Search results

1 – 10 of 870
Article
Publication date: 9 April 2018

Md Morshed Alom

The purpose of this paper is to provide a model that demonstrates how some organizational factors are linked to the proactive transparency behavior and outward accountability…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to provide a model that demonstrates how some organizational factors are linked to the proactive transparency behavior and outward accountability orientation of frontline public bureaucracies.

Design/methodology/approach

The model is developed on the basis of literature review.

Findings

It is shown in the model that some dimensions of organizational culture are linked to the “value for proactive transparency,” which, in turn, is linked to the “proactive transparency behavior” of frontline public bureaucracies. The proactive transparency behavior is also influenced by organizational structure and organizational endowment. Finally, the proactive transparency behavior determines “outward accountability” orientation.

Originality/value

This paper contributes to the understanding of the frontline public bureaucracy’s transparency behavior and outward accountability orientation from the perspective of organizational factors such as culture, structure, and endowment.

Details

International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, vol. 67 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1741-0401

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 19 October 2023

Daniel Simonet

Often linked to the New Public Management (NPM) doctrines, agencification has been on the priority list of policy makers for over two decades. This article proposes an analysis of…

Abstract

Purpose

Often linked to the New Public Management (NPM) doctrines, agencification has been on the priority list of policy makers for over two decades. This article proposes an analysis of the role of agencies in the French health system and the impact of government agency reform on physicians and the public.

Design/methodology/approach

The research analyzes the perceived implementation of a re-concentration of decision-making powers within public agencies as the declared goal of agencification at the French health care system, specifically primary care providers and hospitals. The assessment relies on secondary sources from ministerial bodies such as the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs, the Ministry of Labor, the Social Security and the General Accounting Office, and specialized French technical agencies.

Findings

Decentralization in France and the subsequent rise of public health care agencies had outcomes below expectations. Hence, a re-concentration of decision-making powers within the larger Regional Health Agencies; a streamlining of the public administration; and a re-appropriation of decision-making powers by the Ministry of Health are needed. The monitoring of health providers allows central health authorities to govern at a distance.

Originality/value

The analysis of health care agencies in France and of their use of efficiency-enhancing techniques may trigger a change of values within the medical profession.

Details

Public Administration and Policy, vol. 26 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1727-2645

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 19 March 2020

Bastian Jørgensen and Jannick Schou

This paper examines how digital reforms affect the relationship between frontline workers and citizens in Danish public sector institutions. Using ethnographic research in two…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper examines how digital reforms affect the relationship between frontline workers and citizens in Danish public sector institutions. Using ethnographic research in two branches of public administration, the study highlights how frontline workers act in accordance with seemingly contradictory modes of ordering. Their acts problematize linear conceptualizations of change that often prevail in digital reforms.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper is based on a comparative ethnographic study of frontline workers in the Danish tax and customs administration and municipal citizen service centers. The concept of modes of ordering is used to highlight new tensions that arise as frontline workers adapt to make digital reforms work.

Findings

Frontline workers act according to two different modes of ordering based on the separation between helping citizens help themselves and helping citizens directly. National policies and strategies promote the underlying rationale of the first mode but, as this paper shows, this mode is sustained by a second mode, which involves the intervention of professionals when citizens cannot be helped to help themselves.

Originality/value

The paper, which contributes to our understanding of how digitalization is changing public administrations and the relationship between frontline workers and citizens, challenges applying a linear, technocratic focus in discourses on public sector digitalization and highlights the contradictory practices of frontline work. It demonstrates the necessity of going beyond policy narratives and calls for increased attention to how frontline workers adapt to make reforms work.

Details

Journal of Organizational Ethnography, vol. 9 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2046-6749

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 13 July 2015

Anja Svejgaard Pors

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of e-government reforms on street-level bureaucrats’ professionalism and relation to citizens, thus demonstrating how the…

1953

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of e-government reforms on street-level bureaucrats’ professionalism and relation to citizens, thus demonstrating how the bureaucratic encounter unfolds in the digital era.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper is based on an ethnographic study of frontline work at a citizen service centre in a Danish municipality, and draws on empirical material generated through observations, field notes, interviews and policy documents.

Findings

The paper shows that e-government changes the mode of professionalism in citizen service from service to support. An ethnographic account of how digital reforms are implemented in practice shows how street-level bureaucrat’s classic tasks such as specialized casework are being reconfigured into educational tasks that promote the idea of “becoming digital”. In the paper, the author argues that the work of “becoming digital” in client processing entails two interconnected changes in frontline agents’ practice: de-specialization of the task and intensified informality in relation to citizens. As a result, the frontline agent works as an explorative generalist whose professional skills and personal competencies are blurred.

Originality/value

The study contributes to ethnographic research in public administration by combining two separate subfields, e-government and street-level bureaucracy, to discern recent transformations in public service delivery. In the digital era, tasks, control and equality are distributed in ways that call for symmetrical and relational approaches to studying street-level bureaucracy. The argument goes beyond technological or social determinism to find a fruitful intermediary position pointing at technological change as having both constraining and enabling effects.

Details

Journal of Organizational Ethnography, vol. 4 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2046-6749

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 7 April 2020

Harish P. Jagannath

To examine the implementation processes and outcomes of collaborative governance initiatives through the lens of bureaucratic politics.

Abstract

Purpose

To examine the implementation processes and outcomes of collaborative governance initiatives through the lens of bureaucratic politics.

Design/methodology/approach

An in-depth single case study research design with 28 embedded cases to study the implementation of a collaborative governance initiative. This paper uses the analytical technique of process tracing to explicate necessary and sufficient conditions to uncover causal mechanisms and confirm descriptive and causal inferences.

Findings

This study finds that when street-level bureaucrats perceived the collaborative initiative as a health intervention (and not as a collaborative initiative), it resulted in low levels of stakeholder participation and made the collaborative initiative unsuccessful. This paper finds that bureaucratic politics is the causal mechanism that further legitimized this perception resulting in each stakeholder group avoiding participation and sticking to their departmental siloes.

Research limitations/implications

This is a single case study about a revelatory case of collaborative governance implementation in India, and findings are analytically generalizable to similar administrative contexts. Further research is needed through a multiple case study design in a comparative context to examine bureaucratic politics in implementing collaborative initiatives.

Practical implications

Policymakers and managers need to carefully consider the implications of engaging organizations with competing institutional histories when formulating and implementing collaborative governance initiatives.

Originality/value

This study's uniqueness is that it examines implementation of collaborative governance through a bureaucratic politics lens. Specifically, the study applies Western-centric scholarship on collaborative governance and street-level bureaucracy to a non-Western developing country context to push the theoretical and empirical boundaries of key concepts in public administration.

Details

International Journal of Public Sector Management, vol. 33 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3558

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 December 2021

Ditte Thøgersen

For decades, there has been a call for the public sector to be more innovative, and there is widespread agreement that managers play a crucial role in meeting this goal. Most…

Abstract

Purpose

For decades, there has been a call for the public sector to be more innovative, and there is widespread agreement that managers play a crucial role in meeting this goal. Most studies of innovation management focus on top-level managers, despite the fact that most innovation activities take place on the frontlines, deeply embedded in professional practice. Meanwhile, micro-level studies of innovation tend to focus on the agency of employees, which leaves a knowledge gap regarding the mobilizing role of frontline managers. This is unfortunate because frontline managers are in a unique position to advance the state of the art of their professions, in scaling public innovation and in implementing public reform.

Design/methodology/approach

To explore how frontline managers approach innovation, a case study has been constructed based on in-depth interviews with 20 purposely selected frontline managers, all working within the Danish public childcare sector.

Findings

The article explores how frontline managers perceive their role in public innovation and finds three distinct approaches to innovation leadership: a responsive, a strategic and a facilitating approach.

Originality/value

This paper contributes to the research on public management by applying existing research on leadership styles in order to discuss the implications of how frontline managers perceive their role in relation to public innovation.

Details

International Journal of Public Sector Management, vol. 35 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3558

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 18 October 2021

Daniela Leonardi, Rebecca Paraciani and Dario Raspanti

This study aims to investigate the role of relational asymmetries in influencing the coping strategies adopted by frontline workers to deal with the policy–client role conflict.

1251

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to investigate the role of relational asymmetries in influencing the coping strategies adopted by frontline workers to deal with the policy–client role conflict.

Design/methodology/approach

A comparative analysis of three different services highlights the role of the service relationships characteristics in explaining similarities and differences in the strategies adopted by street-level bureaucrats (SLBs). The research is based on the secondary analysis of three case studies conducted in Italy: the reception system for homeless people, the job brokerage service in the public employment service and the dispute settlement procedure in the labour inspectorate.

Findings

The results underline the interaction between the characteristics of the service relationship and the different coping strategies adopted to deal with the policy–client conflict.

Originality/value

The contribution of this study is threefold. Firstly, the authors focus on the influence of the characteristics of the service relationship in terms of agency resources over SLBs’ strategies to face with users’ expectations. Secondly, the authors intend to discuss these issues analysing SLBs not only as agents with individual preferences. Thirdly, the research design allows the authors to return to the street-level bureaucracy theory its comparative essence, proposing a comparative strategy with an explorative intent.

Details

International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, vol. 41 no. 13/14
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0144-333X

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 18 November 2022

Rory Shand, Steven Parker and Catherine Elliott

Public service ethos (PSE) is traditionally associated with public administration, bureaucracy and frontline response. Thinkers such as Aristotle and Weber embedded ideas of public

Abstract

Public service ethos (PSE) is traditionally associated with public administration, bureaucracy and frontline response. Thinkers such as Aristotle and Weber embedded ideas of public virtue and vocation, yet new managerialism, as well as changes to public services management challenge traditional notions of PSE. Recent events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, counter terrorism and government austerity agendas have put PSE back into the public eye. In this chapter we examine the context for a renewed PSE as a crucial aspect of resilience for workers in public services and public management. We focus on three areas that we feel are important for PSE: policy, purpose and pedagogy, and how a renewed PSE can inform pedagogy in the discipline, renewing ideas of vocation in public administration training.

Details

Reimagining Public Sector Management
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80262-022-1

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 4 December 2023

Susanna Pagiotti

The study compares the social services functioning in two local contexts, one urban and one rural, in the same Italian region, to understand how contextual features affect…

Abstract

Purpose

The study compares the social services functioning in two local contexts, one urban and one rural, in the same Italian region, to understand how contextual features affect frontline workers' work.

Design/methodology/approach

By applying the framework of the street-level bureaucracy theory (SLB) and proposing a framing of the spatial contexts under analysis, the present study adopts a qualitative approach. In particular, semi-structured interviews were conducted among street-level workers, decision-makers and privileged witnesses.

Findings

The study shows how the typical features of the rural and urban Italian contexts analyzed impact differently on the working conditions of frontline workers, leading to substantive differences in the possibility of exercise their role at the street-level.

Originality/value

The article contributes to a wider understanding of social services provision in a highly fragmented system like the Italian one by taking into consideration contexts that are usually little investigated in SLB and welfare studies in the Mediterranean Europe area: those rural and, in particular, those belonging to the so-called “inner areas”.

Details

International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0144-333X

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 23 May 2016

Rory Shand and Mark Hyde

Is public entrepreneurship an oxymoron? Why and how is enterprise/entrepreneurship important for public service delivery? The growing role of enterprise within the public sector…

Abstract

Purpose

Is public entrepreneurship an oxymoron? Why and how is enterprise/entrepreneurship important for public service delivery? The growing role of enterprise within the public sector has been the subject of much recent debate and policy focus, surrounding issues such as public value, meeting targets, and the need for innovation across public services by policy makers and managers given rapid reduction of budgets in this sector. This chapter reflects on these developments and examines the effects that an enterprise focus in the public services has in terms of vocation. Drawing on the Weberian notion of vocation (1941) in politics and the sciences, what does enterprise mean for the notion of public service? Certainly, historically the public services have enjoyed a strong vocational drive from its workforce, resulting in employee loyalty, and links with communities as well as higher levels of public trust than politicians or bankers, for example. The chapter draws on examples from education, public services and localism, all of which have seen to some degree the parachuting of managers in from the private sector or the aping of these behaviours and cultures in search of more entrepreneurial delivery. Drawing on the Weberian framework of bureaucracy and vocation, the chapter examines the changing role of public service and notions of community and duty, arguably damaged by failures of the Big Society agenda (Shand & Higman, 2014; Smith, 2010) and examines if and how enterprise can maintain the ethos of public service and vocational areas of the public sector in the enduring and pressurised new public management environment of meeting targets and value metrics.

Methodology/approach

The chapter adopts a Weberian approach in terms of vocation, and applies this concept to the notion of enterprise across the public services. The vocation approach in the public services, drawing upon Weber’s discussion of politics and science, underpins our discussion in this chapter as we argue that the role of innovation needs to be more widely applied and appreciated in the public services.

Findings

The chapter finds that examples of innovative behaviour and delivery are evident across the public services, but these need to be understood within the context of culture, values and ethos. These underpinning goals, across several frontline and first respondent public services particularly, are driven by dedication to duty and having to respond to rapid changes in targets, ‘customer’ service, and most recently, austerity. These responses need to be seen as innovative traits, linked to leadership and the Weberian notion of vocation.

Practical implications

The chapter raises several issues driven by failures or mistrust in the practical delivery and underpinning ethos of the public services. The focus on ethos has direct implications for both leadership within the public services and how these leaders’ roles and actions are interpreted by sections of wider society such as the media or the public. Notions of public trust are touched upon in the chapter, which highlight the role of key public services as different from the activities of politicians and bankers, areas which have become central to growing attitudes of mistrust among the public. The notion of vocation in the chapter is applicable to the practical arena as the role of innovation in public service needs to be reconsidered. The chapter suggests that, to date, the idea of innovation in public services has been driven by private sector innovation, and this has led to far too narrow an appreciation of what we term innovation within and across the public services.

Originality/value

This chapter unites debates around trust and innovation in the public and private sectors with the Weberian ideal of vocation, drawing upon key public services and their leadership and delivery to argue that we need to understand the drivers and motivating ethos behind the public services when we consider the role of innovation and indeed how we understand and apply this term within public service delivery.

Details

New Perspectives on Research, Policy & Practice in Public Entrepreneurship
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78560-821-6

Keywords

1 – 10 of 870