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This article reflects on the leadership and management of public services, at a time of political and professional appraisal and the appointment of a new prime minister in the UK…
Abstract
This article reflects on the leadership and management of public services, at a time of political and professional appraisal and the appointment of a new prime minister in the UK. It argues that this is a moment of opportunity for leaders of public services and professions, and that they should now impose themselves more firmly on the debate.
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David Faulkner, Ysanne M. Carlisle and Howard P. Viney
To report findings from an updated survey of environmental policy and practice among UK organizations. To draw conclusions about the relationship between environmental concerns…
Abstract
Purpose
To report findings from an updated survey of environmental policy and practice among UK organizations. To draw conclusions about the relationship between environmental concerns and organizational strategy making.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper reports findings from a 1999 survey of 911 UK organizations, updated by interviews conducted with participant organizations in 2004. The paper represents an extension of a ten‐year longitudinal study of environmental policy and practice in UK organizations.
Findings
The gap between policy formulation and implementation in the environmental area has continued to narrow, but environmental concerns appear not to have moved towards the centre of the strategy making process in many firms. Organizations are still primarily influenced by short‐term rather than long‐term imperatives, and although recognition of opportunity offered by the environment is increasing, organizations are still liable to adopt a reactive position, increasingly so as the size of the organization decreases.
Research limitations/implications
It offers a contribution to the debate over the ongoing relationship between organizational strategy and environmental factors as a determinant of organizational strategy. It locates the debate in the wider discussion of determinants of organizational strategy.
Practical implications
It highlights the complex decision‐making processes facing managers in satisfying a variety of stakeholders who may be making competing demands of their organization.
Originality/value
The paper offers a longitudinal review of changes to environmental policy and practice among UK organizations, providing an opportunity to explore the nature of change over a ten‐year period.
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Peter Lawrence and Rehan ul‐Haq
The notion of bounded rationality is used to consider strategic alliances with a view of providing an insight into the presumptive reasons for action in choosing strategic…
Abstract
The notion of bounded rationality is used to consider strategic alliances with a view of providing an insight into the presumptive reasons for action in choosing strategic alliance partners. The research methodology used is one of a realist approach (after Stiles, 1995) and a discerning of patterns (after Tesch, 1990) in thematic interviews. The discussion examines the issue and concludes that bankers, when entering into strategic alliances, do not consider every option. That is they use filters to reduce the potential choice; thus the range of possible alliance partners is restricted in many ways, some of these being unconsciously employed. Furthermore, it is clear that, while bankers consider margins, ratios and percentages, relationships have a pre‐eminent place in strategic alliances and that relationships are poised between ends and means to ends.
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Felicitous writing is enormously important. However, the art of writing well is rarely addressed by marketing scholars. This paper seeks to argue that the marketing academy has…
Abstract
Purpose
Felicitous writing is enormously important. However, the art of writing well is rarely addressed by marketing scholars. This paper seeks to argue that the marketing academy has much to learn from historiography, a sub‐discipline devoted to the explication of historical writing.
Design/methodology/approach
Although it is primarily predicated on published works, this paper is not a conventional literature review. It relies, rather, on the classic historical method of “compare and contrast”. It considers parallels between the paired disciplines yet notes where marketing and history diverge in relation to literary styles and scientific aspirations.
Findings
It is concluded that marketing writing could benefit from greater emphasis on “character” and “storytelling”. These might help humanise a mode of academic communication that is becoming increasingly abstruse and ever‐more unappealing to its readership.
Research implications
If its argument is accepted by the academic community – and, more importantly, acted upon – this paper should transform the writing of marketing. Although the academic reward systems and power structures of marketing make revolutionary change unlikely, a “scholarly spring” is not inconceivable.
Originality/value
The paper's originality rests in the observation that originality is unnecessary. All of the literary‐cum‐stylistic issues raised in this paper have already been tackled by professional historians. Whether marketers are willing to learn from their historical brethren remains to be seen.
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Thomas Ahrens, Laurence Ferry and Rihab Khalifa
This paper seeks to contribute to the debate on the usefulness of institutional theory to critical studies. It pursues this topic by exploring some of the possibilities for…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper seeks to contribute to the debate on the usefulness of institutional theory to critical studies. It pursues this topic by exploring some of the possibilities for allocating local authority funds more fairly for poor residents. This paper aims to shed light on the institution of budgeting in a democratically elected local government under austerity.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper uses world culture theory, the study of the devolution of cultural authority to individuals and organisations through which they turn into agentic actors. Based on a field study of Newcastle City Council’s (NCC’s) budget-related practices, the paper uses the notion of actorhood to explore the use of fairness in austerity budgets.
Findings
This paper documents how new concerns with fairness gave rise to new local authority practices and gave NCC characteristics of actorhood. This paper also shows why it might make sense for a local authority that is managing austerity budget cuts and cutting back on services to make more detailed performance information public, rather than attempting to hide service deterioration, as some prior literature suggests. This paper delineates the limits to actorhood, in this study’s case, principally the inability to overcome structural constraints of legal state power.
Practical implications
The paper is suggestive of ways in which local government can fight inequality in opposition to central government austerity.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first qualitative accounting study of actorhood. It coins the phrase fairness assemblage to denote a combination of various accounting technologies, organisational elements and local government practices.
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Laurence Ferry and Thomas Ahrens
Within the context of recent post-localism developments in the English local government, this paper aims to show, first, how management controls have become more enabling in…
Abstract
Purpose
Within the context of recent post-localism developments in the English local government, this paper aims to show, first, how management controls have become more enabling in response to changes in rules of public sector corporate governance and, secondly, how changes in management control systems gave rise to new corporate governance practices.
Design/methodology/approach
Theoretically, the paper mobilises the concept of enabling control to reflect on contemporary changes in public sector corporate governance. It draws on the International Federation of Accountants’ (IFAC) and Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy’s (CIPFA) new public sector governance and management control system model and data gathered from a longitudinal qualitative field study of a local authority in North East England. The field study used interviews, observation and documentation review.
Findings
This paper suggests specific ways in which the decentralisation of policymaking and performance measurement in a local authority (present case) gave rise to enabling corporate governance and how corporate governance and management control practices went some way to aid in the pursuit of the public interest. In particular, it shows that the management control system can be designed at the operational level to be enabling. The significance of global transparency for supporting corporate governance practices around public interest is observed. This paper reaffirms that accountability is but one element of public sector corporate governance. Rather, public sector corporate governance also pursues integrity, openness, defining outcomes, determining interventions, leadership and capacity and risk and performance management.
Practical implications
Insights into uses of such enabling practices in public sector corporate governance are relevant for many countries in which public sector funding has been cut, especially since the 2007/2008 global financial crisis.
Originality/value
This paper introduces the concept of enabling control into the public sector corporate governance and control debate by fleshing out the categories of public sector corporate governance and management control suggested recently by IFAC and CIPFA drawing on observed practices of a local government entity.
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