Change In Public Sector Research Articles

Barriers to adaptation in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Preliminary findings

Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the inertia of the climate system means that adaptation to new ‘normal’ weather patterns is needed. Uncertainties in climate science means adaptation will be challenging, requiring an iterative approach. Considerable progress in adaptation has been made in the United Kingdom (UK), but some vulnerable groups are marginalised from this process. The nature of destitution in the UK means that official statistics – and therefore adaptation plans – exclude significant numbers of vulnerable people. Social vulnerability is increasing in the UK due to the global recession, the reform of the public sector and welfare changes. Extreme weather exacerbates pressures on Local Government who are financially stressed to the point that delivery of statutory functions are threatened, thereby making adaptation planning extremely challenging.Effective options to tackle this challenge are governed by two key factors. First, acknowledging evidence based policy insufficiently accounts for constraints on adaptive capacity. Second, effective adaptation requires broader involvement in decision making. Developing adaptive capacity will require considerable effort, particularly for vulnerable groups. Adaptation cannot occur in isolation from socio-economic and political drivers, yet the resource implications of dealing with increasing social vulnerability and climate extremes are poorly understood and not currently factored into decision making.

The Process of Albania Enlargement of the European Union, the Transition, Reforms and Changes in Public and Private Sector of Economy

Challenges in identifying the appropriate electoral system and institutional arrangements to achieve inclusiveness require developing an adequate knowledge of the local electorate and identifying a combination of electoral system and affirmative action which best suits the structural as well as institutional context. The capacity of public administration was weak; the system, stemming from a party focused environment, was highly politicized. Corruption was pervasive in every facet of the public sector. Citizens feared public administration and did not trust it to provide even the most basic services in a fair or impartial way. The financial collapse in 1997 was a watershed event in Albania's transition from its communist past. It highlighted the problems of Albania's economic governance capacity and, from an administrative standpoint, reaffirmed and highlighted the inefficacy of a public administration, unable to enforce its laws and regulations. As the public's confidence in Albanian1 institutions had been significantly eroded by the recent events, restoring the public's trust in the government became the main priority of the government. In order to achieve this objective the capacity of the public administration needed to be dramatically strengthened.2 The donors concurred with this assessment. IDA, starting with the 1998 CAS, considered governance and institution building as one of the central planks of its intervention and identified the need to adopt and implement reforms to build an accountable and transparent state as the most important challenge facing the Government of Albania. Over the next several years, the Albanian Government, in partnership with donors, emphasized institutional reform and capacity building and developed a comprehensive strategy to strengthen the public institutions for more effective governance. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n9p689

What is the Meaning of Public Sector Health? Translating Discourse into New Organizational Practices

This study explores the dynamics involved in establishing discourses necessary for constructing organizational change within the public sector. Drawing upon critical discourse analysis, the study identifies two competing discourses – a ‘patient’ and a ‘healthy citizen’ discourse, which exist as strategic resources in health care. The case study focuses on a municipality in Denmark and the way the organizational actors translated meaning into the development of a new healthcare centre. The analysis contributes to our understandings of translation by focusing on discursive legitimizing strategies in the context of public sector change. First, the study shows that discourses not only provide different senses of meaning and warrant particular social actors a louder voice than others, but that these actors also develop discursive legitimizing strategies and translate particular meanings into the organization and organizational practices. Second, when the strategies make a discourse resonate with the local context, in this case a highly political context, then specific organizational practices become more legitimate than others, and the discourse is more inclined to become manifest. Finally, the findings indicate that the manifestation of a discourse can also be explained by how successful this discourse can be carried out in practice.

Impact of group dynamics on eservice implementation

PurposeThe purpose of this article is to re‐appraise the significance of Lewin's group dynamics theory empirically in the context of technology related change in local government.Design/methodology/approachThe paper examines qualitatively the change management processes in the five city councils selected for this study that have developed eservices. A total of 23 face‐to‐face, semi‐structured interviews were conducted with key managers of participating city councils.FindingsThe present study finds that participating Australian city councils are experiencing some degree of disconfirmation of functions, while some participating Australian city councils still maintain a quasi‐stationary equilibrium state. There are some challenges in terms of inter‐department integration and empowering business units to demonstrate explicit ownership of Eservices adoption. Empirical evidence presented in this study supports Lewin's argument that the main focus of change should be on group behaviour rather than individual behaviour.Research limitations/implicationsThis study covers five organizations that are from the same geographical proximity and metropolitan area. The findings are limited to government organisations.Practical implicationsThe findings of this study would be useful for facilitating technology oriented change in public sector organisations.Originality/valueThis paper reinforces Lewin's argument that to understand change and the individual in the changing organisation, it is necessary to identify, plot, and establish the dynamics of the group. Some insights are provided regarding the complexity of group dynamics and the impact they have when implementing organisation wide‐change.

Ten years after: The rise and fall of managerial autonomy in Pompeii

In September 1997, an ad hoc law (Law no. 352/1997) gave archaeological site of Pompeii a new status. Its previous status as a local branch of Ministry of Culture (the Soprintendenza) was reconfigured as an autonomous entity (Soprintendenza autonoma). In July 2008, Italian Prime Minister declared a one year state of emergency in Pompeii, appointing a special Commissioner (Commissario straordinario) in order to cope with the serious critical situation of archeological area (OPCM 3692/2008). The aim of paper is to review process of change in Pompeii over ten years, observing major institutional transformations and analyzing evolution of activities and human and financial resources management. Beyond substantive elements of interest (the mis-management of one of most important archaeological sites in world), paper sheds lights on role of accountability in cultural sector and on distinctive features of Italian public administration, questioning existence of a path of international convergence in public sector change. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. Author keywords Accountability; Arts management; Italy; New public management; Public sector

Forms of Intervention in Public Sector Organizations: Generic Traits in Public Sector Reforms

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.

Dynamic Capabilities in Public Organizations

This article provides a review and synthesis of the extant literature on dynamic capabilities in public organizations. Although this theoretical perspective holds potential to enhance our limited understanding of how public organizations change in response to their increasingly turbulent and complex environments, it has received little attention in the public management field. Against this backdrop, this article seeks to contribute to future research on public sector change by advancing an analytical model that captures the antecedents, microfoundations and effects of dynamic capabilities in public organizations.

The Factors Effecting Employee Commitment to Change in Public Sector: Evidence from Yemen

This study attempted to investigate the moderating effect of organizational culture between the leadership style and normative commitment to change. The study relied on the data collected from 371 employees of Yemeni public sector. The finding of this study shows that organizational culture plays an important role of moderating the relationship between leadership style either transformational or transactional and normative commitment to change. Furthermore, the results light out that the transformational leadership is positively related with normative commitment to change. In the same line, transactional leadership is found to be not only positively related with normative commitment to change but also as stronger effect on it. This study was carried out with numerous limitations as example is cross sectional was conducted in this study and this could not figure out the effect pre and after change, thus longitude study is highly recommend in order to look in deep and compare the result. Not only this but also there may conduce in another sector and industry, it may come out with different light. With believing of different culture and its effect, future study can be conducted in different research context. This research has figured out the weakness of empirical study in change management literatures by connecting the leadership style, and organizational culture, and how they are associated to employee normative commitment to change. In the same way, it has provided a guideline for the public sectors in general and particularly in Yemen context on how to successfully implement change phenomena as well as how to get effective and efficient leadership with change management.

Technological Change in Developing Countries: Opening the Black Box of Process using Actor-Network Theory

Processes of technological change – innovation, transfer, adaptation, implementation – are central to development. Yet they are typically black-boxed in research accounts so actors and practice remain hidden. This paper applies one aspect of actor-network theory (ANT) – moments of translation – to a case study of technological change in the Sri Lankan public sector. Such application has its challenges but ANT provides a rich, detailed account of technological change processes for development. It can offer three unique insights that expose: the formation and dissolution of socio-technical structure; the active role of technology; and the ‘translation’ of interests, identities and ideas during these processes.

Opening the door to accounting change. Transformations in Chinese public sector accounting

Accounting has changed radically in China over the last 30 years, a transformation which is associated with one of the most astonishing episodes of economic development witnessed in modern times. Most researchers of accounting in China focus their attention on contemporary business accounting or identify challenges for the future. This article takes a different perspective. First, it investigates accounting changes in the Chinese public sector. It explores how public sector accounting has been involved in the process of modernizing the state bureaucracy. Second, the article takes a historical viewpoint and attempts to understand the changes in public sector accounting regulation which have taken place in recent decades. We identify various streams of regulation and waves of policy outputs over time. Four main phases of continuity and change are also located, providing a framework in which future researchers may analyze accounting developments in the post-Open Door period. We define these phases as: restoration, revision, innovation and maintenance.

Does Acpo Know Best: To What Extent May the Pip Programme Provide a Template for the Professionalisation of Policing?

This paper uses a case study approach to examine the claim of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) that the Professionalising Investigation Project (PIP) it introduced to the police service should be considered the template for the professionalisation of policing in England and Wales. Specifically, interviews were conducted with senior police officers, including a chief officer, and a questionnaire circulated to detectives in the selected force. Whilst the results of this small-scale study may not be generalisable to the wider police service, they highlight the paucity of scholarly research on the PIP and suggest that it may not have had the impact on investigative practice that has been claimed. As much as anything, this case demonstrates the need for independent evaluation of important public sector change programmes like the PIP.

Change management in the public sector: the use of cross-functional teams

Adoption of change management best practices continues to be offered as a route towards improved cost, quality and productivity of public services. These approaches are predominantly drawn from private sector research and their application by the public sector remains a relatively under-researched area. In this article we investigate with three case studies of local authorities one popular private sector change management approach – cross-functional team-based working. We analyse the varying success of three cross-functional teams and the organisational mechanisms that supported their implementation. We identify four requirements for success. The first three concur with established private sector research on cross-functional working (the need for the organisational leader to clearly support the team; cultural and structural issues that support cross-functional integration; funding support), although we find greater subtlety needed in their application in the public sector. Our research also uncovers a fourth critical requirement – the need to break the status-quo and overcome resistance to change. We find no evidence that these conditions cannot be met in the public sector and suggest cross-functional teams as a positive approach to be integrated in public sector change programmes.

‘It Was The Night Of The Long Knives’

This article explores through ethnography how public servant identities are affected by organizational change. Using an organizational becoming perspective, it studies the introduction of Lean in a recently merged public logistics department. Lean divides the department into two groups and conflict arises. Later, another institutional change is introduced. Here, the employee attitudes towards Lean change, now unifying rather than dividing the department. Rather than a professional-managerial split, the article concludes that the interplay between public sector change and employee identity is shaped by the apprehension of uncertainty and related group conflicts.

Movement and Coalition in Contention: Gender, Management and Academe in England and Sweden

The article opens by considering recent change in higher education, examined through the literature on new public management. In this literature the direction of change is decided in advance, assumed to emanate from above and conceptualized as moments fixed in time. As a consequence, it is argued, the rich processes of change enacted through time, which seek to take account of the motives of those involved, are elided. It is further argued that change is more appropriately understood as contested than as consensual, and that civil society is implicated in processes of public sector change in the organizations affected. An attempt is made accordingly to analyse the presence of civil society influences through social movement processes in universities, as organizations that are not social movements. Arguments are considered for and against the status of the new public management as a social or managerial movement, which is taken to be a coalition rather than a social movement, acting as the organizational glue of many neoliberal regimes. It is then shown that women's movements, understood conventionally as social movements in the literature of social movement theory, are alive and well in the halls of academe, engaged in direct and indirect struggle and forms of symbolic contestation in the furtherance of gender equity in the milieu of management reform. It is concluded that empirical work that makes use of social movement theory is necessary to explore management change attempts in order to take fuller account of those involved, and of movement and coalition in contention.

Value Dynamics: Towards a Framework for Analyzing Public Value Changes

This paper presents a preliminary framework for analyzing how values in the public sector change over time. The specific dynamics are conceptualised as three types of change mechanisms: a teleological, a conflictual and a value-internal change mechanism. Choice of governance systems – hierarchy, clan, network or market - is an example of designing control systems to promote particular values. Another change mechanism is rooted in conflicts between values and the actors carrying these values leading to various organisational responses. Finally, influenced by basic properties of a value changes may follow several distinct patterns such as life cycles, pendulum dynamics, enlargement of scope, refinement and turbulence. The possible outcomes of value dynamic processes are basically changes in value configurations: crowding out, sedimentation, the core-periphery hypothesis, division of labour, and re-interpretation. The paper uses examples from a Danish context, but argues that the value dynamics identified have a more universal scope.

Canada's International Response to HIV during Times of Global Transition: A Qualitative Inquiry

Canada's international response to HIV may be under threat given CIDA's new aid priorities that appear to exclude health. Drivers of this recent priority shift have been the influence of global aid trends among public sector donors and changes within the global HIV milieu itself. However, this is not the first time Canada has shifted in response to these two global trends. The era from 2000-2004 also witnessed dramatic changes in both the HIV field and in global thinking around international aid. As such, this article presents an evaluation of the Government of Canada's international response to HIV during the first era of transition (2000-2004) in order to derive lessons for decision-making around HIV in the current climate of change. In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 23 key informants with expertise regarding Canada's international response to HIV over time. Analysis involved multiple readings of transcripts to identify descriptive codes and establish intimacy with the data. Descriptive codes were then collapsed into thematic categories using a process of inductive reasoning. Canada's international response to HIV was perceived to be exemplary at times (e.g. seminal funding to WHO's "3-by-5" strategy), but also inconsistent (e.g., underutilized technical assistance capacity) and non-strategic (e.g., contradiction between investing in training health providers while poaching professionals to bolster Canada's workforce). Lessons from the 2000-2004 era of transition focus on strategic investments, the inextricable connection between HIV and development and strategy coherence. These results highlight that it is more constructive to ensure that Canadian development responses in all areas engage with both the upstream drivers of HIV as well as the impacts of the epidemic itself in order to achieve the greatest results from international investment and the most effective contributions to the lives of the people that these endeavours seek to support.

The Leadership of Middle-level Managers Under the Conditions of Public Sector Change

The Leadership of Middle-level Managers Under the Conditions of Public Sector Change

Which Organizational Attributes Are Amenable to External Reform? An Empirical Study of African Public Financial Management

ABSTRACT Many externally motivated public sector reforms produce less change than expected. This article argues that we should expect limited reform results in respect of certain organizational attributes. Applying institutional theory on isomorphism, the argument is simply that reforms are harder where they influence organizational characteristics that (i) are difficult to observe externally, (ii) are core to the organization, and (iii) involve actors with whom the externally defined change agenda is unlikely to resonate normatively. These arguments are tested in an analysis of Public Financial Management (PFM) reform in Africa, where evidence is supportive. The article contributes to public management literature, and comparative studies in particular, by applying a well-suited theory to the study of public sector change. The approach and findings should be of particular interest to the development community, shedding light on why reforms routinely underperform—in PFM and beyond, extending to topics like externally driven nation building.

Budgeting China. Macro‐policies and micro‐practices in public sector changes

Purpose – Transformations taking place in China are of crucial importance in the development of the world economy. The international community is turning its attention to China's move towards a market economy and assessing the likely impact on the years ahead. This paper aims to plot the evolution of administrative reforms in China with particular reference to the state (and therefore public sector), because the modernization of the state is an issue that will persist into the future, and because the state itself was driving the country's transformation towards a market economy in a deliberate way.Design/methodology/approach – The paper revisits the debate on administrative reforms at different levels, i.e. fiscal, budgeting, government organizations, and public sector units (PSUs). In addition to reconstructing the evolution of norms and procedures as part of deliberate strategies by the center, the paper also investigates how actual practices at the micro level have followed this process of reform, with...

Building Administrative Capacity for the Age of Rapid Globalization: A Modest Prescription for the Twenty‐First Century

The twenty‐first century is characterized by rapid change, globalization, hyper‐competition, and hyper‐uncertainty. Traditional models of governance and public administration are no match for the challenges of this chaotic environment. This essay argues for building new administrative capacity in response to these serious governance dilemmas. Offered as a modest prescription, this new administrative capacity is proposed to cope more effectively with an increasingly unknowable world. The article opens with an overview of key issues, then focuses directly on the nature and trends of global public sector changes, and concludes by elaborating on the building of such administrative capacity. The author's proposals are presented from a macro perspective: first, suggestions for revitalizing public service and administration given the current crisis; second, macro strategies for enhancing capacity design; and third, specific reforms for strengthening governance, instrumental and administrative capacities, along with concrete recommendations for public administration.