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.     

The Impact of Quality Public Service Delivery on Customer Satisfaction in Bahir Dar City Administration: The Case of Ginbot 20 Sub-city

ABSTRACT

This study is conducted with the general objective of assessing the impact of quality public service delivery on customer satisfaction in Ginbot20 sub-city. To conduct the study correlational research design, and quantitative research approach have been employed. A total of 88 samples both from customers (68) and service providers (20) were selected using simple random sampling and systematic random sampling techniques respectively. Data were collected using questionnaires. Based on the data collected, the study comes up with certain findings. Among the major findings, the perception of customers and service providers on quality service delivery and customer satisfaction is different, responsiveness, tangibility, assurance, and reliability have positively associated with customer satisfaction. However, empathy has negatively associated with customer satisfaction. Generally, the likelihood of customers gets satisfied when there is quality service delivery is 0.84 (84%) while get satisfied with the probability value of 0.038948(3.8948%) in the absence of quality service delivery.     

The Military Coups in Fiji: Reactive and Transformative Tendencies

Abstract

Since 1987 there have been six coups altogether in Fiji. The article examines the reactive and transformative nature of the Republic of Fiji Military Forces, hereafter referred to as Fiji military, and coups and their impact on the small multi-cultural country of 850,000 people. The coups in Fiji have to be seen in the light of the two separate but related developments, namely the historical dynamic interplay between politics and ethnicity and secondly, how the military itself has evolved as a state institution and how it perceived its role in the modern state system. Although the military is modelled along the lines of a praetorian institution, its perceived role has often shifted from being guardian of indigenous Fijian interests to protector of the multi-ethnic state. The interventionist tendency of the military was largely in response to the way in which the interplay between politics and ethnicity had played a part in creating discord and tension. All the six coups in Fiji were linked and need to be understood in relation to each other. The 2006 coup was the most politically transformative as some of the most powerful institutions were weakened and reconfigured and a new order created under the guise of a ‘clean-up campaign’.     

Postal Service Reforms in Solomon Islands of the South Pacific: Evaluating Consequences for Public Service Delivery and Customer Satisfaction

The changing environment of the postal sector over the last decade has increased the urgency for governments worldwide to re-examine regulations governing how their public postal administrations operate. The need to increase service efficiency and quality is a critical strategic focus, given the increasing technological competition, rising operational costs, and changing customers' needs and expectations. There are many success stories, particularly from developed countries, highlighting improved service quality following corporatization of their public postal administration. This particular study revealed that reforms of the Solomon Islands postal service have had some positive influence on the level of customer satisfaction.     

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE AND THE EVALUATION OF PARTICIPATORY INSTRUMENTS IN SPANISH CITIES

The article examines the role that personal experience with participatory mechanisms plays in the explanation of the perceived efficacy of these instruments. The first part demonstrates that , contrary to most expectations, citizens who have direct experience with these processes have a more negative evaluation of their performance. Where does this frustration effect come from? The second part analyzes three potential explanations of why this pattern emerges: (1) overly high prior expectations; (2) the existence of an underdeveloped institutional participatory context; and (3) the design of participatory mechanisms. We use a public opinion survey representative of the Spanish adult population living in medium sized cities to test these hypotheses. Results show that participants' overly high expectations are not crucial. On the other hand, people who live in more participatory cities and those who participate in individually based mechanisms do not feel the same disappointment with participatory experiences.     

Analyzing the Experiences of Female Leaders in Civil Service in Kazakhstan: Trapped between Economic Pressure to Earn and Traditional Family Role Expectations

This paper analyzes the experiences of female leaders in civil service in a rapidly changing political, socio-cultural, and economic context of Kazakhstan. The research presents an analysis of the views of female managers on advantages and disadvantages of having women-leaders in civil service; on challenges and opportunities they are facing; on strategies they use to advance to and succeed in leadership positions. The important finding of this research is that female leaders in Kazakhstan are challenged with a clash of western, neo-liberal values and traditional expectations of women in the society. The analysis is based on primary data with women holding managerial positions in civil service.     

The Rights-Asserting Contemporary Public Service Customer in Botswana

This article discusses an often-ignored subject in Botswana-specific literature: the emergence of rights-asserting contemporary public service customers. These customers unflinchingly demand their rights. Given this situation, this article argues that there is a need for a paradigm shift on the part of public servants. Among other things, this will entail the crafting of a new internally created customer service charter which puts a high premium on service delivery. Thus, the charter should beget a public service that respects customers' inviolate right to quality public service. Although the case study is about Botswana, there are general lessons — e.g., an internally created public service charter.     

Reshaping Public Administration: The Spanish Experience Compared to the UK

This paper analyses the nature and extent of the policies of modernizing Spanish public administration. Successive Spanish governments have been involved in modernizing public administration with the stress on customer focus, improving service delivery and implementing quality awards, service charts and information technologies.
As a basis for assessing the reforms, we compare Spanish New Public Management (NPM) developments with the initiatives undertaken in the UK. The paper evaluates the usage of NPM concepts in the Spanish and UK experiences and cultural differences based on public and common law traditions respectively, locating these reforms in a comparative context. We focus on why similar concepts and initiatives could provide such different results in each country and how the cultural and institutional features produce differences in the way that NPM postulates are defined, implemented, monitored and evaluated. The answer is probably rooted in the context in which the initiatives have been developing.     

EXIT AND VOICE IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT RECONSIDERED: A ‘CHOICE REVOLUTION’?

Market‐based public management reform has introduced customer choice among competing providers of public services. Choice entails exit, an option which Albert Hirschman famously reserved for the market, while voice is the key mode of communication in political life. Based on elite and mass surveys, the article studies how exit is perceived by citizens and local political and administrative leaders in Norway and Sweden, and how the two strategic options relate to each other. Citizens are more positive towards customer choice and exit than are leaders, albeit with some variation across different public service sectors. Political and administrative leaders are positive towards customer choice models as a strategy to empower clients but more critical in terms of the potential loss of accountability and control that contracting out services may entail.     

E-Governance to Cut Corruption in Public Service Delivery: A Case Study of Fiji

Experience in a number of developed and developing countries has shown that E-Governance initiatives can promote greater transparency with the goal of cutting corruption. This article examines perceptions of public service delivery in Fiji to explore the potential of E-Governance to cut corruption and improve governance. Based on a survey of community perceptions and a review of selected literature it suggests that service-delivery oriented IT initiatives can contribute to an effective, multi-pronged strategy to cut corruption in the Fiji public sector.     

Public Service Motivation in Ghanaian Civil Service: A Case Study of Ejisu-Juabeng Municipality

Civil servants are perceived to possess altruistic motive known as Civil Service Motivation (PSM) which promotes public interest as confirmed in some developed countries. Using the Ejisu-Juabeng Municipality as a case study, this article assesses the existence of PSM in the Ghanaian public sector and finds that PSM exists in the public service but its existence does not ensure maximum output. The workers professed having motives such as sense of social justice, compassion, commitment to public interest, self-sacrifice, and sense of civic duty but indicated their unwillingness to commit their future to the public sector because of poor working conditions.     

Gaining Legitimacy as a Public Official: The Case of Supportive Employee Attitudes to the Standardization of Work

The standardization of work processes is a common feature of the public administration, aiming at both efficiency and equal treatment of citizens. Combining this standardization with employee motivation is considered a challenge. This challenge is explored, based on a survey to 261 social insurance officers (SIOs) at the Swedish Social Insurance Agency. Results reveal that, contrary to expectations, 73 per cent of these officials perceived the standardized protocols as supportive, rather than burdening. Justifications were codified in order to identify factors affecting these attitudes. Four categories emerged. These factors are discussed and it is concluded that the standardization of work increased professional status, by providing with legitimacy and authority. However, in order to ensure compliance and increase professional status, better opportunities for officials to influence protocols and contribute to the shared knowledge base are required.     

Towards Strong Local Governance: Current Reform Scenario in Fiji

This article examines how the historical context of poor central-local relations and inefficient service delivery structure is used by the current military-led government in Fiji as a ploy for its local government reform agenda. Based on an analysis of secondary information on local government structure and a review of the reforms undertaken by the Review/Reform Committee, this article identifies the concentration of economic and political power at the central level as one of the major obstacles towards empowering local governance in Fiji. The article emphasizes the need for effective institutional reforms to devolve governance and resources from the centre to the grassroots.     

Expectations from Administrative Reforms: An Attempt to Implement the Balanced Scorecard in a Public Sector Organization

The aim of this case study is to explore what actors in a Swedish municipality expect from a new administrative reform (i.e., an attempt to implement the Balanced Scorecard). The findings show that the expectations on changes are highest among the politicians, moderate among the administrators, and lowest among the operative employees. The differences can be explained by the way the reform is anticipated to favor or disfavor the actors, who in turn are influenced by the actors' past experiences. Most of the expressed expectations concern expectations of the outcome of the administrative reform, but some concern expectations on the reform itself.     

CUSTOMER CARE AND THE PUBLIC SERVICE ETHOS

The Labour governments that have been in power in the UK since 1997 have reconceptualized the public service ethos. In an apparent departure from their Conservative predecessors, Labour ministers have argued that the distinctive culture of public service can enhance rather than impede service quality and deliver high levels of customer care. This article utilizes interviews and content analysis data to explore the ethical dimension of public service, the significance of the language of customer in relation to ethos, and the implications for service delivery of a customer care focus. Case study findings show that a customer orientation is endorsed by politicians and bureaucrats in both central and local government, although there is a lack of clarity about the service manifestations of such a shift in emphasis. Respondents voiced concerns about the viability of customer care in the public sector as well as the sidelining of the political role of citizen.     

This time it’s different: lithium extraction,cultural politics and development in Bolivia

As governments throughout Latin America have increased their dependence on resource extraction, the debate around extraction-based development has been reinvigorated. This article argues that, despite historical failures and recurrent conflicts associated with extraction-based development, the way in which development is experienced and conceptualised at the subnational level demonstrates why extraction continues to be perceived as a legitimate means for development. These findings show that, as resource extraction continues to play a critical role in the overall development transition of Latin America, the process must be understood and theorised in relation to the experiences and expectations of actors at multiple scales.     

MANAGING CITIZENS' EXPECTATIONS OF PUBLIC SERVICE PERFORMANCE: EVIDENCE FROM OBSERVATION AND EXPERIMENTATION IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT

Citizens' expectations of public service performance influence their attitudes and behaviour towards services, including satisfaction, choice of service and political voice about them. However, there has been little research on what sets expectations. This paper assesses the effects of prior service performance and information about prior performance on two forms of citizen expectations, positive expectations of what performance will be and normative expectations of what performance should be. In an observational study, prior performance is positively related to expectations of what performance will be. Prior performance is positively related to high normative expectations but is unrelated to low normative expectations. The resilience of normative expectations suggests that poor performance will trigger dissatisfaction and citizen response rather than lowering expectations creating passive acceptance. In a field experiment, performance information effects are found for positive but not normative expectations. Providing information about excellent performance raises positive expectations and providing information about poor performance lowers positive expectations; negativity bias is evident with information about poor performance having a larger effect. Performance information that is credible to citizens can be used to manage citizens' positive expectations but their normative expectations are less amenable to influence by this route.     

Low-Hanging Fruit: Leadership,Perceived Prosocial Impact,and Employee Motivation

Transformational leadership affects public service motivation, but little is known about the context dependency of this association. If citizen contact and, therefore, relative perceived impacts on others and society differ, the association between transformational leadership and motivation is also expected to differ. Analyzing public employees and their leaders from four organizational contexts, we find that employees have relatively higher perceived impact on others and are more user-oriented in contexts with high citizen contact. The association between transformational leadership and employee motivation also depends on employees’ perceived impact, implying that some fruit hangs lower than other when leaders try to increase employee motivation.     

Entrepreneurs,expectations and business expansion: Lessons from Lithuania

This article applies a multinomial logit estimator to investigate which factors affect SME owners' expectations to grow their businesses in Lithuania. Our findings provide evidence that SME owners' human capital (education) matters and that growth expectations are positively related to exporting. In addition, we analyse the link between the perceptions of business constraints and growth expectations and find that the factors, which are perceived as main business barriers, are not necessarily those which are associated with reduced growth expectations. However, perceptions of corruption seem to affect growth expectations the most.     

The Effect of More Demanding Public Services Quality Standards on the Organization of Service Providers

ABSTRACT

This research aims to investigate the effects that more demanding quality standards have on the organization of public service providers. A hypothetical research model showing the relationship between the quality of public service and the organization of public service providers was tested through a survey carried out with managers of water companies located in Italy. Results show that the new regulations impact on the organization in terms of resources and the performance management system, while the degree of centralization (i.e., the hierarchy of authority and degree of participation in decision-making) is not significantly related to the more demanding quality standards.