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Public sector absorbs a sizeable part of each country’s GDP. Therefore, public organisations are not performing very well at the economic level of responsibility. Consequently, we argue that in order to build better and more responsible public organisations we need to improve their economic responsibility. This chapter presents a prospective action of social media for business to intervene in public administration reform. We envision a possible course of action that may introduce CSR in the public sector thanks to social media collective action.

The framework of this study will make a reference to the theory of socio-technological media de Kerckhove and Pierre Lévy, and on a survey of the literature of citizen activism through social media to answer the question: new media, new message?

It is a new perspective action of social media for business-government relations. We identify a possible theory that leverages the ‘koinè’ of multinational brands to address government effectiveness. The names of multinational companies are the same all over the world, like the ‘Koine’ Greek, and are now a common element in all languages of the world. Citizens and consumers pay a great deal of attention to brands. Multinationals spend millions of dollars every year in public relations (PR) and marketing precisely in order to manage their reputations and images and respond to the requests that consumers have of big corporations. The greatest threat to the reputation of a company or a multinational brand comes, in fact, via the Internet, which has become the most powerful weapon in the hands of interest groups. The object of this research is to explore whether stakeholders can join forces with corporations and use global media to monitor governments in the same way.

The citizens of governments and the customers of global corporations – in different countries in the world – seem to be isolated islands: all endure their own battle without the possibility of drawing attention from other parts of the world through social media.

The citizens can exercise pressure on the governments and public administrations the same way as what happens against the brands. It behoves us to ensure responsible behaviour from all. We propose an extension of the use of social media to monitor behaviour of governments as effectively as they are used to monitor behaviour of the corporations.

The stakeholder approach to CSR action and reporting implies that the relevant stakeholders of the organisation be listened to, and this listening be accounted for in the CSR report. These groups are also called the ‘publics’ of the organisation. We contend that the stakeholder approach might be misused and end up in collusion with sections of the publics involved.

The stakeholder approach leads an organisation to try to engage with the wrong counterparts. This is an over-rating of stakeholders.

Therefore, everything that is not taken into account under the headline of the stakeholder approach we call ‘stewardship for the unknown stakeholder’. The theoretical bases of this value reside in the vast literature on non-maximising, non-efficient, non-effective behaviour by firms and by the employees especially.

Thus, the first task in drawing up a CSR or sustainability report is to identify the possible unknown stakeholders; that is, those who do have a stake but don’t know they do; those who have a stake too small to care about but who are numerous.

If we complain about Apple, many in the world will join in; if we complain about the companies that manage the ‘garis’ (as the Portuguese call a garbage collector of Rio de Janeiro) nobody outside Brazil thinks it matters. But in fact, this is not true!

To paraphrase Leo Tolstoy in Anna Karenina, ‘Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way’. Each local public administration will have its own problems, but all in the same way contribute to the well-being or mismanagement of a territory and its citizens. All, to some extent, ill-treated the citizens through their ineffectively.

The CSR should be for everyone and a global movement of citizens asking for responsible governments around the world could be the solution for the well-being of the individual peoples. Let the people’s rights emerge vis-à-vis perceived needs and outrage about the ineffectiveness of public administration that too often lose the name of action.

In summary, the proposal is the extension of the use of social media to monitor behaviour of governments as effectively as they are used to monitor behaviour of the corporations.

We propose a covenant between consumers/taxpayers in order to extend the CSR to governments and public administration. The citizens can exercise pressure on the governments and public administrations the same way as what happens against the brands. It behoves us to ensure responsible behaviour from all. We propose an extension of the use of social media to monitor behaviour of governments as effectively as they are used to monitor behaviour of the corporations, with the help of the same corporations.

Companies would join consumers for two main reasons: because there are clear signs that their company’s reputation is being harmed by the conflict, and because their market performance dips, coinciding with pressure from stakeholders. Our proposal goes beyond this and proposes the concept of a novel social figure: the unknown stakeholder.

The need to develop a greater understanding about the creation of social capital and how this might impact on entrepreneurship and the development of the small‐ to medium‐sized enterprise (SME) sector requires further research. This paper aims to consider to what extent engagement with higher education institutions (HEIs) by SMEs creates social capital and network benefits.

This paper follows the experiences of five SME owners who participated in the Lancaster University LEAD programme (a leadership programme for owner/managers who want to develop their leadership capabilities and grow their business) between 2004 and 2006. Qualitative techniques are used to consider networking activities, use and development of social capital and experiences. A framework for data collection and analysis was developed from the literature review.

Results show that the experience of engaging with the HEI sector was beneficial. Networks provided the opportunity to create social capital and had a positive impact on the development of the SME and the individual. A number of key elements supported this process namely trust in the individuals running the programme, the creation of a supportive environment where individuals were able to share experiences and social events.

This paper has implications for practitioners and the designers of SME engagement programmes at HEIs. For practitioners, this paper demonstrates that by engaging with the HEI sector, entrepreneurial networks can be extended. For designers, this paper demonstrates that the creation of trust and sociability are key aspects for the success of the experience of engaging. However, this must be coupled with content that is rich in reflection.

The article features a study based on postal questionnaires and structured interviews, targeting senior members of the hospital pharmacy profession. The aim was to examine the potential of practice and performance benchmarking as a means of improving competence and capabilities within the clinical pharmacy service of NHS Trust hospitals. Postulation of models and analysis of data is followed by discussion of results. This leads to a number of suggestions and conclusions with respect to the potential role of benchmarking including an assessment of its suitability, limitations, and implementation issues associated with this particular service sector.

The study examines the dynamic association between competition, risk-taking, performance and income diversification of frontier and emerging economy (FEE) banks. It additionally, explores the effect of banking sector depth and economic performance on the level of competition, performance and risk-taking behavior of banks in these economies.

The paper adopts a panel vector auto-regressive technique and collects data across ninety (90) FEEs.

The paper finds that competition increases with improvement in the depth of the banking sector, a surge in risk-taking behavior and the adoption of focused strategy by banks. Similarly, income diversification activities are driven by competition, banking sector depth, the state of the economy and bank performance. Additionally, risk-taking behavior, banking sector depth and the state of the economy are relevant in describing bank performance. Also, risk-taking behavior is influenced by bank performance, banking sector depth and economic growth.

The evidence indicates that although competition improves banking sector health, excessive competition and non-competitive banking environment constrain banks’ performance and stability.

Social inclusion is high on the Government’s agenda but the role of public libraries in this area has not always been clearly defined. This paper first examines the issue of social exclusion, attempting to define the inclusive society. Drawing on recent work by the Library and Information Commission (2000), it then proposes that research conducted by the University of Central England – A Place for Children and The Value and Impact of Homework Clubs in Public Libraries – demonstrates the capacity of the public library service to combat the exclusion of the child from society, by enabling access to the adult world. The paper concludes that the public library service supports the educational, social and cultural development of all citizens, indeed that it is the essence of inclusion. Public libraries must therefore be integrated into the infrastructure for inclusion, and recommendations towards this end are made.

This paper investigates residential sanitation collection (RSC) pricing under two different service delivery arrangements: (1) the municipal RSC arrangement where municipal employees collect residential refuse, and (2) the contract RSC arrangement where private sector firms, under contract with a municipality, collect residential refuse. The results of the study indicate that municipal RSC prices are significantly higher than contract RSC prices. Furthermore, municipal RSC prices exhibit greater variability than contract RSC prices. These findings suggest that contract pricing is consistent with pricing in a competitive market.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the roots of environment policy through a review and application of policy literature, portraying a disjointed process worried with procedure over substance and too often removed from the reality of environment degradation and attainment of sustainability.

The paper involves literature review and application of policy literature to sustainability.

Government is responsible for protecting the environment in the face of rapid industrial growth, but ineffectiveness in and misunderstanding of the policy process, confounded by a multitude of actors and interests, and, often inadequate resourcing, threaten the possibility of sustainability.

Policy literature is voluminous. This paper seeks to apply public policy literature to the concept of sustainability, but a comprehensive review of all literature would be beyond the scope of a journal article.

There is a separation between academic approaches to public policy and complex policy processes in practice. More nuanced sophisticated understanding of the policy process in the literature may allow for greater application to difficult policy problems like sustainability.

Sustainability is critical and should be promoted by public policy; however, interactions within the policy process are difficult and textbook approaches to defining or delineating processes are insufficient to encourage greater understanding of sustainability and how it may actually be achieved through public policy.

Application of policy literature to sustainability in this manner is fairly unique in the literature.

Existing research neglected examining the environmental effect of an event on the effectiveness of sponsorship activation in a competitive setting. The purpose of this study is to explore how the event environment impacts consumers’ attitudinal and behavioral responses to competitive brands that co-present at an event.

The research comprised an exploratory pre-test and two studies at a sport event with a retailing environment. The exploratory pre-test was used to examine the competitive relationship in the local market between the market leader and the lesser-known sponsoring brand. Study 1 used structural equation modelling to test how the event environment impacts consumers’ attitudes toward both brands at the post-consumption stage. Study 2 compared actual sales data of the two competing brands to examine the immediate effect of the sponsorship space on consumption.

The results revealed the event environment had an impact on consumers’ brand attitude toward both the lesser known sponsoring brand and the non-sponsoring market leader. However, the effect on the sponsoring brand that activated its sponsorship was influenced by consumer involvement with the event and was more salient. Furthermore, the product sales of the less-known sponsoring brand outperformed that of the market leader that co-presented at the event.

This study addresses a call to go beyond exploring the brand image of the sponsoring brands in isolation and holistically examine sponsorship effectiveness. The study contributes to knowledge on both attitudinal and actual behavioural outcomes of sponsorship activation in a competitive environment.

This article identifies current performance measurement practice within state, territory and federal government departments in Australia with a particular emphasis on the importance of sustainability performance measures. Whilst voluntary sustainability reporting by private sector organisations aligned, for the most part, with Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines is growing, there is little sustainability reporting by organisations in the public sector. This raises questions as to the extent to which public sector sustainability performance is managed. This research aims to assess the use of sustainability performance measures for supporting organisational performance improvement.

A mail out survey approach has been adopted within government departments.

The performance measures utilised by organisations to a great extent were in the areas of cost efficiency and quality measures and those utilised to least extent were for learning and growth measures and to satisfy legislative requirements and manage programs. Sustainability, environmental or social responsibility measures are the least used performance measures, and those utilised are mainly measures of employee diversity and non-financial economic aspects that are identified.

The public sector is unlikely to adopt comprehensive sustainability performance measures while they remain voluntary and while there is no perceived need to be competitive in these areas. Either mandatory reporting is required or some form of competitive process based on performance measures implemented.

The findings make a contribution to the academic literature on sustainability performance measures in public sector organisations and point to policy measures that may lead to improvements in practice.

Research suggests that improving hospital work environments and solving the nursing shortage are critical to improving patient care. The Houston–Galveston region created an aggressive approach to this issue by forming an unusual coalition of business, university, and hospital leaders and using a quality improvement approach. Four years later, the project has achieved over 40% participation among hospitals in the 13-county region and includes 50 hospitals employing approximately 15,000 registered nurses. The data that have been collected by this collaborative to date suggests that hospitals are taking action to improve outcomes by modifying their key initiatives to address the attributed causes of poor work environments. From 2004 to 2005, executives of top performing hospitals increasingly attributed successful work environment outcomes to an emphasis on management development and executive-driven initiatives, de-emphasizing specific employee behavior, process, and outcome-based initiatives.