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Seeks to examine changes in the environment in which public policy and public management operate and the claim that bureaucracy has been replaced by post‐bureaucracy as a result of these changes.

The paper proposes reanimated public governance as a concept that occupies the space between public administration and transformed public governance (including reinvented government and new public management (NPM)). Rather than accepting the existence of post‐bureaucracy, per se, the paper argues that there has been a process of extending bureaucracy that cuts across public and non‐public boundaries rather than the development of post‐bureaucracy per se.

In examining the claims for post‐bureaucracy, The paper is witnessing a discourse and practice of continuity rather than difference. The need for economies of scale and scope, standardisation and the existence of indivisibilities in public services suggest that public sector reforms and proposals for new governance models establish extended or flexible forms of bureaucracy rather than post‐bureaucratic organisational forms. Attempts to introduce ICT‐based services and the need for regulatory agencies to oversee the contracts with private and non‐profit service providers reinforce these findings.

The arguments in this paper are based on marshalling the literature and debates surrounding public sector reform to advance a central thesis. It draws on real world examples but does not draw on direct empirical evidence. There is scope for internationally comparative case‐studies of various public service functions and discourses and practices in different countries.

Policy makers and managers should treat the clarion call of post‐bureaucracy as a way of liberating public services from a lack of creativity, innovation and accountability with healthy scepticism. In particular, the view that public sector reforms through post‐bureaucratic re‐organisation will lead to efficiencies is one to be challenged. Reforms in any service driven organisation are not zero‐cost and any implied operational cost saving should be considered against increased transaction costs.

There have been heroic claims made for post‐bureaucracy in many organisations enabled by developments associated with the concepts of information society and knowledge society. By locating public sector reforms under the rubric of “reanimated public governance” a deeper investigation of the implications for the discourses and practices associated with public sector reform is advanced.

The purpose of this article is to provide organized, synthesized information related to initiatives throughout the world based on knowledge‐based development (KBD) such as knowledge cities (KCs), knowledge regions, and knowledge countries. A first search was conducted using the Internet and specialized databases under the keywords “knowledge cities”. The information compiled led to other related keywords which branched out the search. All resulting information was then collated and integrated into a number of categories all unified under the field of knowledge‐based development. A compilation of information on the topic “knowledge cities” and other topics related to knowledge‐based development. The information is presented in eight sections: a glossary of KC‐related terms, a list of knowledge‐based development initiatives, a list of associations and organizations related to the topic, a list of urban KBD‐related value dimensions and their indicators, a list of international rankings, a list of special editions on KCs, a bibliography, and a directory of related sites on the Internet. This effort resulted in a public service available at the World Wide Web. The information included in this compilation is limited mainly to public domain information available throughout Internet in both English and Spanish, as well as in selected databases.

This study, based on our analysis of survey data from 1,242 partners and employees of a U.S. national public accounting firm, examines the impact on psychological well-being from the moderating effects of flexibility and role clarity on work-home conflict experienced by public accountants. Most prior research in public accounting deals with the antecedents and consequences of role stress and primarily focuses on job outcomes of turnover intentions and job satisfaction as dependent variables. Public accounting firms have responded to stressors with worker-friendly policies, largely by introducing flexibility and clarity in their organizational culture. Using a multi-disciplinary research model, we analyze the causal relationships of flexibility and clarity as moderators of the bi-directional nature of work-home conflict (work interference with home and home interference with work) on psychological well-being. Our study finds that perceptions of flexibility and role clarity drawn from a career position in public accounting can mitigate role conflict between work and home environments and contribute to enhanced psychological well-being. We also find that certain relationships described in the model are moderated by family status and age, but not by gender. Results of our study have implications to both individual public accountants and to their firms.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mediating effect of job embeddedness on the relationship between work-life balance practices (WLBP), which include accessibility (AWLBP), current utilisation (CWLBP) and perceived future use (FWLBP) of these practices, as well as employees’ intentions to stay (ITS). This research is based on conservation of resources theory.

This study uses a survey method and a structured questionnaire to collect data from people working in diverse industries. A regression analysis is used to measure the direct effects of the hypothesised relationships. The Sobel test and Baron and Kenny mediation analysis were used to measure the indirect effects of the hypothesised relationship.

AWLBP, CWLBP and FWLBP are found to foster job embeddedness and turnover intention. Job embeddedness fully mediates the relationship between AWLBP, CWLBP, FWLBP and ITS.

Human resources (HR) managers should introduce WLBP to create a web of contextual and perceptual forces that embed employees in the organisation and encourage them to stay. Factors that affect employee attraction and retention change with time, career and life stage; therefore, it is important to assess the future needs of employees to augment retention. HR managers should proactively attempt to enhance embeddedness by offering customised WLBP and by dealing with the signs of low embeddedness before it results in voluntary turnover.

This study attempts to integrate two streams of research (job embeddedness and WLBP), which, despite being similar in focus, have developed independently of each other. This is one of the first studies to incorporate access to, utilisation and perceived future use of these practices in a single study. It also adds to the literature by investigating antecedents of job embeddedness and analysing it as a mediator between WLBP and ITS, which has been highlighted as a gap in the literature.

Many employees do not use work-family practices to their full extent, even when they are in need of them. Drawing on the concept of psychological safety the authors propose a new construct: psychological accessibility– employees' sense of embracing the benefits of work-family practices without experiencing a fear of using them. The authors argue that the psychological accessibility of work-family practices could explain the variations in the utilization of work-family practices among employees with similar levels of family needs. Furthermore, the authors propose multilevel contextual factors that could affect the psychological accessibility of work-family practices.

The authors develop a theoretical multilevel framework for work-family practices that places psychological accessibility at its core and addresses accessibility of work-family practices from a macro level that includes institutions and the different attributes of the national culture, a meso level that includes work time norms in organizations, and a micro level, that includes the social context at the team level in organizations.

As part of the conceptual development the authors offer 10 propositions.

The authors' multilevel model of psychological accessibility could explain the variations in the utilization of work-family practices across different national, organizational and group contexts. This paper refocuses scholarly attention to the psychological antecedents of the utilization of work-family practices. The authors offer some practical recommendations to make the utilization of work-family practices a psychologically safe activity.

The classics will circulate wrote a public librarian several years ago. She found that new, attractive, prominently displayed editions of literary classics would indeed find a substantial audience among public library patrons.

Direct, administer, manage. All of these are words applied to those who lead libraries, and they are usually applied interchangeably. But not only do they have unique definitions, they each carry a distinct implication for library managers and the organizations they lead. “Direct” means to provide a forward-thinking grounding for action in an organization (and this word’s meaning is most closely synonymous with “lead”). “Administer” suggests dispensing or carrying out, for instance, policy. The word is in some ways distant from the creation of policy or direction. “Manage” frequently is limited to the performance or overseeing of tasks on a daily basis. None of these words is false or pejorative when applied to the library, but each is limited in some important ways. The genuine work of guiding actions in libraries is actually an iterative balance of all three of the functions denoted by these words. If the terms are conflated in the everyday usage of our profession, from where does the confused usage come? Is understanding of the aforementioned balance common in practice? How clearly is the range and complexity of action communicated in educational programs? (Terminology presents some problems; for ease of expression and reading, the whole complex of action will be referred to as management, understanding that the usage here encompasses all requisite connotations.)

The purpose of this paper is to investigate gender differences in motivations to use flexible work arrangements (FWAs) in Korea.

Based on a literature review on theory of planned behaviour (TPB), this study considers four motivational factors that influence the intention to use FWA: motivation for personal life, motivation for productivity, peer behaviour and concerns about career disadvantages. Survey response data drawn from 92 male and 105 female Korean workers were used to analyse differences by gender.

As for the male respondents, all four motivational factors have a significant effect on the intention to use FWA. However, in the female respondents, the effects of concerns about career disadvantages on the intention to use FWA are not significant. The results of gender differences analysis show that significant difference was not found in the effect of motivation for personal life on the intention to use FWA while the other three motivational factors have significant differences by gender.

In this research, basing its conceptual background on TPB, a novel approach is taken by introducing motivational factors as the antecedents of intention to use FWA. This is a more systematic view on individuals’ behavioural mechanism relating to the intention to choose FWA. It is also meaningful in that this study looks at the intention to use FWA from a broader perspective by suggesting gender differences as critical analysis criteria given the uniqueness of Korean labour market.

For an effective operation of FWA, it is important not only to launch a flexible working programme itself, but also to ensure that the users are properly understood and fairly evaluated.

Considering the motivations of utilising FWA from various angles will contribute to coming up with various measures to raise the use and effectiveness of FWA.

This paper offers an approach for outlining the main dimensions surrounding clusters in three areas of knowledge: economic geography, strategic management and operations management, the first being considered its natural field of knowledge.

The work was developed using the citation analysis technique as applied to a database of 627 articles and 22,980 citations, taken from 15 important journals in the areas selected.

The results proved that the theoretical and conceptual bases are unique to each of the areas studied and that they have few topics in common between them. They are complementary, however, and this facilitates their reconciliation.

The sample base, despite considering fairly influential periodicals in the areas of knowledge selected, can be considered to be a limitation.

Common themes and different areas of knowledge surrounding the cluster concept were identified; despite being considered “common”, a more detailed examination of their content reveals very different, but certainly complementary emphases, which makes it possible to reconcile the areas of knowledge.