Paradoxical leadership in public sector organisations: Its role in fostering employee resilience

Government organisations, and their employees, need to be resilient to manage challenges such as resource constraints, rising demands, and the tensions and contradictions that underlie much public sector work, often stemming from the need to balance different stakeholder interests. Employee resilience, defined as the capacity to continuously adapt and flourish, even in the face of challenge, is an individual level construct that also benefits organisations. Despite its benefits, little is known about how to foster it. This paper explores whether paradoxical leadership (PL) can contribute to employee resilience. PL – the ability to balance competing structural and relational demands over time – may be one means of supporting employee resilience, as it corresponds to the tensions and paradoxes that exist in public sector work. This correspondence between PL and tensions in public administration work means that PL may also help employees behave resiliently. Findings from a quantitative survey (n = 233) in a large New Zealand public sector organisation indicate that PL antecedes resilience. The effect of PL facets on employee resilience is partially mediated by perceptions of organisational support.     

Strategic Management in the Public Sector: How Tools Enable and Constrain Strategy Making

ABSTRACT

Strategic management (SM) has become prominent on the agenda in several public organizations due to new public management (NPM) reforms. Nevertheless, there are few studies investigating how public organizations apply SM in practice and what tools are used. As a result, calls have been made for such studies. This article can be seen as an attempt to meet this call by presenting a qualitative case study of how SM has been applied in the Swedish Transport Administration (STA), a central government agency in Sweden, and what tools it used in strategy making. By analyzing the micro processes of strategizing at STA, our results indicate that public organizations need to be aware of at least three specific tensions that can enable or constrain strategy making. These tensions are: short v. long-term, parts v. whole, and reactivity v. proactivity.     

Cutback Management and the Paradox of Publicness

Cutback management in the public sector poses unique problems. More than 30 years ago, Charles Levine illustrated these problems by discussing the paradoxes of cutback management in public organizations. Building on Levine's work on cutback management and developments in publicness theory, the author provides a contemporary perspective on cutback management. He asserts that publicness creates paradoxical tensions in different domains such as organizational goals, employee motivation, and organizational performance. These tensions need to be embraced in both theoretical discussions of and practical engagement with cutback management. Instead of a short‐term, reductionist approach to cutback management, a holistic and long‐term perspective is necessary.     

The Impact of Public Funding on Contemporary Visual Arts

Public policy for supporting the visual arts has historically followed different traditions in France and the United Kingdom. In an environment of fiscal austerity that impacts upon public funding as well as private patronage, and given the tensions between artistic freedom on the one hand, and market constraints on the other, this article examines how these two traditions of financing artists has influenced the direction of the work itself. A brief historical presentation of the two forms of public support and their evolution in recent decades provides a framework for understanding government attitudes and policies on both sides of the Channel. A closer examination of selected artists, chosen here for their representativeness and their international renown, is used to illustrate the changing nature of public support for visual art creation.     

Registered Traveler Program: The Financial Value of Registering the Good Guys

We discuss how the Registered Traveler (RT) program can enhance simultaneously aviation security and passenger convenience. We point out some of the potential weaknesses in the program from both a security and civil liberty perspective. The RT program is a public–private partnership between the Transportation Security Agency (TSA) and the private sector. As in any partnership between private enterprises and the public sector, there are tensions that must be monitored, managed, and resolved. We note that financial distress of a RT service provider will place increased pressure on TSA resources. We review the resources allocated by the public and private sectors and the natural tensions that exist between companies investing capital with the expectation of earning a market rate of return and an agency of the Department of Homeland Security, the TSA, with one of its responsibilities being to assure the safety and security of air travel.     

Public accountability: Effectiveness, equity, ethics

This article tests a wide range of government activities against requirements for public accountability. The article explores the incentives for ethical behaviour by public officials; the need for more outcome focused performance indicators, tensions between parliamentary and managerial accountability; the standards of accountability applied to public providers of services can be applied to private providers; the utility of spelling out service requirements in advance; the impacts on accountability of the convergence of the public and private sectors; the need, where responsibility for programs is collaborative, for a clear governance framework, tensions between representative and participative democracy, and trends towards more participative and collaborative leadership.     

Intelligence analysts and policymakers: Benefits and dangers of tensions in the relationship

This article is occasioned by public interest in reported tensions between CIA analysts and policymaking officials of the administration of President George W. Bush regarding the significance of ties between the Saddam Hussein regime and Al Qaeda terrorists, an important factor in the US decision to invade Iraq in 2003. No evaluation of the latter case is provided. The article addresses, instead, general patterns of tensions between intelligence analysts and policy officials in order to provide context for public assessment of the Iraq-Al Qaeda incident when the public record is more complete and enhance understanding of similar future instances of tension.     

Continuity and Change: The New South Wales Public Sector Under Labor

This paper analyses recent developments in wage bargaining in the New South Wales public sector under the Labor government. It contrasts the approach taken by the former Coalition government with that of its successor. The discussion is focused on the Memorandum of Understanding between the Labor government and the public sector unions. With the agreement of the unions, the government has reasserted both substantive and procedural control over public sector industrial relations. This has not, however, prevented widespread industrial action in schools, hospitals and public transport and continuing tensions between the principal public service union and the government.     

Caring, Controlling, Contracting and Counting: Governments and Non-profits in Community Services

Performance measurement and contracting out are central elements of new public management systems. At first sight these elements seem necessarily connected for reasons of accountability. However, for some kinds of services, implementation of conventional performance measurement systems may exacerbate tensions in contracting out. Using a case study of child and family welfare services in NSW, this paper shows that differences in the missions and operating modes of public and non-government community service providers are thrown into sharp relief by performance measurement, when observed from the perspective of practitioners in service-providing agencies. Practitioners perceive that their priorities in service provision differ sharply from those of the department funding their activities — and seeking to measure their performance. These findings pose challenges for the 'partnership' model now prevalent in community services provision.     

The Challenges of Consulting the Public on Science Policy: Examining the Development of European Risk Assessment Policy for Genetically Modified Animals

With the growing importance of public engagement in science policy making and declining levels of public trust in food production, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has attempted to embed “good governance” approaches to strengthen scientific independence and open up risk decision making, which include the use of public consultations. However, “opening up” of risk assessment policies reveals some tensions; namely, balancing the goals of scientific excellence and transparency, protecting science from interests, addressing value judgments, and limited opportunities to debate ethical and social issues. EFSA's development of risk assessment policy for genetically modified animals is used as a case study to analyze these tensions. This analysis suggests that in order to fulfill good governance commitments and maintain trust in risk governance, closer cooperation between EFSA and the European Commission is required to provide “space” for debating the broader risk management issues. This publically accessible space may be needed alongside rather than instead of EFSA's consultation.     

Determinants of public support for EU membership: Data from the Baltic countries

Abstract. Focusing on individual–level determinants of public support for EU membership, this paper brings the literature on Western European integration to bear on the Eastern and Central European accession. Existing theories have focused on utilitarian expectations, political values, and domestic politics as determinants of public attitudes toward European integration. The paper discusses the applicability of the proposed theories and measures in the Eastern European context and develops a model that identifies micro–level economic expectations, support for democratic norms, trust in the national government, and perceptions of ethnic tension as possible determinants of public support for EU membership. These propositions are tested with survey data from Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, using logistic regression. The results lend strong support to the expected gains and domestic politics hypotheses but suggest that individual competitiveness, a frequently used proxy for economic expectations, may be a poor predictor of attitudes toward the EU in the CEE context. Perceptions of increased ethnic tensions were found to decrease minority support for EU membership in Latvia, the Baltic country that has pursued particularly stringent citizenship and minority policies. Identification with democratic norms did not influence opinions in Latvia and Estonia, while having an unexpected negative effect on the attitudes of the Lithuanian public.     

Coordination in Youth Affairs: The Politics of Non-Decision-Making

One of the components associated with the widely heralded shift to 'new managerialism' in the public sector has been an increased emphasis on coordination between government departments as a means to enhance effective service provision. This article examines the capacity for coordination to fulfil this objective. Drawing upon a case study of coordination in youth affairs in Western Australia, the article examines the process by which the coordination mechanisms become enveloped in the 'politics of non-decision-making'. By this is meant that a set of power relationships create tensions at a number of levels — between commonwealth and state government agencies; between state government agencies and within individual agencies — which act to prevent effective decisions from being taken. The implications of this case study for the capacity of 'new managerialism' to produce effective policy outcomes in complex social policy areas is highlighted. Evidence from this study suggests that, in an era of restricted resources and heightened competition within the public sector, agencies are pushed to more clearly define their boundaries.     

Determinants of public support for EU membership: Data from the Baltic countries

Focusing on individual–level determinants of public support for EU membership, this paper brings the literature on Western European integration to bear on the Eastern and Central European accession. Existing theories have focused on utilitarian expectations, political values, and domestic politics as determinants of public attitudes toward European integration. The paper discusses the applicability of the proposed theories and measures in the Eastern European context and develops a model that identifies micro–level economic expectations, support for democratic norms, trust in the national government, and perceptions of ethnic tension as possible determinants of public support for EU membership. These propositions are tested with survey data from Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, using logistic regression. The results lend strong support to the expected gains and domestic politics hypotheses but suggest that individual competitiveness, a frequently used proxy for economic expectations, may be a poor predictor of attitudes toward the EU in the CEE context. Perceptions of increased ethnic tensions were found to decrease minority support for EU membership in Latvia, the Baltic country that has pursued particularly stringent citizenship and minority policies. Identification with democratic norms did not influence opinions in Latvia and Estonia, while having an unexpected negative effect on the attitudes of the Lithuanian public.     

Communicating law,building peace: the pedagogy of public outreach from war crimes courts

ABSTRACT

There has been a growing interdisciplinary concern with the implications of public outreach processes from war crimes trials for new forms of citizenship in the wake of violent conflict. The enactment of such outreach, through seminars, civil society initiatives and workshops, provides a glimpse of the tensions between different conceptions of justice, belonging and rights in the post-conflict period. Specifically, such events constitute a rare public arena in the more fragmented and securitised domain of international legal practices. This paper focuses on a series of public workshops for survivors of wartime sexual violence carried out in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) 2011–13. Drawing on participant observations and open-ended interviews, we argue that such public outreach programmes can be viewed as a form of pedagogy, where the materials, format and arrangement of the events structure the nature of participation and engagement. In doing so we are making two contributions. First, the discussion advances understandings of public outreach as a form of pedagogy, illustrating how practices of dissent, rejection and resistance animate processes of public outreach. Second, the paper illuminates the role of pedagogy as a governmental instrument, reflecting the micro-situations within which individuals are interpellated into the state.     

Of(f) Course: Michel Foucault,the Mobile Philosopher and his Dreamworlds

Foucault extolled the Iranian revolution and, anticipating the havoc that his public intervention in favour of the revolution would create, he wrote: “I can already hear the French laughing, but I know that they are wrong”. Examining Foucault’s (so unlikely) valorisation of certainty and the partisan affectivity it bestows upon knowledge and truth, I read his unusual engagement with the Iranian revolution against the grain. A major tendency is to approach Foucault’s Iranian writings as aberration; against this tendency, I read them as an effect of Foucault’s specific epistemic and utopian optics. Through a critical reading of neglected aspects of Foucault’s comments on Iran, I argue that much nuance is missing when damning critiques fail to see why and how Foucault’s interest in an active rather than folklore non-European political identity unveils deeper tensions of his own worldview and outlook on international politics and interrogates mainstream appraisals of Foucault’s political philosophy.     

What Services are Public? What Aspects of Performance are to be Ranked? The Case of “Services of General Interest”

ABSTRACT

In this article, we focus on the difficulties in evaluating the performance of so-called services of general interest. These services generally include such services as water and electricity supply, telephony, postal services, and public transport, where providers are subjected to certain universal service obligations. Because of the tensions between European internal market requirements and these universal service obligations, there exists considerable debate on the criteria to be used to evaluate the performance of these services. In addition, the status of these public services as “public” or “essential” services is disputed. Rankings of the performance of these services will always reflect a certain dominant definition of performance. Ranking schemes as a result both reflect and create performance.     

The Government's Plans for Decentralisation and Localism: A Progress Report

This article assesses progress on the coalition government's ambitious agenda for decentralisation and localism against six actions set out in the government's own guide to decentralisation. It critically examines the government's case that the previous government's centralised approach failed. The six actions cover reducing bureaucracy, community empowerment, more local control of public funding, provider diversification, more public scrutiny and stronger local accountability. The paper concludes that accountability is the most challenging and that progress is hampered by tensions between the actions and between government departments. It argues that the government needs a clearer, shared vision for localism going forward.     

The cult of the victim: an analysis of the collective identity of the English Defence League

Since its creation in 2009 the English Defence League has become the largest street-based social movement in contemporary Britain. Its demonstrations have led to violence and community tensions in town and city centres throughout the country. While these street demonstrations have attracted some attention in academia, as of yet there has been no attempt to analyse the statements of the EDL as an organization. Oaten analyses the EDL's outgoing communicative transmissions and argues that the EDL as a movement is based on a sense of collective victimhood. By drawing on conceptions of collective victimhood from post-conflict studies, he suggests that only by understanding the EDL's collective victimhood can we understand its anti-Muslim and anti-establishment stance. His article stresses that collective victimhood is a zero sum identity, and highlights the fact that, as such, the EDL and its members continuously seek to portray themselves as the ‘true’ victims of abuse by government and British Muslims. Oaten concludes, in light of EDL leader Tommy Robinson's departure, by looking at the potential future trajectories of the EDL. He argues that, despite the fact that Robinson was central to the movement's collective victimhood frame of reference, the EDL continues to utilize the collective victimhood narrative in order to explain Robinson's departure. This suggests that collective victimhood had become a powerful category of self-identification for the movement, and that the movement can continue without Robinson.     

Security implications of NAFTA’s disruption

US President Donald Trump's ongoing threats to overhaul or repudiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) have increased tensions with Mexico and engendered its distrust of the United States. As a result, robust security and defence cooperation in several areas, including drug enforcement and immigration, could diminish substantially.     

Testing APS Ethics: Where's the Integrity?

In recent years there has been a good deal of discussion in Australia about public service integrity. This article seeks to consider the Australian public service's standards of integrity by analysing the ethical framework under which the public service operates and the particular ethical issues and tensions that this involves; testing and benchmarking the ethical performance of the public service; and providing some suggestions as to the next steps in ethics considerations in the Australian public service.