Search results

The chapter summarises findings from a study on administrative reforms covering all central government ministries and agencies in 19 countries, examining reform trajectories seen from the top of the central administrative apparatus. Core structural features of the central bureaucracy are described, along with role perceptions, values and motivation of administrative executives. Reform processes, trends, content and management tools are addressed, leading up to similarities and differences between the Nordic countries and between them and other European families of countries. A main finding is that the Nordic bureaucracy represents a layered, complex and hybrid system combining different reform trends and that there is a clear North–South divide in Europe when it comes to administrative reforms.

Drawing on Price Waterhouse Cranfield survey data, examines whether the common challenges to local authorities in Europe have resulted in similar national trends in human resource management. Compares public and private sector developments in line management responsibility, remuneration, appraisal and management development in six countries: Denmark, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden and the UK. While line mangement responsibility has expanded rapidly in all countries apart from Germany, local authorities generally lag behind the private sector in relation to performance management. Analyses the implications of the observed changes in human resource management policies for managerial roles and concludes by looking at the management development consequences for local authorities.

Studies five successful chief ’ntrepreneur officers (CNOs) together with one failure. Looks at why the CNO is indispensable. Presents 36 characteristics of CNOs across six groups: eagerly embracing risk, passionately innovating, creating/harnessing disequilibria, empowering the middle management, empowering top management with complementing industry product and participants and with complementing capital products and providers. Uses numerous case studies to demonstrate theory and provide a number of questions and answers.

Until the 1988 Education Reform Act, a large part of English higher education was provided by polytechnics and colleges of higher education that were under local authority control (LEAs) and were collectively known as public sector higher education. The 1988 Education Reform Act split this sector from the LEAs and handed control and all assets over to newly constituted Higher Education Corporations (HECs) that were run by the institutions boards of governors. All staff cntracts were also transferred making the HECs the employer instead of the LEAs. The majority of the funding was to come from the Government channelled through a body called by Polytechnics and Colleges Funding Council (PCFC). From that time on, until the establishment of the current Higher Education Funding Councils, the area was known as the PCFC sector. Direct Government funding of similar institutions already existed in Northern Ireland and in Scotland. Wales was excluded from these changes at this time and the sector remained partly with the LEAs.

The Nature of Business Policy Business policy — or general management — is concerned with the following six major functions:

This paper examines the current position of copyright for the music industry in the light of innovation and diffusion of technologies which enable audio file sharing amongst web users. We note that there currently appears to be conflicting assessments between the major corporations and the many small firms in Europe with regard to the business potential for online music. In particular, we show that the convergence of technologies together with the emergence of particular practices of ‘net culture’ have posed a number of marketing opportunities and threats for industry incumbents. The role of the Napster program, as well as subsequent innovations in peer‐to‐peer software, is examined together with the responses that have been made by different sections of industry.

Management in education departments must cater for the special nature of professional administration within them. The problems to be faced in managing such changes required are outlined and the main areas of management development described.

In this section the different types of information source which constitute the management literature are allocated to categories according to their broad function. Within the four categories — tertiary, secondary and primary sources and research in progress, each type of information source will be looked at in terms of the information it supplies and the role it can play in literature searching.

The big challenge for communication management is to encourage and enable line managers to improve the quality of their day‐to‐day communication. Communication is a core management competence. In the flat, devolved, team‐based organisation structures, which are fast becoming the norm, good mangement is synonymous with good communication. The role of central communication departments such as Corporate Communication or Internal Communication has to expand to meet this challenge. Traditionally, communication has focused on the production, packaging, targeting and distribution of messages — using skills which are borrowed from journalism and marketing. This skill set needs to be extended so that the centre can facilitate and support the communication of local line managers. As a first step, the centre must make managers around the organisation accept their responsibility for communicating with their staff. Developing an open and communicative style often requires a major shift of behviour for mamnagers. Organisations try to encourage this shift by broadcasting ‘open communication’ as one of their values. Including communication as a key performance indicator in the appraisal process increases managers' accountability for their daily communication with staff. Performance evaluation can be designed to make managers accept that they need to improve their communication. These are new areas for communication managers. What is clear is that unless they find effective ways to address the real issue of line managers' communication, they will miss a huge opportunity and find themselves increasingly relegated to the management side lines.

The purpose of this conceptual paper is to explore the role of strategic leadership under conditions of uncertainty and unpredictability. The authors argue that highly improbable, but high-impact events require the upper echelons of management, traditionally the custodians of strategy formulation to offer a new kind of strategic leadership focused on new mindsets, organizational capabilities, more in tune with high uncertainty and unpredictability.

Drawing on strategic leadership, and complexity leadership theory, the authors review the literature and present a conceptual framework for exploring the nature of strategic leadership under uncertainty. The authors conceptualize organizations as complex adaptive systems and discuss the imperatives for developing new mental models for emergent leadership.

Strategic leaders have a key role to play in preparing their organizations for episodic disruptions. These include developing their adaptive capabilities and building resilient organizations to ensure their organizations cannot only bounce back after a disruption but have the capacity for transformation to new fitness levels when necessary. Strategic leaders must engage with complexity leadership by seeing their organizations as complex adaptive systems, reconfigure their leadership approaches and organizations to build strategic adaptive capability.

This is a conceptual paper and the authors cannot make any claims of causality.

Organizational leaders need to reconfigure their mental models and leadership approaches to reflect the new normal of uncertainty and unpredictability. Developing the strategic adaptive capability of organizations should prepare them for dealing with high impact events. To assure business continuity in the face of disruptions requires building flexible, adaptable business models.

The paper focuses on how managers can offer strategic leadership for a new normal that challenges some of our most cherished leadership and strategic management paradigms. The authors explore the new mental models and leadership models in an era of great uncertainty.