Freedom to do What you are Told: Senior Management Team Autonomy in an NHS Acute Trust

Arguably, the government's aim of using the reward of 'earned autonomy' and Foundation Trust status as an incentive to improve performance in the NHS will only be effective if Trust managers view greater autonomy as both desirable and realistic. This article examines this issue by investigating the extent to which members of an NHS Trust's senior management team perceive themselves as autonomous, the factors most likely to hinder their ability to operate autonomously, and the extent to which managers want greater autonomy. In the event, autonomy was largely restricted by extensive centrally dictated targets. Entrenched professional interests and a lack of managerial skills on the part of clinician managers suggested limitations on the extent to which autonomy can be realistically devolved. Additionally, there was little belief among managers that greater autonomy would enable healthcare services to be delivered more effectively.     

EUROPEANIZATION IN MANAGING EU AFFAIRS: BETWEEN DIVERGENCE AND CONVERGENCE,A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF ESTONIA,HUNGARY AND SLOVENIA

Scholarly research into Estonia, Hungary and Slovenia has shown that the idiosyncrasies of the new EU countries (especially with respect to institutionalizing and centralizing the co‐ordination of core executives in managing EU affairs at home) persist. They are complemented by trends toward convergence (such as growing co‐ordination efforts and a common tendency: that of the prime minister to be the centre of co‐ordination). In this article external Europeanization pressures, national administrative traditions (the legacies of both pre‐communist and communist systems), and the patterns of party competition that cause variations in politico‐administrative relations, are tested as possible explanatory variables of differences seen in the three countries when managing EU affairs. While national administrative traditions play similar roles to those seen in old(er) member states by filtering the EU‘s impacts, the effect of patterns of party competition on politico‐administrative relations when managing EU affairs has been filtered by the accession states’ national priorities of integrating with the EU.     

A Proposal for a New Rule of Adverse Possession

In this paper, I propose a new rule of adverse possession whereby the occupier acquires title if the owner does not raise an objection to the occupation within the legal limitation and at the same time the owner himself has not met the legal standard of monitoring effort. I show that the proposed rule with suitably chosen legal standard of monitoring effort can improve efficiency relative to the current rule of adverse possession.     

Generating Usable Knowledge through an Experimental Approach to Public Administration

This introduction to the symposium on experimental methods in public administration shows how using experimental methods generates not only research that is empirically credible, but also relates to the real world of public administration. The ten articles in the symposium subject classic public administration theories or hypotheses that have been generated in nonexperimental research to rigorous testing using experimental methods. The first group of articles consists of studies with citizens who interact with government. The second group consists of three studies with public officials.