Search results

On-going change in relation to the management of public services has led to the development of many initiatives in the control of day-to-day resources as the New Public Management¹ (Hood, 1991, 1995) continues its reforms. In this context debates about control of capital expenditure have taken a less visible role despite some earlier and influential comment on the area (Perrin, 1978 for example). Perhaps as the flow of ideas for reform in the management of day-to-day activity have waned, recent attention has turned more systematically to the efficient use of capital resources or infrastructure. This has been accompanied by recognition of the poor state of some of the public sector infrastructure. This chapter is concerned with the implications of the changing approaches to the provision of infrastructure is the U.K. National Health Service (NHS). Its particular focus in the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) and the contractual implications this brings into infrastructure development.

Under public sector reforms, HR departments are under increasing pressure to demonstrate how they add value to the organization. This paper seeks to contribute to our knowledge of HR functional roles in public sector organizations by considering how social capital may influence perceived HR department performance. Most prior research on HR functional performance has focused on what HR professionals do, rather than on how they do it, yet such process factors have been shown in the literature on organizational strategy to be crucial determinants of long‐term effectiveness. This paper aims to use the framework of social capital as a means of conceptualizing HR processes, and investigates how these are played out in an exploratory study.

The paper is based on four matched‐pair case studies in public sector organizations in the UK. A total of 77 interviews are conducted.

The research found that there appeared to be a link between HR social capital and perceptions of HR functional performance on the part of both HR staff and line managers.

This is a piece of case study based research in the UK public sector, and therefore the findings may not be generalizable. It would have been preferable to have had some hard metrics for HR department performance, but perceptual data was relied on instead. Further research is therefore recommended.

The implication for HR practitioners is that attention needs to be paid to the structural and relational dimensions of how the HR department operates, as well as to what it does, if it is to be regarded as effective.

This is a piece of original research on a topic that has received almost no prior attention. Previous research on the link between HRM and performance has focused almost exclusively on HR strategies and policies and has neglected process and implementation. This paper presents some evidence to show that HR processes in terms of social capital may be an important element.

This paper seeks to develop a system of how to judge the merit and worth of Private Finance Initiative (PFI) projects in the UK National Health Service (NHS) once they are operational. This concern is couched in relation to whether PFI can be seen to provide long‐term “value for money” (VFM) using a broad definition of this term. This paper does not attempt to further the debate that has focussed on the broader macro economic VFM arguments; rather, the focus is upon developing a model for evaluation at the organisational level where there is a paucity of direction and clarity. Whilst there are many VFM criteria available to guide whether PFI in the NHS should be pursued at the pre‐decision stage, there is little in the way of post‐project evaluation systems to judge VFM once decisions have been taken. Little thought has been given to the design of these post‐project evaluation systems let alone the experiences of how such systems may operate. This paper is addressing these lacunae but only in the sense of suggesting a design for a system for post‐project evaluation. This is drawn from PFI pre‐decision processes, post‐project intentions of some PFI schemes and evaluation theory. It is not about the judgements that come from the use of such a framework which the paper conclude will take some time to be forthcoming.

Public private partnerships (PPPs) are a recent extension of what has now become well known as the “new public management” agenda for changes in the way public services are provided. PPPs involve organisations whose affiliations lie in respectively the public and private sectors working together in partnership to provide public services. This special issue of the Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal explores this new development, which, in its most advanced form, is contained in the UK’s Private Finance Initiative (PFI) but is now spreading across the world in multiple forms. This introduction provides an overview of this development as well as an outline of the seven papers that make up this special issue. These seven papers are divided into two parts – the first four looking at different aspects of PFI and the latter three providing three country‐based (from the USA, New Zealand and Australia) studies of PFI/PPP. Many questions about the nature, regulation, pre‐decision analysis and post‐project evaluation are addressed in these papers but many research questions remain unanswered, as this Introduction makes plain.

So much has been written about public management and administrative reform in the past decade that in developing the approach for this book we wondered whether there was anything new to say. As is the case for most professionals working in our field, we recognize that the topic of New Public Management has been worked over very thoroughly. New public management is no longer “new” and, therefore, we believe in the future it is better to use the words public management change or innovation when speaking and writing about emerging initiatives in the public sector. And, as most in our field also understand, the topics receiving significant attention at present are networking and a set of issues related to what is termed “governance.” Research on networking has been on-going since at least the 1970s. Many issues related to networks and networking remain unresolved so that continued dialogue in this area is constructive. Renewed attention to governance (versus government) appears to have emerged in the public management dialogue and literature in the past five years or so.

This paper reviews literature on interim leadership and management through the lens of effective interim performance. The purpose of this review is to advance understanding of interim assignment performance and the antecedent individual psychological characteristics of effective interim leaders and managers, to improve the practice of managing interim leaders from a human resources (HR) perspective.

The paper reports a targeted review of the literature on interim leadership and management.

The main proposition from this review is that the influence of individual factors on interim performance operates within the stages and contexts of assignments. Accordingly, the authors propose a framework of the demands on interim assignments (the interim assignment cycle), comprising stages of preparation, entry, delivery and exit. The paper subsequently reviews evidence of the potential individual characteristics (focussing on individual differences in personality, leadership approach, motivation and competencies) of effective preparation and entry to an assignment, actions and performance during an assignment and exit/disengagement.

The findings of the review have implications for the selection and placement of interims into organizations and their management once appointed.

The main original contribution of the paper is to provide a framework around which interim assignments can be modelled and better understood. The paper discusses implications for future research, theory and human resource management practice and calls for a renewed research effort in this critical area of management and leadership.

Any scheme whereby the treasures of a public reference library are made more widely known is sure of the sympathetic consideration of all serious librarians, for it is a lamentable fact that reference libraries generally, and especially those in the provinces, are very sparingly appreciated. Their primary function is largely defeated by the ignorance of those most likely to be benefited. When there is displayed any considerable use of the facilities for research and study, analysis will often show it to be a mere prostitution by competition‐mongers and acrostic‐solvers; the genuine student is seldom much in evidence.