risk management in public sector entities. Cluster 4 highlights the importance of information systems and efficiency in public sector accounting. Cluster 5 centers on the pressing issue of corruption in the public sector and the role of audit in combating corrupt practices. Cluster 6 explores the potential application of private sector accounting practices in the public sector. Keyword analysis identified the most frequently occurring keywords, such as "accountant", "public sector reform", "performance", and "service", underscoring their importance in the literature. Conversely, keywords with fewer occurrences, such as "transparency" and "information systems", indicate areas that require further attention and research.