The third sector, user involvement and public service reform: a case study in the co-governance of health service provision

The ‘modernization’ of British public services seeks to broaden public sector governance networks, bringing the views of third sector organizations, the public and service users (among others) to the design, management and delivery of welfare. Building on previous analyses of the contradictions generated by these roles, this paper draws on longitudinal qualitative research to enunciate the challenges faced by one third-sector organization in facilitating service user influence in a UK National Health Service (NHS) pilot programme, alongside other roles in tension with this advocacy function. The analysis highlights limits in the extent to which lateral governance networks pluralize stakeholder involvement. The ‘framing’ of governance may mean that traditional concerns outweigh the views of new stakeholders such as the third sector and service users. Rather than prioritizing wider stakeholders' views in the design and delivery of public services, placing third sector organizations at the centre of governance networks may do more to co-opt these organizations in reproducing predominant priorities.     

Public–private efficiency in the delivery of services of general economic interest: The case of urban transport

This paper studies urban transport, a public service with extensive initiatives towards deregulation and privatisation throughout the European Union and in other developed and developing countries. The relative merits of deregulation, public or private provision and the implications of different policies for the performance of public services have become important issues. A crucial question is what type of operating and regulatory environment is best suited to stimulate efficiency in public service delivery. This paper analyses specifically the effect of privatisation and deregulation on the technical efficiency of bus services in 73 cities, in order to compare performance in cities with bus services provided by public operators, private operators, both types simultaneously or in which the service is deregulated. The behaviour of the different types of operators analysed in this paper shows that competition – total or partial – is effective in controlling costs.     

Going privately: partnership and outsourcing in UK public services

Public private partnerships provide an important illustration of the way the traditional role of government as employer and service provider is being transformed. While policy–makers argue that the growing role of the private sector is not driven by ideological thinking – that, in fact, both public and private sector organizations can benefit from working together in partnership relations – in practice it is the norms and rules of private sector management that underpin reforms. This paper assesses evidence from two detailed case studies of partnerships and demonstrates, first, that there is little evidence of mutual gains from partnership arrangements and, second, that because of an imbalance of power between public and private sector partners, any gains achieved are not distributed equitably. These results suggest that current reforms need to be refocused around building on the distinctive qualities of services provision in the public sector, rather than expanding the private sector world of markets and contracts.     

A GENDER ANALYSIS OF WOMEN IN PUBLIC–PRIVATE–VOLUNTARY SECTOR ‘PARTNERSHIPS’

The nature of work and traditional notions of the public sector have been changing with increasing collaborative governance and delivery of public services among public, private and voluntary sector organizations. In the UK, governments at national and devolved levels of government have adopted collaborative governance for service delivery through various networks and partnerships. This article explores collaborative governance from a gender perspective, specifically the perceptions of women in public–private–voluntary sector partnerships. While previous research in this area has explored aspects of collaborative governance such as power, trust, accountability, decision‐making, performance, exchange of information and participation, there is very little research on women within these networks. The article therefore provides a gendered analysis, disaggregating survey data to better understand the dynamics, for women, of collaborative governance and partnerships among public, private and voluntary sector organizations.     

The evolution of business – state interaction in Russia: From state capture to business capture?

This article discusses two basic strategies of Russian companies—isolation from, and close cooperation with the state. The author analyses several ways in which companies realise these strategies, drawing analogies with the ‘exit’ and ‘voice’ strategies suggested by A. Hirschman. It is shown that under the conditions of a weak state these strategies lead either to an expansion of the shadow economy or to ‘state capture’. Both the privatisation of the state and the lack of its privatisation result in budget crises as well as drastic social and political shocks, leading to calls for a ‘strong hand’ in the business community itself. However, as there is little political competition and the mechanisms of democratic control are weak, state consolidation takes place as a bureaucratic consolidation accompanied by new opportunities for informal ‘business capture’ by the authorities. Nevertheless, the high degree of openness of the economy and the remaining heterogeneity of political actors provide business with a wide range of possible strategies of interaction with the state. This article explores how these strategies are becoming more formal and public compared to the 1990s. Strategies of isolation from the state now take place as legal strategies of internationalisation. Cooperation strategies, on the other hand, currently seem to be more efficient when switching from the traditional lobbying of private interests to more rational and collective actions aimed at providing the necessary conditions for sustainable economic development.     

Nyerere's Road to Socialism

The privatisation of Ashanti Goldfields Company (AGC) was an important part of Ghana’s neo-liberal reforms. Privatisation is explicitly intended to alter the balance of power between the public and private sector, and the process revealed much about the relationship between the state and the country’s business community. A close examination of the process confirms widely-held perceptions of the Rawlings government and its reform process as highly state-driven and subject to the personal idiosyncrasies of the country’s president. By contrast, Kufuor’s New Patriotic Party (NPP) demonstrated a less equivocal commitment to boosting the role of the private sector in the economy and employed a more routinely institutionalised set of interactions. While the outcome of these processes was sometimes counterintuitive, overall the privatization of AGC is likely to have shifted power out of the hands of the state and into the hands of an international set of shareholders.     

Governance in Public and Private Management

This article analyses the effect of governance in the delivery of public services, and the advantages of collaboration with the private sector in the provision of these public services. The article is not intended to be the conclusions drawn from an empirical study, but rather is based on the experience of a practitioner who has worked as a civil servant in the public sector and as a manager in the private sector. The advantages of private participation are listed, without prejudicing the role of regulator which must be exercised by the public sector.     

Swedish politicians’ preferences regarding the privatisation of elderly care

Since the 1990s, Sweden has embarked on a series of market reforms in public services, aiming for greater efficiency and better service quality. Nevertheless, the political debates do not seem to fade away and local politicians still have to decide on privatisation issues. We argue that attitude studies of local politicians are of importance and present a 2014 survey in this regard, using Swedish elderly care as one example. Our findings show that altitudinal difference between left- and right-wing politicians on private for-profit providers remains distinctive. Moreover, political orientations of individuals, political majority in the municipality, as well as privatisation level already achieved locally are identified as important factors in explaining local politicians’ willingness to privatise further. This case study serves as a good example to examine the market development of public welfare in advanced welfare states and also contributes to the contentious discussion of political roles in welfare reform.     

Does Ownership Matter for Employee Motivation When Occupation Is Controlled for?

The public service motivation literature argues that public employees are more motivated than private employees to deliver public service for the benefit of society. But the reason for this may be that the classical welfare services are predominant in the public sector. This article therefore investigates if ownership matters to employee motivation when occupation is controlled for. The findings show that the employees in both sectors have pro-social motivation, but that public sector employees are more motivated to work for the public interest, whereas private sector employees are more motivated to help individual users of services. The survey data are based on 3,304 Danish employees working in private as well as public organizations.     

THE ‘NEW PUBLIC GOVERNANCE’ AND EMPLOYABILITY SERVICES IN AN ERA OF CRISIS: CHALLENGES FOR THIRD SECTOR ORGANIZATIONS IN SCOTLAND

Third sector organizations (TSOs) have emerged as key players in the delivery of public services to assist jobless people to improve their employability and move from welfare to work. Drawing on in‐depth research with employability providers in Scotland, this article explores how TSOs have responded to the challenges of a rapidly changing public services environment. Specifically, we use the concept of the ‘New Public Governance’ to explore TSOs' relationships with UK, devolved and local government stakeholders. TSOs demonstrated a pragmatic approach to shaping their services to reflect the priorities of public funders, and identified some opportunities arising from the new emphasis on ‘localism’. However, the evidence suggests that opportunities for collaboration at times remained constrained by certain forms of ‘contractualism’ and top‐down performance management. Based on the evidence, lessons for future policy and practice are considered.     

Measuring Innovation – Applying the Literature-Based Innovation Output Indicator to Public Services

Governments have been encouraging public service organizations to innovate. However, little is known about the extent of innovation in public service organizations. A private sector approach to the measurement of innovation - the literature-based innovation output indicator (LBIOI) - is applied to public service organizations to address this significant information gap. The method is described and then explored in one public service sector, English housing associations. A sample of 257 innovations is constructed and then subject to analysis. This initial testing of the LBIOI indicates that the approach can be applied across public services to create longitudinal data sets, which will enhance the communication of good practice and the use of evidence in public policy, management and research. This methodology is demonstrated to offer initial insights to public service innovation and would allow relationships to be explored notably innovation and performance, a relationship central to government's promotion of innovation.     

COMPARING BUSH–CHENEY AND CLINTON–GORE PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES: ARE THEY MORE ALIKE THAN DIFFERENT?

Successful performance management strategies are intrinsically linked to the political environment in which public policy‐making occurs. Since the mid‐1990s, many governments have re‐examined how to simultaneously reduce costs, increase performance and achieve results. Public agencies are experimenting with performance measurement and management systems designed to meet public policy goals and respond to citizen demands. Various reform models have been proposed and public administrators now expend considerable time, effort and resources exchanging ‘best practices’, finding ‘best value’, and ‘rethinking’ government operations. Although equally important, less effort has been devoted to performance management (PM) within increasingly complex, ideologically charged and politicized decision‐making environments. Despite significant increases in productivity, more theoretical and empirical research is needed to assist public managers in applying private market‐based alternatives to public service delivery structures. This article compares the PM initiatives of the Clinton–Gore Administration in the United States, known as the National Performance Review (NPR), with President Bush‘s Presidential Management Agenda (PMA). Following the comparison, a theory‐based research agenda is proposed to determine which of many approaches best ‘fits’ the varied and often contradictory systems for delivering public services in a decentralized governance system.     

Transformational Government? The role of information technology in delivering citizen-centric local public services

Following on from five years of ‘electronic government’, the Labour Government has recently announced a new five year plan for ‘transformational government’. Like its predecessor, t-government emphasises the important role of information technology in enabling the delivery of modernised public services. Modernisation is defined as an increasing emphasis on citizen choice, personalisation of services and understanding and responding to service user needs. This paper explores the appropriateness of the t-government agenda by drawing upon lessons learned from the preceding e-government era. Arguably the most significant citizen-focused technology of the e-government era was customer relationship management. The potential of CRM to support service transformation is explored and co-production, an alternative approach to citizen-centric service design, is examined both as a way of addressing weaknesses in IT-enabled service transformation and as a candidate later stage in the evolution of citizen-centric local public services.     

Changing the ‘front line’ to meet citizen needs

Public services need to be re‐designed to meet citizens’ needs and to become more accountable. The role of the ‘front line’ is crucial in this. It is the pivotal point on the ‘see‐saw’ connecting ‘the public’ and the ‘back line’ of national and local public service agencies. This article compares the experience of Sweden and the UK in designing new ‘front lines’ through ‘decentralisation’ and ‘one‐stop shops’. It concludes that these initiatives can help to meet citizen needs and that citizens notice the difference. Committed support from the ‘back line’ is crucial for success. Active democratic involvement of both politicians and local residents is also essential.     

Public Sector Commissioning: Experiences of Voluntary Organizations Delivering Health and Social Services

The perceived benefits to users and beneficiaries of voluntary organizations delivering public sector services have been well documented and include the engagement with parts of society that the state cannot reach, personalized service delivery, and improved services. There is a lack of clarity, however, as to whether these perceived benefits are being realized. This article presents the experiences of voluntary sector organizations involved in public sector commissioning. The research suggests that the public sector is limiting the voluntary sector's engagement in service design and performance monitoring. These findings raise questions about the role of the voluntary sector in public service provision.     

Marketization reforms and co-production: Does ownership of service delivery structures and customer language matter?

In public services that are tax funded, public goods are sometimes marketized by being delivered using private companies instead of public organizations. In addition, marketization reforms can entail service users being described as customers for the service rather than as citizens. We assess the effects of these aspects of marketization reforms on users' willingness to co-produce public services. First, service delivery using private companies risks reducing users' willingness to co-produce because firms cannot commit ex ante to not appropriate donated labour for private gain. Second, using customer-oriented language risks reductions by priming individualistic market norms that lower prosocial motivation compared to citizen-oriented language priming citizenship duty. Using three survey experiments in the United States, we find that delivery structures are not neutral. Private firms delivering local public services reduce users' willingness to co-produce, although similar effects are not evident from primimg customer rather than citizenship thinking.     

Admitting a Bad Influence: Contracting the Public Service

Abstract

Emulation of the private sector is a longstanding controversy in public administration, but could it constitute a bad influence, of the kind that parents seek to guard against by scrutinizing their children's peers? Effectiveness provides a perspective on how helpful or harmful private sector influence has been for the public service. The practice of contracting-out under the A-76 process receives particular scrutiny relative to maintaining the effectiveness of public agencies. A second perspective on private sector influence examines, through the theoretical perspective of transaction-cost economics, the promise of cost savings that justified recent acceleration of contracting-out. The author, himself a government contractor, also bases his analysis on personal experience.     

WHAT’S VALUED MOST? SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE ORGANIZATIONAL VALUES OF THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SECTOR

In recent administrative and organizational literature much attention has been paid to values that guide organizational and managerial behaviour in the public and private domain. Comparative empirical research efforts, however, are sparse. This article reports the results of a comparative empirical survey of 382 managers from a variety of public and private sector organizations in The Netherlands. Contrary to much recent literature that presupposes the intermixing or convergence of value systems guiding governance in different kinds of organizations, the results of this study show two distinct and relatively classical value systems for government and business as well as a ‘common core’ of important organizational qualities. These are accountability, expertise, reliability, efficiency and effectiveness, all of which are considered crucial in both public and private sector organizations. Additional analysis shows that value preferences are primarily attached to sector rather than to age, gender, working experience, or previous employment in the other sector.     

Is cooperation cost reducing? An analysis of public–public partnerships and inter-municipal cooperation in Brazilian local government

ABSTRACT

In local government systems worldwide, financial pressures have obliged local authorities to focus on cost-efficient methods for providing local services, including inter-municipal agreements and public–public partnerships. However, in comparison with municipal mergers, privatisation and other approaches to the problem, the cost impact of the cooperative provision has not yet been thoroughly examined empirically. Moreover, available empirical research has largely concentrated on waste disposal in developed countries. The present paper seeks to contribute to the empirical literature on inter-municipal agreements and public–public partnerships by comparing their impact on costs with ‘stand-alone’ provision in a range of non-waste local services. In contrast to the bulk of existing studies, our analysis takes place in a developing country context by examining Brazilian local government over the period 2013/15. We found that – on the whole – cooperative provision is less expensive than the ‘stand-alone’ provision for the services studied. Our results can be explained by the size and composition of the population, together with the politics for cooperation.     

CORPORATE GOVERNANCE AND THE PUBLIC SECTOR: SOME ISSUES AND EVIDENCE FROM THE NHS

The 1990s have been marked by a resurgence of interest in questions of corporate governance in both public and private sector settings. The 1990 reorganization of the NHS is taken as an example of a recent attempt to‘reform’arrangements for corporate governance in the public sector based on a board of directors’model. The policy background is reviewed and the salient features of the NHS reorganization outlined. Empirical case study evidence is adduced which enables us to make an assessment of the advantageous and disadvantageous effects of the 1990 reorganization. Some unresolved questions are outlined in the concluding discussion.