Internal markets in the public sector: the case of the British National Health Service

This article discusses the application of internal markets to the publicly financed British National Health Service (NHS). The objective of internal markets is to obtain, through the stimulus of competition, greater efficiency, effectiveness, and responsiveness to consumer needs than would be obtained through continued direct government provision. There have been real advances in the NHS attributable to the internal market, not the least of which is a growth of debate, dynamism, experimentation, and entrepreneurial attitudes that contrasts sharply with the glacial pace of change prior to 1990. However, there is also a sense in which the reforms have, thus far, failed to achieve all their promoters hoped for. It is far from clear that efficiency gains exceed the high transaction costs associated with the reform. Competition remains restricted, information is inadequate, and the regulatory and legal framework is flawed. Lack of transparency and a clear publicly stated ‘end vision’ of the reform process, together with a refusal to evaluate it systematically, have heightened already intense controversy. This has blurred the fact that the internal market is not a panacea and cannot alone be expected to solve the problems of a health service where demand is accelerating faster than the resources available through taxation. (© 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.)     

Conveners as champions of collaboration in the public sector: a case from South Africa

This article analyses the role of conveners in facilitating interorganisational collaboration. Consistent with previous research, the article shows that conveners help overcome the obstacles frequent in interorganisational collaboration processes. It also illustrates further how their effectiveness depends on their credibility among the partners, their familiarity with the collaborative project and their being perceived as unbiased intermediaries. Most interestingly, the article advances our knowledge on conveners by suggesting that their behaviour is consistent with that common among ‘champions’ of innovation. They are likely to assume a leadership role and use influence politics, such as salesmanship, personal appeal and persuasion. These findings build on a case study of successful collaboration between two government agencies in South Africa. We believe, however, that the findings are likely to apply to other types of organisation, private and voluntary, and to other country contexts. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Towards virtuous and ethical organisational performance in the context of corruption: A case study in the public sector

With the increasing number of ethical violations reported across the public sector, the emphasis on ethics and values in governance is on the rise. Corruption is widely accepted as a form of unethical behaviour that can have detrimental effects on organisations as well as society at large. Research calls for empirical studies focusing on the contextual factors surrounding corruption. Based on the Contextually Based Human Resource Theory and using the case study method, this paper examines the role of context through a systematic analysis of corruption in a public sector organisation. We integrate corruption and human resource literature to understand employee behaviour, employee relations, HRM strategies, and organisational outcomes in the context of organisational corruption.     

BNFL National Stakeholder Dialogue: a case study in public affairs

This case study explores the very early days of the British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL) National Stakeholder Dialogue. The dialogue is arguably the most intensive, consistent and difficult engagement with stakeholders ever undertaken by a UK company. It involves a wide range of individuals and organisations interested in or concerned about nuclear issues and aims to inform BNFL's decision‐making process around the improvement of their environmental performance in the context of their overall development. The process is designed and convened by The Environment Council, an independent third party with expertise in stake‐holder dialogue. The aim of this paper is to examine how the dialogue came about, why stakeholder dialogue was used as a process, some of the problems encountered by the process and the link that can exist between public affairs and stakeholder dialogue. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications     

Pricing public sector services: The tuition gap

The large gap between the tuition charged by public colleges and universities and private ones is likely to cause severe disruptions to the private sector institutions of higher education. If it continues, private sector institutions may once again become bastions for students who can afford their services, rather than for those who merit them, and these institutions will diminish in size and diversity as well. Public sector institutions will become relatively stronger - not solely for reasons of effectiveness, efficiency, or equity - but because of the competitive advantage that the tuition gap affords them. This paper explores the feasibility and desirability of the three methods of correcting this problem, using real cost and demand data from the University of Massachusetts for illustrative purposes. It concludes the subsidization of students (rather than institutions) and raising public sector tuitions are two possible alternatives to the present tuition gap.     

Implementing transition management as policy reforms: a case study of the Dutch energy sector

Proposals to alter large-scale socio-technical systems through government actions in order to promote goals such as sustainability are highly uncertain policy projects. What is being proposed is the replacement of specific elements of existing policy ‘mixes’—the goals and means—by others, in the expectation of avoiding counterproductive or sub-optimal policy outcomes. While laudable, such efforts are fraught with risks; including the possibility of the creation of sub-optimal policy mixes or of failed reform efforts with resulting poor outcomes. This article develops a model and typology of policy regime change processes and outcomes following Thelen and others in arguing that complex policy mixes typically emerge through one or more of four processes, ‘drift’, ‘conversion’, ‘layering’ and ‘replacement’, and that the expected outcomes of these different processes in terms of their ability to meet initial expectations are linked to the manner in which policy goals and means are (or are not) combined in a consistent, coherent and congruent fashion. This propensity is illustrated through examination of the case of energy transition management as practiced in the Netherlands.     

Public sector versus private sector: the case of Uganda

The article reviews the case for privatization in Africa, with special reference to Uganda. It argues that enterprises supplying goods and services other than infrastructure are best left to the private sector, but considers the relative merits of local performance contracts to expatriate management contracts. (© 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.)     

The provocative public sector: Domestic political protest and public sector growth in the OECD, 1965–1982

The results shown in Tables 1 through 8 above are consistent in that %GG is repeatedly shown to be significant whether making cross-national comparisons of DPP or predicting intra-national variations over time. Therefore, Hypotheses 1a and 1b are confirmed. The confirmation of Hypotheses 2a and 2b shows that, taking into account public sector size, government growth is most provocative in countries where it represents a major socio-economic change (i.e., where the public sector is small). Government growth has a neutral impact where the role of the public sector is long-established (i.e., where the public sector is large).Hypotheses 3a and 3b posited that average and annual rates of economic growth would be inversely associated with domestic protest. These hypotheses, too, were confirmed. The belief that economic growth rates would clearly provide the margin of affordability for public sector growth was not confirmed, as the coefficient of the interaction term (%GG*%GDP) was not statistically significant.     

Public sector audit and influence the investment institutional background during a pandemic

The study purpose was to assess the impact of public sector audit on investment climate formation under the COVID-19 pandemic and to develop recommendations to improve its effectiveness. For this purpose, a multistage research project was developed with the participation of auditors from Russia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. The project was based on the primary information obtained in the course of expert interviews. Testing the methodological approach with experts from these countries allowed proving the main study hypotheses, according to which the public sector audit has an indirect positive impact on investment climate formation. Such an audit influences the main impact factors through improving public administration efficiency, the fight against corruption, and the provision of the regulatory framework. During the testing, the main directions for improving public audit for a more favorable investment climate were formulated. The developed methodological approach makes it possible to obtain an expert assessment of the impact of the public audit on investment climate formation. At the same time, partial use of statistical methods makes it possible to replicate the study in the form of an expert interview, which increases its attractiveness for researchers in conditions of shortage of qualified interviewers.     

Training and public sector reform: an integrated approach

This article is partly a response to McCourt and Sola ( 1999 ), who raised a number of important observations about the role and limitations of training in promoting public sector reform in Tanzania. In particular, their discussion of the relationship between individual and organizational change is referred to. The article outlines a possible alternative to the straight training approach to capacity building, and suggests it as a possible model for the kind of OD intervention mentioned in McCourt and Sola, The author describes a programme of capacity building for rural district councils in Zimbabwe, which tried to avoid the mistakes of earlier public sector training programmes. In discussing ways of integrating human resource development into programmes of capacity building and public sector reform, the article adds to the debate about process and blueprint approaches as discussed in this journal by Cook, ( 1997 ), Blunt ( 1997 ) and others. The article concludes with an attempt to assess some of the achievements and failures of the training programme after the initial three years. It draws attention to some of the external factors in the programme operating environment which combine with the internal coordination and management aspects, in determining the overall achievement of such a complex programme. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Intergenerational transfers of public sector jobs: a shred of evidence on nepotism

The attractiveness of public sector jobs in Italy may induce parents working in this sector to use their positions and the network of relationships to favor their sons/daughters in gaining access to public sector jobs. We verify whether children of public employees effectively enjoy an advantage, estimating a model of the probability of working in the public sector controlling for individual characteristics and labor market conditions. We show that if the father is a public employee the probability of his child working in the same sector is increased by a huge 44%. This advantage is larger for low-ability individuals, “stayers” and Southern Italian residents. We interpret these findings as evidence of nepotism in public employment.     

Controllership in the public sector.

Ineffective or incompetent controllership is, perhaps, the most common managerial failure found in the public sector. This failure affects outcomes and achievements in every area of public policy--often profoundly. Controllers design and operate management control systems. The effectiveness of alternative control system designs depends upon the cost and production behavior of the good or service in question. But control strategies are seldom consciously or effectively matched to circumstances. As a consequence, public programs are too often simultaneously overcontrolled and out of control.     

Public sector unions and public spending

This study examines the influence of public sector unions on the expansion of the public sector. Based on public goods theory, our paper models how unions influence the supply of and demand for public sector activities. On the demand side, public sector unions are special interests which advocate public sector expansion to policy makers; on the supply side, they exert pressure to maintain and expand monopoly powers. Empirical evidence supports the hypothesis that a positive relationship exists between public sector unionism and public spending.     

An exploratory study of pay satisfaction among public sector employees in Jordan

Pay satisfaction is regarded as an important factor in promoting organizational productivity based on its motivational factor. Accordingly, this research sought to explore pay satisfaction in the Jordanian public sector with an objective of establishing the level of satisfaction among employees. The inquiry is based on the Pay Satisfaction Questionnaire developed by a previous study. Using weighted averages for the analysis of data, this research establishes that the pay satisfaction of the Jordanian public sector employees is relatively low and that employees are less than satisfied with the various pay aspects queried including pay level, benefits, pay raise, and pay structure and administration. This has the implication that the low productivity in the public sector could be as a result of lack of staff motivation due to low pay. The research determines that in average, the 210 participated employees were least satisfied with pay structure and administration, whereas the other factors, namely, benefits, pay raise, and pay structure/administration, achieved an average score.     

International political marketing: a case study of United States soft power and public diplomacy

• Political marketing can be categorized with three aspects: the election campaign as the origin of political marketing, the permanent campaign as a governing tool and international political marketing (IPM) which covers the areas of public diplomacy, marketing of nations, international political communication, national image, soft power and the cross‐cultural studies of political marketing. IPM and the application of soft power have been practiced by nation‐states throughout the modern history of international relations starting with the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. Nation‐states promote the image of their country worldwide through public diplomacy, exchange mutual interests in their bilateral or multilateral relation with other countries, lobby for their national interests in international organizations and apply cultural and political communication strategies internationally to build up their soft power. In modern international relations, nation‐states achieve their foreign policy goals by applying both hard power and soft power. Public diplomacy as part of IPM is a method in the creation of soft power, as well as, in the application of soft power.
• This paper starts with the definitional and conceptual review of political marketing. For the first time in publication, it establishes a theoretical model which provides a framework of the three aspects of political marketing, that is electoral political marketing (EPM), governmental political marketing (GPM) and IPM. This model covers all the main political exchanges among six inter‐related components in the three pairs of political exchange process, that is candidates and party versus voters and interest groups in EPM ; governments, leaders and public servants versus citizens and interest groups in GPM, including political public relations and lobbying which have been categorized as the third aspect of political marketing in some related studies; and governments, interest group and activists versus international organizations and foreign subjects in IPM. This study further develops a model of IPM, which covers its strategy and marketing mix on the secondary level of the general political marketing model, and then, the third level model of international political choice behaviour based the theory of political choice behaviour in EPM. This paper continues to review the concepts of soft power and public diplomacy and defines their relation with IPM.
• It then reports a case study on the soft power and public diplomacy of the United States from the perspectives of applying IPM and soft power. Under the framework of IPM, it looks at the traditional principles of US foreign policy, that is Hamiltonians, Wilsonians, Jeffersonians and Jacksonians, and the application of US soft power in the Iraq War since 2003. The paper advances the argument that generally all nation states apply IPM to increase their soft power. The decline of US soft power is caused mainly by its foreign policy. The unilateralism Jacksonians and realism Hamiltonians have a historical trend to emphasize hard power while neglecting soft power. Numerous reports and studies have been conducted on the pros and cons of US foreign policy in the Iraq War, which are not the focus of this paper. From the aspect of IPM, this paper studies the case of US soft power and public diplomacy, and their effects in the Iraq War. It attempts to exam the application of US public diplomacy with the key concept of political exchange, political choice behaviour, the long‐term approach and the non‐government operation principles of public diplomacy which is a part of IPM. The case study confirms the relations among IPM, soft power and public diplomacy and finds that lessons can be learned from these practices of IPM. The paper concludes that there is a great demand for research both at a theoretical as well as practical level for IPM and soft power. It calls for further study on this subject.

Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.