Who loves input controls? What happened to “outputs not inputs” in UK Public Financial Management,and why?

Why do frequently criticized input controls survive in the management of public spending while apparently more enlightened output/outcome controls come and go? The question matters, because output/outcome controls are often assumed in public financial management and related literature to lead to superior policy performance as compared with input-focused approaches. We tackle the question by applying qualitative push–pull analysis to compare one key type of input controls (administration cost [AC] controls) with one much-discussed form of output/outcome controls (performance targets linked to spending allocations) in one major country case, the United Kingdom, over two decades. Drawing on documents and in-depth interviews with 120 key political and bureaucratic players, we conclude that bureaucratic inertia at most only partially explains the survival of input AC controls in this case. The push/pull factors associated with the politics of blame and credit made the political players fair-weather output controllers but all-weather input controllers.     

Interlocal Collaboration and Local Fiscal Structure: Do State Incentives Matter?

Interlocal collaboration is considered an important tool for cost-saving. States, therefore, have incentivized interlocal collaboration in different ways. To understand the budgetary consequences of interlocal collaboration and state incentives, we examine counties in Nebraska where the State uses two incentive mechanisms—resource restrictions and additional access to restricted revenues granted to counties with collaboration. This study finds that county expenditures are lower when they spend more through collaboration. While this lower spending is related to lower revenues in counties less constrained by state restrictions, the results for counties more constrained are unclear. State incentive structures may matter for such variations.     

The 2012 sandy hook elementary school shooting: Connecticut’s department of mental health crisis response

This article reports on the role, activities, and lessons learned of a state mental health authority—the Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services—in responding to the mental health needs of families and community members following the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Following the introduction, we provide a brief case study of Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services’ role in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shooting. This role included use of the Incident Command System (ICS) to deploy a standing statewide network of clinicians who provided direct care for surviving children and school personnel, victims’ family members, and others, and coordination of its mental health response with the activities of other state, private, and individual players. We then discuss key themes and lessons learned and offer recommendations to mental health authorities for planning and implementing their own responses to possible like incidents in the future.     

Practical developments in law science and policy: efforts to protect the traditional group knowledge and practices of the Shuar, an indigenous people of the Ecuadorian Amazon

The purpose of this article is to broadly outline a problem in the context of relatively recent activity in the Amazon Basin. My colleagues and I found the Policy Sciences framework to be a useful blueprint for comprehensive issue analysis. The five intellectual tasks of the policy-oriented approach to solving problems helped us to clarify the apparent goals of the primary actors involved; identify certain trends associated with the problem, including estimations of their magnitude and implications; understand several conditioning factors which could impact (or have already had an impact on) the achievement of the goals identified; recognize several projections anticipated from a normative standpoint in light of the trends examined; and make some observations, including possible strategies and their alternatives, which might enable the Shuar to maximize benefits and minimize costs.     

Complex Organizations Still Complex

ABSTRACT

Resources are generally considered important for the practice of management. Potential resources, however, have to be put into use in order to fulfill their potential. In this paper, we use ethnographic research on the city budgeting cycle in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to explore the process of putting potential resources into use to energize desired frameworks as part of the practice of inclusive management.