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Discussion of ‘governance’ has become commonplace in health and social care in recent years, and ‘good governance’ seems to be seen in some quarters as offering potential answers to some of the complex challenges facing public services. Drawing on evidence from both the private and public sectors on governance, this short paper explores three key interrelated questions: What do we mean by governance (and how does it differ from management)? What is the evidence on governance? What can good governance do? It concludes with some reflections on the key messages for governance in health and social care. In so doing, it draws on material from the Integrated Care Network paper on governance and partnerships written by two of the authors (ICN, 2004) and an ESRC‐funded study of these issues by another (Skelcher & Mathur, 2004).

The political background in the United Kingdom leading to the development of performance indicators for public libraries is discussed. Corporate planning and value for money models are examined. A survey is reported of Scottish public library authorities and their use of performance indicators in relation to planning, budgeting and evaluation, and the development of public library objectives in Scotland is outlined. The major problems in applying performance measures to public libraries are considered.

The purpose of this paper is to make an empirical-based conceptualization of the contemporary domestic state-owned enterprises (SOEs) as domestic institutional market actors (IMAs) in the marketization of public service delivery.

The paper is based on a qualitative comparative case study of the SOEs in passenger rail in Denmark and Sweden from 1990 to 2015.

The paper shows how marketization results in a layered institutional set-up of public service delivery based on both competition and monopoly where the SOE becomes what we call an IMA bridging sectorial challenges. In Sweden, this role has a new public governance form as the monopoly over time is fully dismantled. In Denmark, over time marketization is put on hold due to problems with the SOE as a market actor, but the SOE is nevertheless safeguarded in a new Weberian model as a sector coordinator.

The paper contributes to the recent literature on SOEs and marketization with an original and novel conceptualization of contemporary SOEs in public governance.

The purpose of this paper is to provide, at a particularly significant point in its short history, an overview of a unique system of performance management to which all principal local authorities in England have been subject for the past three years.

Comprehensive performance assessment (CPA) is the controversial centrepiece of a system of performance measurement and improvement management that has involved the external classification of each individual local authority as Excellent, Good, Fair, Weak or Poor. It is a system that, as comparative data on the scale of local government demonstrate, could only be attempted in the UK. The article is written as a non‐technical and evaluative narrative of the introduction, early operation and impact of this system, concluding with the changes in methodology introduced to counter the phenomenon of too many of the nation's local authorities becoming officially too good for the existing measurement framework.

Key points that the article brings out concern the exceptional circumstances of UK local government that make such a performance management system even contemplatable, the improvement and recovery part of the regime, and the inherent implications of a system geared to providing regular statistical evidence of continuous performance improvement.

The originality lies in the CPA system itself, aspects of which at least will be of interest both to specialists in performance measurement and management and to those with an interest in decentralized government and intergovernmental relations.

Posits that collaboration in the UK is either recommended as good practice or enshrined within legislation as a necessity. Chronicles that there has been a sustained growth in the number of formal and informal collaborative relationships between state agencies and market, voluntary and community sectors, as well as within and between state agencies themselves. Uses illustrative case study materials drawn from the authors’ research and consultancy experiences, particularly in the areas of inner city community based mental health, urban regeneration, policing, and child and adolescent mental health. Concludes that research has extensively been drawn on to illustrate the dilemmas that regularly arise when attempting to implement this policy objective.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and analyse the power dynamics and vested interest groups that shape the lack of evidence discourse, which is critical of the way evidence is produced within and for the sport for development (SFD) field. This examination recognises that an understanding of the dominant neoliberal context within which SFD is located is critical.

Using a Foucauldian conceptual framework, power, knowledge and discourse relating to political actors in SFD – funders, policy makers, academics and sport development practitioners (SDPs) – are assessed. This paper addresses two key questions: How is the lack of evidence discourse constructed, and what is its impact? And whose interests are served in the interpretation, generation and reporting of evidence?

This paper concludes that although in a Foucauldian sense power surrounding evidence is everywhere, the neo liberal context, which situates SFD, favours the privileging of evidence discourses associated with and derived from funding organisations, political and academic interest groups to the detriment of evidence discourses associated with SDPs. Clearly then there is a major tension concerning knowledge transfer, power and process, and the way that evidence can be used to inform practice.

The paper attempts to highlight the power dynamics influencing the way evidence is produced within SFD and that much is needed to move the field forward in a more united approach for what counts as evidence for all political actors.

This paper investigates how outcomes-based performance management (PM) regimes operate in the partnerships known as social impact bonds (SIBs), which bring together partners from the public, private and third sectors. The findings are analysed in the light of the different cultural world views of the partners.

Published evaluations of 25 UK SIBs were analysed by a qualitative multiple case study approach. This study of secondary sources permitted the analysis of a wide range of SIB partnerships from near contemporary accounts.

Outcomes frameworks led to rigorous PM regimes that brought the cultural differences between partners into focus. While partnerships benefitted from the variety of viewpoints and expertise, the differences in outlook simultaneously led to strains and tensions. In order to mitigate such tensions, some stakeholders conformed to the outlooks of others.

The need to achieve a predefined set of payable outcomes embeds a “linear” view of intervention and effect on the SIB partners and a performance regime in which some partners dominate. In designing accountability systems for partnerships such as SIBs, commissioners should consider how the performance regime will affect the interests of all stakeholders.

This study adds to the cultural theory literature which has rarely considered three-way partnerships embodying hierarchical, individualist and egalitarian world views and how performance regimes operate in such partnerships. Three-way partnerships are thought to be rare and short-lived, but this empirical study shows that they can be successful albeit over a predefined lifespan.

This paper aims to present insights on the governance of sustainability transitions in higher education in Africa. The authors interrogate the research literatures on the governance of socio-technical transitions in water, electricity, transport and waste management, and identify barriers and enabling factors that enhance transformative practices in universities.

The analytical framework proposed in this paper combines the elements of governance network theory (GNT) and transition topology. The framework of this study is grounded in an actor-centric approach using GNT to understand networks conducive to sustainability transitions. Events and governance networks were mapped on a transition topology to visualise organisational and institutional changes over time. The study engaged students, management, academic and administrative staff in building a community of practice towards sustainability. This research is based on qualitative content analysis grounded in interview data, focus group discussions, workshops, webinars and secondary data analysis.

The findings show that the university has consolidated a sustainability vision and targets, but several factors prevent the community from achieving these targets, including hierarchical decision-making processes, a multitude of disjointed committees and fragmentation in the campus community.

This research adds to an emerging body of literature in the field of sustainability in higher education with two contributions. Firstly, the study presents a novel perspective(s) on the governance of sustainability transitions by combining the literatures on governance and sustainability transitions using a new methodological approach of transition topology to show organisational and institutional changes. Secondly, the study presents new empirical evidence for improving the governance of sustainability transitions in a diverse and highly unequal African university community in the process of (de)colonisation of knowledge and governance.

Given the emphasis in today's environment on customer focus, stakeholders’ interests, public‐sector organisational performance and other methods of assessment are employed to address issues in the new public management and prevailing managerialism in measurement of public‐sector organisations around the world. Therefore, many public‐sector organisations have been encouraged to implement benchmarking as one way of satisfying the government's requirement that public organisations provide best‐value services. In order to achieve best‐value services in public‐sector organisations, benchmarking is considered to be a vital management tool and benchmarking has been used widely in private‐sector organisations. This paper focuses on providing a critical view of benchmarking to provide best‐value services to taxpayers and local businesses. The paper emphasises that, in order for benchmarking to be successful in public‐sector organisations, it is important to have a full commitment to continuous improvement, an ability to learn from others, and a commitment to implement improvement.