Shared Services and Cost Reduction Motive in the Public Sector

The intention of this article is to understand whether and how shared service centers can help reduce costs in the public sector context. We identify the sources of cost reduction for shared service centers and discuss the obstacles to making use of them. In order to illustrate and complement the theoretical discussion and the literature review, empirical insights from two Estonian cases are provided. The case studies indicate that when the context is enabling, shared service centers can help reduce back-office headcount. However, the total costs and benefits of the public-sector shared service centers are not calculated and remain unknown.     

Corporate Social Responsibility,Public Service Motivation and Organizational Citizenship Behavior in the Public Sector

This article examines the mediating role of public service motivation (PSM) on the relationship between employees’ perceptions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). A sample of employees working in public sector banks in Egypt completed a structured questionnaire comprising of questions regarding CSR perceptions and PSM. Immediate supervisors rated the OCB of employees who responded to the survey. Results reported in the paper found the following: a) Employee perceptions of both internal and external CSR had a positive influence on the development of employee desire to serve the public; b) PSM partially mediated the relationship between internal CSR perceptions and employee OCB; c) PSM fully mediated the relationship between external CSR perceptions and OCB. This study extends current knowledge of the theoretical foundations surrounding CSR at the individual-level of analysis and offers practical implications by stressing the importance of employee desire to serve the public.     

The Public Sector as the Employer of Choice among Youth in Egypt: The Relevance of Public Service Motivation Theory

Young people in Egypt want to work in the public sector, even if they get less pay there than at the private sector. This article seeks to explain the attractiveness of public-sector jobs to this group, embedding this experience within the literature and theorization on public service motivation (PSM) and discussing its relevance. Issues of trust, respect, and social status are reflected in the discourse of interviewed youth about this job preference. A generation-held and culturally-ingrained appreciation among the educated to work in the public sector also contributes to this sector preference. Qualitative and quantitative data also show that extrinsic benefits of job security and stability are also pivotal to this preference. The analysis in the article suggests a holistic reading of motivational factors to join the public sector in contexts of job scarcity and labor surplus.     

Self-Care in Public and Community Sector Workplaces

Key aspects of modern public service and community workplaces associated with significant levels of distress are identified. This includes the transformation of public sector and community agencies under the aegis of new public management (NPM). Using a child protection case study, it is argued that NPM ethos generates stressful workplaces and “uncomfortable knowledge” adding pressure to a system already in crisis. It is also argued that while there is value in self-care practices like debriefing, “boundary maintenance,” and “work-life balance,” one critical aspect of self-care associated with the virtue ethics tradition is missing. This gap in the literature and practice needs attention.     

Voluntary Turnover in the Omani Public Sector: An Islamic Values Perspective

Following four decades of economic growth the public sector, Oman is experiencing an emerging problem of labor turnover to the private sector. We examine this phenomenon through semi-structured interviews with 26 current and former public employees. The rate of turnover is low but this masks the impact of losses on key technical and management roles. The main reasons for turnover are dissatisfaction with management style, reward practices, and promotion opportunities. Findings are interpreted in the context of Islamic work values and implications for public management reform in Oman are provided.     

Public Service Efficacy

This article develops a measure of user capacity called Public Service Efficacy (PSE), which is applied to four sectors: hospitals, elementary schools, day care, and higher education. Tests of validity and reliability indicate good properties and consistent patterns across three of four sectors. The measure differentiates between users of the same services, and it increases with level of education. This indicates that PSE can enable us to identify individual users with low capacity and sectors with low average user capacity and thus improve our ability to address equity concerns and harvest potential benefits from user involvement in public service provision.     

Measuring Policy Success: Evaluating Public Sector Reform in Bhutan

There has been resurgence in evaluation of policy, reflected mostly by an increase in ex ante studies. Although there is a shift towards ex post evaluation, this has been gradual, resulting in a paucity of ex post evaluation literature. To address this gap, we apply a revisionist approach to evaluate a major public sector reform in the Bhutanese civil service. We conclude that it provides a more holistic approach for ex post evaluation policy, and also a more nuanced evaluation which moves us beyond the narrow binary view of success or failure in reform.     

Organizational Learning Facilitators in the Canadian Public Sector

An implicit patriarchal bargain between Emirati fathers and daughters is examined from a social constructionist perspective. Using qualitative methodology we found that fathers explicitly encourage their daughters to pursue tertiary education and careers, but hedge this break from tradition with implicit understandings that daughters will observe norms that can only realistically be followed in public sector employment. The persistent public-private imbalance in female employment patterns can thus be construed, as a ‘wicked problem” that cannot be addressed through market incentive-based policies such as Emiratization but rather through behavioral changes on the part of both UAE businesses and Emirati families.     

The Political Economy of the Growth of the Liberian Public Sector

Using a political economy approach, this study examines the nature, dynamics, and causes of the expansion of the Liberian public sector. The findings show that the major causes for the expansion of the Liberian public sector did not fit those provided by the literature—citizens’ demands for new services, and other issues that emerge from state-building. Instead, the politico-economic interests of the Liberian ruling class (both the internal and external wings) are the major causes for the increase in the size of the government. These interests include serving the interests of corporate capitalism, and the private accumulation of wealth.     

Public Sector Reforms and Service Quality Issues From the Perspective of the Small Island Developing States in the Pacific: A Case of Fiji

The purpose of this article is to compare service quality of the Fiji Islands Maritime Safety Administration (FIMSA) and the Maritime Safety Authority of Fiji (MSAF). Using a structured questionnaire, data were collected from 200 Fiji maritime industry stakeholders. Research findings identified FIMSA and MSAF service delivery misalignment with customer expectations; customer’ expectations exceeded perceived customer service experiences of FIMSA and MSAF; and, perceived customer service experiences of MSAF were noticeably better than those of FIMSA.     

State Dilemmas in the Provision of Alternative Care for Children: Relative Efficacy of Public Sector and Independent Sector Foster Placements

The population of children around the world who require alternative care outside of the natural family is staggeringly large. This presents fundamental dilemmas and challenges for every nation. This article notes how the United Kingdom's (UK's) response has evolved from that of a non-interventionist state to one that claims an interest in “Every Child”. Attention is drawn to the way in which the State's “Third Way: What matters is what works” ideology has led to radical reform of public sector services and the widespread sub-contracting of alternative care for children to the independent sector.

The article presents rare data on the relative performance of children in public sector as opposed to costly independent foster care. Contrary to expectations the data reveal minimal differences between the two groups. The data offer no justification, on the grounds of efficacy, for the use of independent sector provision as opposed to public sector provision.     

The Applicability of Best Value in the Nigerian Public Sector

We examine the applicability of Best Value practices in the Nigerian public sector and present a Best Value Model for Nigeria. We find the literature does not extend to the Nigerian context. We make contributions towards understanding stakeholder perceptions of public service delivery best practice. We show Best Value as a significant initiative for improving public service delivery. The mixed methods survey reveals Nigerian Best Value initiatives do not exist significantly, but are applicable. Outcomes are exploration of a new area for Best Value application, incorporation of implementation issues into the model and the seven-stage process for its implementation.     

The Public Sector Reform Movement: Mapping the Global Policy Network

Public sector reform in both developed and developing countries has now become a routine matter of public policy—reform is almost continuous, if not always successful. While the role of international transfer agents such as the World Bank and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in promoting reforms has often been noted, there has been no comprehensive mapping of the global network on public sector reform. This article makes a first attempt to map the close to 100 organizations that make up a loose global network around public administration and governance. It then provides a brief history of the evolution of the network, and the key events that encouraged a substantial degree of coherence among its members. It examines the practices and tools that are specific to this global public policy network, and concludes with some observations on policy transfer models. The article shows that in trying to understand the dynamics of public administration reform, we need to pay greater attention to this network, its members, and its influence over national policy priorities.     

Public Sector Restructuring and Democracy: The State,Labour and Trade Unions in India

This article looks at the ways in which marketisation reforms affect the empowerment, ideological universes and functioning limits of popular institutions. Under what circumstances do left-leaning trade unions accept job cuts and wage freezes? What are the boundaries of consent and dissent? Case studies of three public sector companies in Bangalore city in the southern state of Karnataka, India, indicate that labour rationalisation has occurred with trade union acquiescence and support. However, as yet there is no broad institutional framework to handle social security, rehabilitation and redeployment of displaced workers. Public sector workforce reduction is taking place in a general economic context where there has been little growth of employment in the organised manufacturing sector. Beneath unions' apparent acquiescence to rationalisation processes, there are critical areas of dissent. Dissent, however, has not manifested itself in a critical alternative to the state's rationalisation policies. Changing party-union relations, and shifts in the internal dynamics of unions affecting choice of leaders, union aspirations and ideologies - underwritten by the broader economic changes wrought by the marketisation process - partially explain the inability of the labour movement to shape a definitive challenge to the marketisation process.     

The Role of Risk in Improving Goal Setting in Performance Management Practices within Public Sector: An Explorative Research in Courts Offices in Italy

The study investigates whether the adoption of a risk-based approach that allows public managers to take into account the context and external not-controllable factors during goal setting may contribute to overcome unintended managerial side effects of performance management (PM) practices that hamper their success within public organizations. An explorative research is carried out on court officials of Italian public administration. The results from this study show that the adoption of a risk-based approach could enhance goal setting within the PM process and provide interesting insights to policy-makers invested of the responsibility to improve the effectiveness of current PM procedures.     

Understanding Diversity Management in the Public Sector: A Case for Contingency Theory

Recent diversification in Western populations has led to the implementation of diversity policies like diversity management (DM), a human resource management concept that promotes the hiring, retention, and active participation of a diverse workforce in order to improve organizational performance. This paper seeks to develop contingency theory as a theoretical framework for examining and explaining different DM practices across governments. In contingency theory, there is no one best way to manage all organizations; rather the internal and external environments of each organization create unique situations that require programs tailored to their distinctiveness in order to achieve optimal functionality.     

Strategizing Public Sector Human Resource Management: The Implications of Working in Networks

Networks have come to the fore as a means by which government can achieve its strategic objectives, particularly when addressing complex or “wicked” issues. Such joined-up arrangements differ in their operations from other forms of organizing as they require collaborative effort to deliver the collaborative advantage. Strategic Human Resource Management is concerned with the matching of human resource practices to the strategic direction of organizations. It is argued that the strategic direction of government has been towards network involvement and that, as a result, a reconfiguration of Human Resource Management practices is needed to support this new direction. Drawing on eight network case studies findings are presented in relation to the roles government is expected to play in networks and conclusions are drawn about what types of human resource management practices would best support those roles. Implications for Strategic Human Resource Management are posited.     

Self-Initiated Expatriates in the Private vs. the Public Sector: Creativity and Work Outcomes

Although research on private-sector expatriates is abundant, not much is known about their public-sector counterparts, especially self-initiated expatriates, who themselves initiate the move to live and work abroad. Comparing work outcomes and creativity of self-initiated expatriates in the private vs. the public sector, the results of a survey including 329 respondents indicated that performance and effectiveness were higher in the private sector. However, only in the public sector was there a positive association between creativity and the two work outcomes. These findings are discussed in detail.     

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.     

Processes and Impacts of Strategic Management: Evidence From the Public Sector in the United Arab Emirates

This study presents the first substantial exploration of the processes and impacts of strategic management in the public sector of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It is designed to survey the way in which public organizations formulate, implement, and evaluate their strategic plans, and to identify which particular strategic management elements are most closely related to their perceived impacts. Based on an analysis of 172 usable questionnaires from 67 organizations, the results show that the practice of strategic management has become regular and standard and can be considered the centerpiece of the public management reform in UAE public organizations over the last few years. Moreover, there is relatively high awareness of strategic planning tools and the balanced scorecard is used as the framework for strategic planning by both federal and local organizations. The study also shows that there is very little variation in the practice of strategic management between federal and local organizations and the impacts of this practice are largely beneficial. The implications of these results for practitioners and public management research are discussed.