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The purpose of this paper is to make intelligible the rationalities and mechanisms through which markets have been proffered as alternatives or complements to traditional welfare‐based provision and the effect of this development on the subjectivity of workers.

The research involved collection of archival data, personal encounters and in‐depth interviews with managers, staff and elected representatives at a local authority in New Zealand. Michel Foucault's concept of governmentality is mobilised to interpret these data.

The paper finds that the mandatory changes required by legislation are associated with efforts to constitute local authority workers as business‐like subjects through disciplinary mechanisms and technologies of the self. While markets have permeated this local authority, with some managers and staff claiming to work in a business‐like manner and transact with each other as customers, these discourses have not vanquished the traditional concern of working for one organisation to serve the community.

While the results of this study are not generalisable to other contexts, they show how the introduction of New Public Management in a specific context is associated with a contest between the traditional discourses of community and public service, and the more recent ones of enterprise and customer. The paper illuminates the pathologies associated with these new technologies and how their implementation is often divergent from the rationalities in the name of which they are promoted.

The paper will contribute to ongoing debate on how best to deliver public goods and services and especially, the limits and potential of markets.

The paper's mobilisation of Foucault's governmentality framework in the study of a local authority case study in a contemporary setting is relatively unusual.

Many governments and public organizations are turning to shared service arrangements to decrease costs while increasing service levels. This paper aims to elucidate the fine-grained challenges managers face as they adjust to working under a shared service arrangement.

A two-year longitudinal ethnographic field study followed the IT shared service transformation process at a large public university. Meeting observations, emails, documents and interviews were used in the qualitative analysis.

The research identifies 11 challenges faced by management undergoing a transition to shared services. The authors use a taxonomy of management challenges based on the organizational perspectives literature (Knol et al., 2014) to organize the challenges and relate them to prior literature.

The novel findings include the importance of changing organizational culture, balancing dual interests of cost and customer focus, establishing a sense of urgency and achieving process standardization through practicing when adopting a shared service arrangement. The results from a single case study may not by generalizable to other organizations.

This study provides a nuanced and fine-grained understanding of the managerial challenges of adopting IT-shared services. This unique longitudinal data set describes in nuanced detail the challenges faced by frontline managers.

To describe and analyze in detail an Interpretive Release (the “2006 Interpretation”) approved on July 12, 2006 by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) regarding the soft dollar safe harbor under Section 28(e) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.

Following a brief discussion of the history of soft dollars, describes and analyzes in greater detail relevant aspects of the 2006 Interpretation, including an explanation of the three‐part test concerning the use of soft dollars to pay for products and services under the safe harbor, a discussion of “mixed use” items, further detail on soft dollar arrangements, an explanation of liabilities and obligations of managers and broker dealers, and an implementation timeline.

Under the 2006 Interpretation, a money manager may rely on the safe harbor to acquire products or services only upon satisfaction of each part of a three‐part test. First, does the product or service meet the eligibility criteria of Section 28(e)(3)? Second, does the eligible product or service provide lawful and appropriate assistance in the performance of relevant responsibilities? Finally, may the money manager properly conclude, in good faith, that the commissions paid are reasonable in relation to the value of the research and brokerage products and services provided by the broker (in relation either to the particular transaction or to the money manager's overall responsibilities with respect to discretionary accounts)? The 2006 Interpretation also is relevant to broker‐dealers who may receive soft dollars. Under Section 28(e), a money manager can pay soft dollars only to broker‐dealers who “provide” research or brokerage services and “effect” transactions. Under the 2006 Interpretation, the circumstances under which broker‐dealers will be seen as “providing” services and “effecting” transactions will be interpreted more broadly than under past interpretations, allowing brokers and money managers greater flexibility to structure soft dollar and commission‐sharing arrangements in a manner that will better serve the interests of investors.

Provides a detailed analysis of the 2006 Interpretation concerning soft dollars.

This article describes the test of a method for consulting frail older people about the quality of social services and their unmet needs. The method, home interviews by senior social services managers, was prompted by advice from older social services clients about how best to obtain their views. Results of the interview programme are presented, together with benefits arising specifically from using managers as interviewers and discussion of future application of this approach.

Given that managers play a crucial role in developing and deploying AI for marketing financial services, this study was aimed at better understanding their awareness regarding AI and the challenges they are facing in providing the attendant technologies, as well as highlighting key stakeholders and their collaborative efforts in providing financial services.

Exploratory, inductive research design. The data was gathered through semi-structured interviews with 47 bank managers in both developed and developing countries, including the United Kingdom, Canada, Nigeria and Vietnam.

Managers are aware of the prospects of AI and are making efforts to address AI as a business need but find that there often exist certain challenges in accelerating AI adoption. The study also presents a conceptual framework of AI in relation to financial service marketing, which captures and highlights the interactions among the customers, banks and external stakeholders, as well as the regulators.

Banks must understand their business objectives, the available resources and the needs of their customers. Managers should keep the ethical implications of their working relationships in mind when selecting a team or collaborating with partners. In addition, managers should be trained and assisted in comprehending AI in relation to financial services, while the regulators must be involved in the development of AI for financial service marketing. Finally, it is critical to communicate the prospects for AI to consumers.

This study provides empirical insight into the opportunities, prospects and challenges pertaining to the use of AI in the area of financial service marketing. It also specifically calls into question certain preconceptions regarding AI and its role in financial services, the chatbots adopted for financial service delivery and the role of marketing managers in developing AI.

An updated version of the original (1985) text, the book covers all aspects of marketing and selling bank services: the role of marketing; behaviour of customers; intelligence, planning and organisation; product decisions; promotion decisions; place decisions; price decisions; achieving sales. Application questions help to focus the readers' minds on key issues affecting practice.

This paper examines how a public sector organization combined management control systems (MCS) to comply with increased uncertainty and conflicting objectives of tight budget control, flexibility, and quality care simultaneously. It also analyzes how middle managers interpret management control intentions and manage conflicting objectives, and how locally developed MCS are coupled with top management goals.

This paper uses a case-study approach, based on interviews with top and middle managements, as well as document studies conducted at a medium-sized Danish municipality.

Both constraining and enabling control systems empower middle managers and facilitate tight budget controls. Furthermore, middle managers play a crucial role in the use of MCS, develop local control systems, adjust existing control systems and influence the decisions and strategies of top management.

This paper is context-specific, and the role of accounting in professional work varies due to the specific techniques involved.

This paper shows how MCS, including budgeting and planning systems, can be applied in social services to help middle managements obtain tight budget controls while also improving service quality.

This paper adds to the limited extant research on the role of middle management in a control framework and demonstrates how MCS can balance conflicting goals in social services when uncertainty increases. Furthermore, this paper shows how the vertical coupling of MCS is tight when budgeting is employed for planning purposes.

In this paper we assess the management costs of delivering services under alternative institutional arrangements. We develop an analytic framework based on transaction cost and public sector network theories to identify management costs public managers face in delivering services directly and via contract. Results from a survey of refuse collection managers in Ohio indicate that direct service provision carries higher management costs, though when combined with vendors’ activities, contracting carries more monitoring costs. These results suggest two important contributions to knowledge and contract management practice. First, we develop an innovative approach to assessing management costs. Second, we use our framework to determine whether there are differences in management costs under alternative institutional arrangements that managers should take into account as they approach the “make or buy” decision.

Public managers throughout the world work in an unforgiving environment in which to take risks. Managers face varying pressures from a range of informed publics to ensure that risks to them are minimized or eliminated; while many are simultaneously subject to criticism, via private practice models, that they are too risk‐averse. Concurrently, leadership from public managers is sought in drives to ensure quality in public services. Risk and quality appear strongly inter‐linked, although managerial discussion of their interrelationship seems relatively rare, at least within the public domain. Links these two concepts, as they are experienced by public managers, through two pilot case studies of managerial practice in the UK, based in probation and health services. Gives consideration in each study to the contribution of understanding and managing risk as a core element in improving public services quality. The theoretical underpinnings of the research are drawn primarily from the literature on strategic management and risk‐taking in public services.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how factors associated with a sense of community in the workplace are connected with organizational commitment and the quality of services among frontline managers and middle managers in social and health care services in Finland.

A questionnaire designed specifically for this research was sent to 241 lower-level and middle-level managers in social and health care services in central Finland. A total of 136 managers completed the questionnaire (response rate 56 per cent). The results were analyzed using descriptive statistics, exploratory factor analysis, Spearman’s rank-order correlation coefficient and multiple linear regression analyses.

The study showed that feeling a sense of belonging, mutual trust and appreciation, and open interaction among colleagues were connected to organizational commitment for frontline managers and middle managers in social and health care services in Finland. Correspondingly, an open flow of information in the organization, job meaningfulness and appreciation received from managers’ superiors were connected to the quality of services.

This study provides information on the factors that influence social and health care managers’ organizational commitment and on items connected to their experience of the quality of services.