ORGANIZATIONAL STRATEGY,EXTERNAL REGULATION AND PUBLIC SERVICE PERFORMANCE

We test the separate and joint effects of strategy and regulation on public service performance. Strategy is measured as the extent to which service providers are prospectors, defenders and reactors. Regulation is assessed on the basis of the number of inspection events and service managers’ perceptions of the supportiveness of regulators. We find that, controlling for prior performance and the level of service expenditure, prospecting is a more successful strategy than defending or reacting. In addition, inspection events generally disrupt the relationship between strategy and performance, but regulation that is supportive reinforces this relationship. The evidence suggests that the impact of organizational strategies in the public sector is contingent on the characteristics of regulatory regimes.     

THE DEVELOPMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION OF SPECIAL EDUCATION POLICY: WHERE DID THE 1981 ACT FIT IN?

The passage of legislation is just one point in the process of negotiation and bargaining which formed the will to legislate and continues throughout the period of policy implementation. Using the 1981 Education Act as a case study, this paper develops a conceptual framework which sees education legislation as a significant reference point, a statement of government intent, but implementation as a political process involving negotiation, bargaining and compromise between different sectors of government, between central and local government, between education, health and social services, between administrators and professionals, and with parents.     

Constructing the License to Operate: Internal Factors and Their Influence on Corporate Environmental Decisions

Voluntary programs intended to improve corporate environmental practices have proliferated in recent years. Why some businesses choose to participate in such voluntary programs, while others do not, remains an open question. Recent work suggests that companies' environmental practices, including their decisions to participate in voluntary programs, are shaped by a license to operate comprised of social, regulatory, and economic pressures. Although these external factors do matter, by themselves they only partially explain business decision making, since facilities subject to similar external factors often behave differently. In this article, we draw from organizational theory to explain why we would expect a company's license to operate to be ultimately constructed by internal factors, such as managerial incentives, organizational culture, and organizational identity, as these shape both interpretations of the external pressures and organizational responses to them. Using qualitative data from an exploratory study of matched facilities that reached different decisions about participating in a prominent voluntary environmental program, we then report evidence indicative of the role of these internal factors in shaping facilities' environmental decisions. Finally, we offer suggestions for future research that could further develop understanding of how internal organizational characteristics influence environmental management decisions, including those concerning participation in voluntary programs.     

Reform and the National Health Service

Why is there so much discontent about the current plans to reform the National Health Service in England? What is the government trying to do, and are the critics right to want to block reform? This paper traces the genesis of the current proposals in the Health and Social Care Bill, currently in the Lords, and why the Government has had to water down significant parts of it to appease the critics. The paper argues that the case for change has not been made to public or the 1.3 million staff in the NHS, the extent and timing of the reform is far from ideal given the need to make unprecedented efficiencies in the NHS, and that the political process to gain support has been weak. Yet many elements of the Bill push the NHS in the right direction, and without effective reform the original settlement—to provide equal access to care on the basis of need—is put at risk.