Books in the Routledge Critical Studies in Public Management series

In recent years public management research in a variety of disciplines has paid increasing attention to the role of citizens and the third sector in the provision of public services. Several of these efforts have employed the concept of co-production to better understand and explain this trend. This book aims to go further by systematizing the growing body of academic papers and reports that focus on various aspects of co-production and its potential contribution to new public governance. It has an interdisciplinary focus that makes a unique contribution to the body of knowledge in this field, at the cross-roads of a number of disciplines - including business administration, policy studies, political science, public management, sociology, third sector studies, etc. The unique presentation of them together in this volume both allows for comparing and contrasting these different perspectives and for potential theoretical collaboration and development. More particularly, this volume addresses the following concerns: What is the nature of co-production and what challenges does it face? How can we conceptualize the concept of co-production? How does co-production works in practice? How does co-production unfold in reality? What can be the effects of co-production? And more specific, firstly, how can co-production contribute to service quality and service management in public services, and secondly, what is the input of co-production on growing citizen involvement and development of participative democracy?

With contributions from renowned scholars and practitioners, and using case studies from developed and developing countries from around the world, this research-based edited collection examines the rationales for current roles of the Public Accounts Committees (PAC) and explores the links between PACs and National Audit Offices. This will be int

Through analysing the capacities and considerations of individual governmental actors, this book examines how and why certain public policy decisions are made and will therefore be of great interest to researchers, educators, advanced students and practitioners working in the fields of political science, public management and administration and public policy.

With contributions from renowned scholars and practitioners, and using case studies from developed and developing countries from around the world, this research-based edited collection examines the rationales for current roles of the Public Accounts Committees (PAC) and explores the links between PACs and National Audit Offices. This will be interesting reading for academics, researchers, and advanced students in public management, public accounting and public sector governance. It will also be of interest to researchers working in government.

The book presents the strategic foundations for government's role in fostering, managing and adapting to societal transformation in a volatile world. It shifts the focus of the discipline from overtly retrospective analysis to prospective analysis, including considerations of foresight techniques and instruments.

This book provides a better specification of the institutional and political requirements for sustaining a robust vision of public innovation, through the key dimensions of collaboration, creative problem-solving, and design, via a collection of empirical studies drawn from Europe, the United States of America and the antipodes.

This book deeply explores and integrates existing network theory and related theories from a number of perspectives, levels and jurisdictions to develop a framework to guide network design, governance and management. The book focuses on the important issue of network performance, looking at networks as bounded and consciously arranged; the actors who participate in them design the relationships among a bounded set of individual organizations to purse common objectives. Finally, the chapters tease out the variety of governance modes or regimes that intersect with network governance. This book offers a comprehensive, integrative, interdisciplinary approach that enables specialists, practitioners and administrators across a wide array of interests and fields to formulate and work on problems using a common language, analytical framework and theoretical basis.

The ability to manage government departments and operations has become less important than the ability to navigate the complex world of interconnected policy implementation processes. Public sector reform policies and programmes, as a consequence, are a study in the complexities of the institutional and environmental context in which these reforms are pursued. Building on theory and practice, this book argues that advancing the theoretical frontlines of development management research and practice can benefit from developing models based on innovation, collaboration and governance.

Public Administration Reform examines several commonly-held assumptions about public administration: the public sector is slow and bureaucratic; government employees are frequently disengaged; and government agencies are sometimes wasteful. This book takes a timely look at the heightened need for public administration reform as a result of the economic challenges currently faced by nations across the globe.

Presenting a multi-disciplinary approach to public procurement, this book offers its readers a practical description and analysis of the relevant policies, law and jurisprudence and explores possible future trends in public procurement regulation.

What is trust? Can trust be boosted through regulation? What role does leadership play in rebuilding trust? How does trust and confidence affect public services? The chapters in this collection explore these questions across several countries and different sectors of public service provision: health, education, social services, the police, and the third sector. The contributions offer empirical evidence about how the issues of trust and confidence differ across countries and sectors, and develop ideas about how trust and confidence in government and public services may adjust in the information age.

This book is about rethinking public-private partnerships (PPPs) in the wake of the global financial crisis and aims to give a clearer picture of the kind of conceptual frameworks that researchers might employ to now study PPPs. The crisis took much of the glamour out of PPPs, but theoretical advances have been made by researchers in a number of areas and this book examines selected new research approaches to the study of PPPs.

This book provides an overview of the study of public management from some of the most authoritative experts in this area of study in Europe and the United States, establishing a dialogue between different approaches to this discipline.

Public Management in Times of Austerity seeks to explore the austerity policies adopted by European governments and their consequences to public management. It asks how governments have implemented new rules leading to more stringency in public budgeting and financial management, and how they have cut back public expenditure.

Presents an overview of the scientific study of public management. This book seeks to present the national distinctiveness of the study of public management, in the context of specific state administration. It highlights the underlying differences between Europe and the United States in relation to their political-administrative circumstances.

This book presents, uniquely, a variety of cases from differing national and international contexts that enable a valuable, comparative analysis of policy transferring and learning that is absent from most books currently available. These cases suggest a number of exciting research directions with implications for policy making, transference and implementation in the future.

This volume brings together researchers from a range of disciplines including accounting, political science, management, sociology and policy studies to discuss and develop our knowledge and theory of the nature of `accountability¿ in contemporary global society and the challenges it may pose for public policy and management.

This book brings together public services policy and public services management in a new way, challenging many old ideas in this field and presenting the debate of what 'critical' constitutes when applied to public services policy and management.

Offers readers an understanding of the main objective of public management in complexity - namely complex process system - and a strategy for accepting and dealing with complexity based on the idea of dual thinking and dual action strategies satisfying the desires of controlling processes and the need to adjust to changes simultaneously.

Co-Production and Co-Creation offers a systematic and comprehensive theoretical and empirical examination of the concepts of co-production and co-creation and their application in practice. It shows the latest state of knowledge on the topic and will be of interest both to students at an advanced level, academics and reflective practitioners. It addresses the topics with regard to co-production and co-creation and will be of interest to researchers, academics, policymakers, and students in the fields of business administration, economics, political science, public management, sociology and voluntary sector studies.

This book offers the first wide-ranging survey and assessment of strategic management practices at various levels of government and public service in European countries, bringing together empirical investigations by leading European experts. .

This book offers the first wide-ranging survey and assessment of strategic management practices at various levels of government and public service in European countries, bringing together empirical investigations by leading European experts..

A strong reputation is an asset of importance that no agency can afford to neglect, as it gives power and access to critical resources. However, it must be built, maintained, and protected. This volume critically analyzes the significance of reputation and branding-related activities in the public sector, paying special attention to strategies, with case studies covering countries such as Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Australia, Israel, and the United States.

This volume brings together researchers from a range of disciplines including accounting, political science, management, sociology and policy studies to discuss and develop our knowledge and theory of the nature of 'accountability' in contemporary global society and the challenges it may pose for public policy and management.

By adopting a Complex Adaptive Systems approach to public services, this book shifts the focus from increasing steering techniques to identifying patterns of behaviour of the participants with the objective of increasing policy-makers' understanding of the factors that may enable more effective public service decision-making and provision.