AFTER EXCELLENCE: MODELS OF ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE FOR THE PUBLIC SECTOR

Abstract: Organisational culture is recognised as a critical ingredient of organisational effectiveness. However, the popular "excellence" model of managing organisational culture is unsuited to the contingencies and character of many public sector organisations. Termed here the cultural control model, it is the only widely shared understanding of good culture and haw to create it. As a generic prototype of culture it is limited, since it relies on management imposing a culture on a work force devoid of subcultural conflict. Three other models of organisational culture are introduced which offer more promise for the public sector: the subcultural model; the professional-managerial multiculture; and the public service or public interest model. These other models recognise in the culture-building strategies they prescribe that culture is deeply-rooted and not readily malleable by management and that subcultures affect organisations in various, not necessarily negative, ways. While the cultural control model reminds us of the significance of culture to better management, subsequent research has refined models of organisational culture which are more Consistent with the values and ethics of professionalism and good administration.     

ORGANISATIONAL THEORY AND ADMINISTRATIVE CHANGE: THE CASE OF REGIONALISATION IN YOUTH AND COMMUNITY SERVICES

Abstract: Conventional accounts of administrative change have relied on an instrumental view of organisations. Based on the notion that administrative arrangements are designed to meet predefined goals, such accounts have been unable to deal adequately with the production of organisational arrangements or to analyse the entanglements of theory in those arrangements. A number of revisions to this orthodox view have been suggested which are based on viewing administrative structures as political arenas within which conflicts organised within wider society come to the fore. The adoption of a regional administrative structure by the New South Wales Department of Youth and Community Services highlights the dependence that administrative arrangements have upon the interests and ideas of key administrative actors and coalitions, and their contingent power to produce and maintain changes in those arrangements. The regional structure was based on ideas of community participation and had the avowed aim of allowing the public to have greater access to departmental affairs. Subsequently, ideas of ministerial accountability and organisational efficiency were used to define strictly the legitimate boundaries of that public participation. Such ideas provided covering fire for different groups in and around the department to obtain and consolidate positions of advantage.     

EFFICIENCY AND EFFECTIVENESS: PROBLEMS OF ASSESSMENT

Abstract: The paper focuses on the Coombs Commission's recommendations on efficiency and effectiveness in the Commonwealth Public Service. The recommendations involve the allocation of organizational responsibility for efficiency and effectiveness to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, the Public Service Board, Treasury and the Auditor-General and individual responsibility to the departmental manager through the establishment of a "Forward Estimating Budgetary" process. However the Commission has given little guidance in the matter of the technological tools which must be developed in order to secure its implementation.
The Commonwealth Public Service Board has developed over the last two years a program of Staff Utilization Reviews (S. U. Rs) as one of its management improvement programs. The paper canvases the technological aspects of efficiency and effectiveness drawing upon the development and operational experience of the S.U.R. program. It concludes that much resource-intensive work must be done before the Commission's recommendations can be implemented but Australian and overseas experience confirms the potential fruitfulness of that work.     

GOVERNMENT PRODUCTIVITY, EFFECTIVENESS, AND PUBLIC POLICY

Marc Holzer and Stuart S. Nagel (editors) . 1984. Productivity and Public Policy .
George W. Downs and Patrick D. Larkey . 1986. The Search for Government Efficiency: From Hubris to Helplessness
Elaine Morley . 1986. A Practitioner's Guide to Public Sector Productivity Improvement .
Richard H. Silkman and Dennis R. Young with the assistance of Robert Lipp . 1985. Subsidizing Inefficiency: A Study of State Aid and Local Government Productivity .     

THE FIRST TWO OIL SHOCKS: POLICY RESPONSE AND EFFECTIVENESS

A simultaneous, comparative review of the attempts by different countries and country groupings to react to the economic problems caused by the two oil shocks. of the 1970s can help us evaluate the relative success of those efforts. In general, the world has yet to recover from those shocks, with various combinations of slow growth, high unemployment, high inflation rates, and substantial governmental andlor international debt still facing countries everywhere. It appears that different combinations of traditional fiscal and monetary policy largely shifted the temporal impact of the shocks or altered the trade-offs among problem categories. It also appears that energy policy may be a more powerful tool with which to approach the possibility of future shocks than any combination of economic policies.     

A COMPARISON OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF INCENTIVES AND DIRECTIVES: THE CASE OF DUTCH WATER QUALITY POLICY

The use of effluent charges as an instrument o f regulatory policy has been the object of much dispute. The controversy between advocates and opponents of replacing directives by incentive strategies in various fields of public intervention has always been rather heated, though carried on more in terms of theory than of empirical evidence drawn from experience with policy instruments in actual operation. Much like permit trading in the United States, regulatory effluent charges in The Netherlands more or less "sneaked in through the back door." The Dutch system o f water quality charges had originally been designed to fulfill solely a revenue-raising function.
The unique features of The Netherlands system make it an interesting example of the use of charges. The Dutch system of effluent charges has been in operation since 1970 and, in terms of the level of the charges, is more than twice as large as the more recent German program. Furthermore its use as a regulatory instrument has been "accidental." It did not replace the official intervention strategy of direct regulation. Given this situation, the Dutch case provides a unique opportunity to examine the effects of these two approaches as they were applied to the same case.
Three statistical analyses of the impacts of the policy instrument used, supplemented by two expert assessments of these impacts, show the Dutch effluent charges have had a very remarkable effect on industrial polluters. In Holland, t h e water quality policy i s regarded as one of t h e few examples o f successful governmental intervention. The final section presents some general thoughts on relevance of the Dutch experience with effluent charges for other countries.     

EFFECTIVENESS BUDGETING: THE LIMITS OF BUDGET REFORM

This paper is concerned with the potential for improving public sector financial management by means of efforts to budget in terms of effectiveness. A series of statements are derived from the assumptions of Effectiveness Budgeting to consider what the preconditions for its success and failure might be, in an effort to begin to fill what i s argued to be a void in the literature in the field. Comments are offered as to the likelihood of Effectiveness Budgeting realizing i t s own stated ideal and its utility under less than ideal conditions.     

ASSESSING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE FOR SOIL CONSERVATION PRACTICES

When making its case to Congress and other audiences the Conservation Technical Assistance program of USDAIS Soil Conservation Service, which is the federal government's most extensive and expensive soil conservation program, based its argument on data about its clients. Missing have been comparisons between clients and nonclients that address the issue of whether clients might not have exhibited just as good conservation behavior without the program. Using multiple regression analysis that relates the diversity of conservation practices used to farm operators' receipt lnonreceipt of technical assistance, and controlling for relevant other variables, this study found statistically and substantively significant program effects in each of six diverse survey sites.