The Political Implications of Redefining Public Expenditure in the United Kingdom

This article examines the role, significance and consequences of decisions in the United Kingdom about the definition of public expenditure for planning and control purposes. Three major definitional issues are examined: the narrowing in 1977 of the UK public expenditure definition from a public-sector-wide definition to something much closer to the OECD's 'general government' definition; the treatment of the proceeds of asset sales as negative expenditure; and the introduction in the 1990 white paper of a planning total excluding local government expenditure. Three sets of consequences are examined: the eroding commitment to comprehensive coverage; the resulting policy distortions; and the erosion of conventions traditionally governing the relationships between central and local government. Grounds for unease with present developments are identified, notably the fragmentation of public expenditure documentation and the loss of information, the consequences of which will unfold as public expenditure faces a difficult period because of problems of macro-economic imbalance.     

Performance Monitoring Public Services in Australia

The Industry Commission, the former Bureau of Industry Economics and the Economic Planning Advisory Commission have amalgamated on an administrative basis to prepare for the formation of the Productivity Commission. Legislation establishing the new commission is before parliament.
The Industry Commission has been involved in a number of projects that monitor the performance of a range of government services across Australia. The first monitors the performance of a large number of Australia's major government trading enterprises and the second has begun the process of monitoring the performance of a range of government service providers.
This article outlines why measuring and monitoring performance can be used to improve public sector performance and provides two examples of how this tool can successfully be used in practice.     

Capacity,Leadership, and Organizational Performance: Testing the Black Box Model of Public Management

According to recent “black box” models of public management, managerial capacity is a critical component for achieving service delivery improvement. In particular, black box models assume that the impact of management systems is maximized through integration with effective leadership. This assumption is tested by analyzing the effects of managerial capacity and organizational leadership on the performance of English local governments, while controlling for a range of other variables, including organizational size, resources, external constraints, and past performance. Empirical results show that capacity possesses a positive statistical association with local government performance and that leadership can enhance the impact of effective management systems.     

Performance Management in the Public Sector

There has been a great deal of work undertaken on employee performance management with the Australian Public Service (APS) over the last 4 years. The objective has been to focus upon achieving high performance rather than merely preventing poor performance. This refocus was adopted to reflect the increasing complexity of the work, a rise in the need for knowledge work, and escalations in the speed and frequency of change; all this within a context requiring a reduction in costs while still meeting the growing expectations of the public and government. This pair of papers reflects on where employee performance management has got to as a result of the work. Dr. Damian West from the Australian Public Service Commission identifies the continuing importance of effective employee performance management to the APS and public sectors more widely. He highlights the progress that has been made so far, demonstrating the importance of implementation of the process. He suggests that, now that a framework for assessing the potential for employee performance management processes has been established, accountability of the system implementation and adoption will become paramount. Professor Deborah Blackman, whilst echoing the real progress that has been made, suggests that for real improvement in performance management outcomes there needs to be a fundamental shift in thinking; not in terms of the processes or of ensuring compliance, but rather that organizations undertaking performance management need to be much clear as to the strategic direction such a process is going to support. She suggests that there has been too much emphasis on having a system and not enough on determining what such a system is for. When the papers are combined, it can be seen that much progress has been made in terms of the reorientation towards high performance and how to support organizations to work towards this. The next step, for there to be real outcome improvements, is for organizations to be more overt in determining what high performance will look like in their context, then clarifying that to all those involved in developing performance management so that accountabilities at all levels can be agreed, supported, and effective.     

Transformational Leadership and Organizational Processes: Influencing Public Performance

Leaders are essential actors in public performance improvement and organizational change. However, a key question has not been adequately addressed in prior literature on the topic: how do leadership processes make a difference? Using data on New York City public schools, this article explores the organizational mechanisms by which a specific form of principal's leadership—transformational leadership—influences objective organizational outcomes as measured by standardized test scores. The empirical results indicate that a principal's transformational leadership style affects student test scores through the mediating effects of purposeful performance information use and stakeholder engagement.     

The Dynamics of Political Attention: Public Opinion and the Queen's Speech in the United Kingdom

This article represents the effect of public opinion on government attention in the form of an error-correction model where public opinion and policymaking attention coexist in a long-run equilibrium state that is subject to short-run corrections. The coexistence of policy-opinion responsiveness and punctuations in political attention is attributed to differences in theoretical conceptions of negative and positive feedback, differences in the use of time series and distributional methods, and differences in empirical responsiveness of government to public attention relative to responsiveness to public preferences. This analysis considers time-series data for the United Kingdom over the period between 1960 and 2001 on the content of the executive and legislative agenda presented at the start of each parliamentary session in the Queen's Speech coded according to the policy content framework of the U.S. Policy Agendas Project and a reconstituted public opinion dataset on Gallup's "most important problem" question. The results show short-run responsiveness of government attention to public opinion for macroeconomics, health, and labor and employment topics and long-run responsiveness for macroeconomics, health, labor and employment, education, law and order, housing, and defense .     

Collective Leadership and Context in Public Administration: Bridging Public Leadership Research and Leadership Studies

This article challenges the view that public leadership research should maintain a separate perspective in the study of public leadership. It discusses the benefits of further embedding the public leadership research domain within leadership studies, constructing a cross‐fertilization that contributes to advance both. The article maps key concerns in relational leadership theories, contrasting them with current work in the public leadership research domain and offering suggestions to close the gap. It highlights public leadership scholarship's competitive advantage to contribute to theorizing about leadership, given the importance of context for building contemporary theories of relational leadership.     

Need Public Policy Ignore the Third Sector? Government Policy in Australia and the United Kingdom

The policy of Australian governments, both Commonwealth, state and territory, toward those organisations that comprise a third sector of the organised economy is patchy and piecemeal. Absent is any recognition that they constitute a distinct sector; absent too is any recognition of their contribution to economy, society and politics. Such a situation is not inevitable. After identifying some of the gaps and contradictions in Australian policy toward the third sector, this article outlines the many policy initiatives to encourage the third sector or social economy (in European Union terms) taken by the Blair government in the United Kingdom. Given that there is a good deal of policy borrowing between Australia and the United Kingdom, the stark contrast between the two countries in this policy field is puzzling. This article concludes by identifying four developments that led to this policy explosion in the United Kingdom and finds them largely missing in Australia. This leads to a conclusion that a similar range of policies are unlikely to develop here.     

Perceived Organizational Red Tape and Organizational Performance in Public Services

The claim that perceived organizational red tape hampers public services has become a central theme in public administration research. Surprisingly, however, few scholars have empirically examined the impact of perceived red tape on organizational performance. This article empirically analyzes how perceived organizational red tape among managers and frontline staff relates to objectively measured performance. The data consist of survey responses from teachers and principals at Danish upper secondary schools combined with grade‐level administrative performance data. Based on theories of red tape and motivation crowding, the authors hypothesize that perceived organizational red tape reduces performance within such organizations. The empirical result is a small negative relationship between staff perception of red tape and performance and no relationship between manager‐perceived red tape and performance.     

Politics and Power in the United Kingdom

PRODUCING an introductory text for any academic discipline isa challenging task; however, the work involved in compilingand writing a comprehensive user-friendly and contemporary workfor British Politics undergraduate students has to be one ofthe most daunting tasks to face the political scientist. With the trend towards receiving ever more information and newson politics and political events from the worldwide web, coupledwith the expansion of transmission time by a range of radioand television outlets, much political coverage tends towardssimplistic explanation, driven largely by personality ratherthan policy concerns. Consequently, the importance of producinga thorough introductory text removing misperception and misinformationhas intensified. However, in Politics and Power in the United Kingdom editedby Heffernan and Thompson, both established and well-respectedfigures in their subject disciplines,     

Goal Setting and Performance Management in the Public Sector

ABSTRACT

The public sector in North America as well as parts of Europe is increasingly adopting a performance management system that includes goal setting, coaching, and the evaluation of an employee on goal attainment. The purpose of this article is three-fold. First, the extant literature on goal setting for individual employees is summarized in terms of its applicability to the public sector. Second, the importance of context to goal setting and performance management in the United States and Italy is discussed. Third, coaching techniques, based on theory and empirical evidence, for increasing the probability of goal attainment by public sector employees are examined.     

A Stronger or Weaker Union? Public Reactions to Asymmetric Devolution in the United Kingdom

A system of asymmetric devolution was established for the firsttime in Great Britain in 1999. Its advocates hoped it wouldstrengthen public support for the maintenance of the UnitedKingdom, whereas its critics feared it would have the oppositeeffect. This article examines which of these two perspectivesappears to have been correct by looking at trends in nationalidentity and constitutional preferences in each of England,Scotland, and Wales following the advent of devolution. It findsthat although there may have been some erosion of British nationalidentity and although there are some pressures for further changes,a system of asymmetric devolution appears to be the only constitutionalstructure capable of enjoying public support throughout GreatBritain.     

Transformational Leadership and Public Service Motivation: Driving Individual and Organizational Performance

Despite growing evidence about prosocial motivations and their effects on employee behavior, how can new public service motivation research translate into more effective management practices—which, so far, regrettably remain underdeveloped? Increasingly, public service motivation studies have moved from understanding what motivates public servants to exploring how public service motives influence performance. Similarly, greater attention is now paid to the practices of transformational leadership. Drawing on concepts from transformational leadership, this essay explores how managers can harness the positive aspects of public service motivation to enhance employee and organizational performance and outlines strategies that can help managers incorporate public service motivation values across management systems.     

政府绩效治理中的协同领导体系构建：超越个体层面的公共领导新发展

在超越个体层面的公共领导研究视角下,公共领导是一种复杂机制,是嵌于包含政治引领、组织管理和资源动员等复杂治理体系中的要素关系和运行方式。通过对已有研究的疏理,在其基础上归纳出基于个体/特质、情境/权变、关系/网络和多元主体/整合框架等四种研究路径。作为一种整合性公共领导框架,重点围绕绩效领导的概念体系和功能机制,分析了我国党政体制为绩效领导提供的价值传导渠道、战略创新平台和组织支撑等有利条件。同时将绩效领导作为我国深化干部队伍和领导班子建设的理论突破,提出基于我国党政体制发展绩效领导力的三个关键问题是:党政体制中绩效领导的价值、愿景和效率的输入与输出;绩效领导的价值属性、战略属性和工具属性间的动态关系;与绩效领导结构相匹配的领导干部选拔任用和班子建设制度。