公共行政人员行为选择的伦理困境及其化解

实现负责任行政行为的关键在于制度伦理建设、公共精神的彰显以及行政人格的塑造。通过外在约束和自我规制,从而构建以公共利益为导向的行政行为具有重要意义。     

服务型乡镇政府的职能定位及构建

服务型乡镇政府是以公共利益为目标,以服务为行政理念,以法治为准则,以承担乡村公共责任为己任的新型政府。其职能可概括为提供公共产品,管理公共事务;培育农村市场,引导农民发展生产;完善社会管理,维护乡村社会稳定等三个方面。实现乡镇政府的职能转型需要从改革政府管理体制、创新政府管理方式、提高公务员素质等方面入手。     

关于"服务型工会"的实践和探索

经济多元化的发展使劳动关系和职工队伍日益复杂化,而当前经济危机的发展也凸显了创建服务型工会的迫切性,建设服务型工会,不仅是中央的指示,也是来自实践的需求,服务是比维护更为宽泛的概念,服务型工会更好地处理了服务大局、服务企业和服务职工三者之间的关系。创建服务型工会必须从改革工会自身入手,实现工会的全方位转型。     

医改的抉择:政府主导还是市场化——基于医疗卫生服务及其市场特殊性的分析

医疗卫生改革理应寻求解决民众的"看病难"、"看病贵"问题.医疗卫生服务及其市场是医改中所有问题的归结点.在对医疗卫生服务与其市场的特殊性进行分析中,表明医疗服务市场不同于一般的商品市场与服务市场,在政府与市场的分工上针对其特点进行合理界定,既否决单纯的市场主导,也否决一味的市场化,而是二者的理性结合.     

论高校图书馆信息资源布局和信息资源服务

高校图书馆利用先进的科学技术,应充分发挥信息资源库的作用和价值。提供优质高效的信息资源服务有赖于图书馆信息资源的合理布局。图书馆信息资源布局实行开架制三线典藏较为合理。信息资源服务的方法主要有用户研究与用户培训、文献借阅服务、参考咨询服务、馆际互借和文献传递等。高校图书馆信息资源建设制度化才能促进图书馆信息资源服务规范化。     

The Investment Approach to Public Service Provision

The investment approach to public service provision is now receiving considerable attention worldwide. By promoting data‐intensive assessments of baseline conditions and how government action can improve on them, the approach holds the potential to transform policy development, service implementation, and program evaluation. Recently, variations on the investment approach have been applied in Australia to explore the effectiveness of specific programs in employment training, criminal justice, and infrastructure development. This article reviews the investment approach, presents a Public Investment Checklist to guide such work, and discusses three examples. It concludes by considering the implications of investment thinking for the work of policy designers and public managers.     

Network structure and collaborative innovation processes—A comparative analysis of two elderly service networks in Shanghai

How does the structure of government‐funded service networks affect the process of service innovation? We have conducted a comparative analysis of the structure and processes of collaborative innovation of 2 government‐funded community‐based elderly service networks in Shanghai. We have found that in consistent with the literature, a network that has a network administrative organization structure is better able to manage the process of service innovation in a way that balances the need to achieve government policy goals on the one hand and the imperative to facilitate bottom‐up citizen participation on the other. Surprisingly, contrary to what prior studies have suggested, we have found that a network in which a lead organization plays a dominant role, despite its more centralized process of service innovation, is often able to deliver a variety of high‐quality and low‐cost services addressing citizens' needs. With the leadership provided by the network lead organization and its close affiliation with the street‐office government, the network has been able to solicit government support. Such a hierarchical yet responsive state‐society relation has emerged as a result of the coalescence of a corporatist state legacy and an increasing pressure for local governments to seek citizens' support in service delivery.     

New directions for public service reform in developing countries

This paper argues that recent developments in practice and theory provide a more promising basis for public service reform in developing countries than we have had since at least the turn of the century. There have been significant instances of large‐scale reform success, such as Nepal's Public Service Commission and Malaysia's delivery unit, Pemandu, and also “pockets of effectiveness” in individual agencies in many countries. They contribute to a more fruitful and diverse repertoire of reform approaches than generally realized. Policymakers can draw on all those instances and types of reform, together with relevant rich country experiences, as they improvise and tailor responses to their always unique reform problems. Proceeding in this way helps reformers to expand the “reform space” available within the political economy. Donors can help reformers if they facilitate reform in the spirit of the Busan Partnership rather than impose their preferred models. In short, the new direction which this paper identifies can be stated as creative problem solving by local actors facilitated by sympathetic donors, building on examples of reform success and drawing on a repertoire of poor and rich country reform approaches.     

Public Services after Austerity: Zombies,Suez or Collaboration?

Public services—in the UK and elsewhere—are under considerable pressure, not just from austerity, but also from a variety of social, demographic and technological changes (in effect ‘austerity plus’). In this context, three broad options are open to policy‐makers: continue with tried‐and‐tested approaches while spending less money, which in the UK means a reliance on ‘New Public Management’ (NPM); withdraw completely from certain public services; or develop new approaches to public administration. We argue that all of these approaches have been attempted in recent years, but it is the final option that is most interesting and potentially the most beneficial. In this article, we examine experiments with these new approaches in responding to ‘austerity plus’. In particular, we examine various attempts at ‘collaboration’ in public services and discuss the risks associated with them. We conclude by setting out the extent to which policy‐makers have moved beyond NPM and suggesting some of the benefits that this could bring.     

Innovation Agents in the Public Sector: Applying Champion and Promotor Theory to Explore Innovation in the Australian Public Service

Innovation is critical to organisational success and is a process steered, and potentially thwarted, by individuals. However, despite the importance of public sector innovation given the complexity of policy issues faced and the sector's specific contextual features, our understanding of innovation processes in government requires expansion. This study, using in‐depth case analyses of three Australian Public Service agencies, focuses on understanding the ‘human component’ of the innovation process by drawing on both innovation champion and promotor theories to explore, through the lens of organisational power, how multiple human agents progress public sector innovations. The results highlight the key, and often tandem, roles of individuals at multiple organisational levels who work to inspire and motivate others to progress an innovation (champions) and those with specific power bases who help overcome organisational barriers to innovation (promotors).