PUBLIC BUDGETING AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: EVOLUTION AND PRACTICE OF AN IDEA

One of the major dimensions of public budgeting relates to the generation of growth, employment, and more favorable income redistribution in the economy. This dimension had come to acquire a good deal of importance during the last seventy years. The use of public budgeting for purposes of promoting economic growth, employment, income distribution, has so far been considered as a part of development economics in general, and more specifically, as a part of economic planning. Indeed, such use has been so extensive that it is difficult to consider budgeting for economic development without a consideration of organized economic planning and associated formulation of medium term and annual plans. Planning itself has gone through several vicissitudes during these decades. As an extension, budgeting too has gone through several phases. By 1985, nearly 300 plans were formulated by developing countries. During the same period, the approaches in industrial countries of the west incorporated some elements of organized planning into their budgetary systems. By early 1990s, however, there was a noticeable sense of fatigue with planning. The state which was seen thus far as a solution to market failure, came to be viewed as a major problem in itself, standing between the legitimate aspirations of the community and their realization. Countries, particularly those belonging to the Soviet block, moved away from planning for economic development and came to adopt market friendly policies. In the process, several countries have abandoned formulation of economic development plans. In these countries, there has been a revival, and, therefore, strengthening of public budget as the one and only instrument of economic development conceived, sponsored, funded, and to a significant extent, implemented by the government. Plans, which at one stage had generated the illusion of permanence, proved after all, to be as transient as many other things in the world.     

SYMPOSIUM ON CHANGING MODES OF GOVERNANCE IN PUBLIC SECTOR ORGANIZATIONS: ACTION AND RHETORIC

This symposium grew out of the sub‐theme, ‘New Modes of Governance in Public Sector Organizations’, of the European Group for Organizational Studies (EGOS) Conference held in Ljubljana in July 2004. Our aim was to provide a forum to discuss the policy and practice and the space between in public sector management and governance within Europe.     

SYMPOSIUM OVERVIEW: CONCEPTUALIZING NEW GOVERNANCE ARRANGEMENTS

This symposium, ‘Conceptualizing New Governance Arrangements', takes up the challenge of refining governance theory to better integrate work in several disciplines, most notably politics, public administration and law. To this end, we argue for a theoretical framework that profiles three key dimensions of governance: institutional, political and regulatory. This framework, in our view, offers new insights into the nature and operation of various governance arrangements, and offers the potential to assess and measure change within such arrangements over time. After describing our methodology for selecting and analysing the case studies profiled in the symposium, we introduce each of the articles that apply our three‐dimensional governance framework. These articles employ the framework to consider a variety of contemporary governance scenarios that vary widely by sector (environmental, climate change, forestry and education policy) and level of analysis (sub‐national, national, and bi‐national).     

RESOURCE CONSTRAINTS IN INFORMATION SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT: A LAND MANAGEMENT CASE STUDY

Network analysis of information systems management is the focus of this study. Its premise is that resource scarcity will force public sector organizations to integrate and coordinate systems development tasks with other agencies in ways that will give rise to networked interorganizational capabilities. Emphasis is placed on the effect that the joint adoption by public organizations of advanced information technologies is likely to have on existing approaches to managerial decision making, particularly in the federal bureaucracy. Information models of organization suggest that expanded information processing capacity can correspondingly increase institutional capability and responsiveness, although information technology (IT) also tends to generate increasingly complex internal and external demands on the information management capacities of organizations.[1] Malone, T. W. and Crowston, K. 1994. The Interdisciplinary Study of Co-ordination. ACM Computer Surveys, 26(Spring): 87–119. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar] In interorganizational domains, a history of technical collaboration, along with shared missionx and common interests, conditions the process of adoption of information systems. A case study of a partnership between the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service in an effort at the joint development of a major computer information system will indicate the need for new approaches to the management and evaluation of coordinated IT projects capable of sustaining organizational innovation. One important issue is the relationship between the cultures and practices of emergent team-led management and established centrally directive management.

An assessment of the BLM Automated Land and Mineral Records System (ALMRS) indicates that, as adversity and uncertainty increase, institutional capacity and efficacy may also increase proportionally, and resource constraint might actually prompt the development of new organizational capabilities. For this somewhat paradoxical outcome to obtain, however, public agencies must address information demands flexibly, adaptively, and cooperatively, modifying their management systems in complementary ways. They can, for instance, tackle the high costs of information system deployment by sharing expertise through interorganizational networks of user-experts. However, information systems innovation requires the corresponding development of organizational and managerial capabilities. A movement toward decentralization and teamwork may be expected to require new, integrative, forms of information systems management, and political management skills need to be brought into play to stave off external threats long enough for these changes to occur. Absent these enabling conditions, fledgling or even established team approaches to information systems development may be in jeopardy.     

‘THE GREAT DOCK AND DOLE SWINDLE’: ACCOUNTING FOR THE COSTS AND BENEFITS OF PORT TRANSPORT DEREGULATION AND THE DOCK LABOUR COMPENSATION SCHEME*

Deregulation of the port transport industry was predicted to bring much needed jobs and investment to Britain's ailing dockland areas, lower prices for port users and consumers, and improved international competitiveness. These benefits were anticipated to far exceed any attendant costs. But the benefits have failed to materialize, largely because the government failed to appreciate the non-competitive structure of the industry or the effects of the National Dock Labour Scheme on the economic performance of the ports, while the costs were substantially underestimated. Consequently, the costs of deregulation have exceeded the benefits. As in the past, current industrial policy has been dictated by the apparent‘labour problems’of the docks, but the new system of deregulation, founded on the mass redundancy of exregistered dockers and a re-assertion of managerial prerogative, has exacerbated rather than resolved the underlying structural weaknesses of the industry. In particular, deregulation has ushered in a new era of casual employment on the docks. Unless, or until, public policy addresses these problems the costs of deregulation will continue to accumulate.     

EXECUTIVE EDUCATION FOR STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT: A SURVEY

ABSTRACT

Executive education is a growth industry in the United States. Executive education programs and, more particularly, the variety of teaching techniques they use, promise to be key issues in the field of public administration in as much as they may be precursors of techniques and technology that will be used in more traditional teaching venues. This study reports the results of a survey of executive education programs conducted in 1998 under the auspices of the South Carolina Executive Institute. The survey covered four areas – curriculum, participants, faculty, and program administration. We conclude that the immediate future of executive education likely will be marked by a continuing emphasis on customization, experimental learning, and rigorous evaluation of the results. Two areas in which there are likely to be more significant departures from existing practices in public sector executive education are program alliances and the use of new communications and information technology.     

HOW POLITICIANS AND BUREAUCRATS NETWORK: A COMPARISON ACROSS GOVERNMENTS

Effective public administration relies on the passage of information through interpersonal communication networks. While we have a vast research literature concerning formal structures and roles in organizations, including public agencies and government institutions, we know far less about the flow of information through semiformal, voluntary interactions. In this paper we use a large survey to explore the networking patterns of politicians and bureaucrats and to compare these with the more formal structural attributes of hierarchy and functional specialization. Social network analysis and standard quantitative measures are used to examine which actors are most central in advice and strategic information networks and how this varies across governments. The results suggest that the communication networks of politicians and bureaucrats differ substantially, with politicians being surprisingly peripheral in their patterns of interaction. Differences across governments are also observed with some municipalities being markedly more hierarchical, cross‐organizational, and externally focused in their networking behaviour.     

PERFORMANCE, EVALUATION AND THE NHS: A CASE STUDY IN CONCEPTUAL PERPLEXITY AND ORGANIZATIONAL COMPLEXITY

This paper adopts a comparative perspective towards the analysis of performance evaluation in the National Health Service. The NHS, it is argued, is best seen as an organization which is not unique but which ranks high on a number of dimensions: uncertainty about the relationship between inputs and outputs; heterogeneity of activities and aims; the ambiguity of the available information. These factors help to explain why performance evaluation in the NHS is both conceptually and organizationally problematic, and fragmented and professionalized in practice. By looking at the same factors in other organizations, it may be possible to start constructing a framework for examining the problems of performance evaluation in different settings.     

MEASURING NEED IN THE NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE RESOURCE ALLOCATION FORMULA: STANDARDIZED MORTALITY RATIOS OR SOCIAL DEPRIVATION?

All methods of dividing public expenditure between competing claims become contentious, particularly when they rely on social indicators of need. The Resource Allocation Working Party (RAW) formula devised in 1976 for distributing National Health Service financial resources fairly between different parts of England relies on the size, age/sex structure and mortality rates (in the form of standardized mortality ratios – SMRS) of populations as combined surrogates for their need for health care. This paper aims to demonstrate three things: first, that RAW'S approach in selecting SMRS was sure-footed; second, that no better proxy of health care need which could be used in RAW has been produced since RAW; and third, that the continuing criticism of SMRS has been sustained by political pressures within the NHS. The result has been the application of ever more indirect and complex surrogates for'need in the resource allocation process which are known to be contaminated by the prevailing unequal supply of health service facilities.