Managing Change And Innovation In Public Service Organizations

The context and environment of public services is becoming increasingly complex and the management of change and innovation is now a core task for the successful public manager. This text aims to provide its readers with the skills necessary to understand, manage and sustain change and innovation in public service organizations. Key features include: the use of figures, tables and boxes to highlight ideas and concepts of central importance a dedicated case study to serve as a focus for discussion and learning, and to marry theory with practice clear learning objectives for each chapter with suggestions for further reading. Providing future and current public managers with the understanding and skills required to manage change and innovation, this groundbreaking text is essential reading for all those studying public management, public administration and public policy.

Forming part of the Understanding Organizational Change series, Managing Organizational Change in Public Services focuses on the organizational dimension of change management in public services. Combining aspects of change management theory with ‘real life’ practice in the form of organizational cases from different regions and sectors, this edited collection identifies and analyzes significant issues regarding the development, implementation and evaluation of public service change initiatives. Featuring contributions from leading authors in the field, this text provides an overview of organizational change management with a focus on leadership, management, and strategies for change. Looking at cases from Europe and North America, Managing Organizational Change in Public Services offers both a global, as well as a cross-sector analysis of this complex and challenging process. Different sectors that are examined include: Transport Health Education This book offers an excellent introduction to change management and how it works within the public service organizations internationally. It will be vital reading for all those engaged with the study or practice of this dynamic subject.

This book explores the management of change to improve publicservice effectiveness. It breaks new ground in addressing whypublic service change is becoming increasingly complex to manage,how people cope with this new complexity, what implications arisefor improving policy and practice, and which avenues for furtherresearch and theory-building look particularly promising. The contributors are all leading researchers from the USA,Canada and the UK. Together they provide a synthesis ofstate-of-the-art thinking on the complex change process inAnglo-American contexts, policy-making for public service reformthat generates managerial complexity, and practice in serviceorganizations to improve provision. Special reference is made toeducation and health: the largest and most complex of the publicservices. The analysis has wider relevance for other publicservices and national contexts. Managing Change in the Public Services is essentialreading for all concerned with public service improvement - leadersand managers in service organizations, administrators, trainers,advisers and consultants who support the management of change,policy-makers and public servants, and advanced course students andacademics. The book also offers general insights for the theory andpractice of managing organizational and systemic change.

New Public Management as an administrative reform ideology as well as conceptual innovation has changed the outlook of public administration during the last ten years. Public administration and public administration reform should not only be concerned with the improvement of the efficiency and coherence, which play an important role in public administration, but also with political values like liberty, equity and security as well as legal values like the rule of the law. The modernization agenda of public administration has a rather internal focus, while the ultimate test for the modernization of public administration is the way in which governments are able to respond to changing social, cultural and economic conditions and the ‘wicked’ policy problems which result from them. This publication contains interesting contributions to the science and practice of public administration.

In the wake of the economic crisis, many public services are facing a challenging environment in which they receive less funding but are expected to deliver better services. Organisational Innovation in Public Services develops new theoretical models and analyses case studies to provide an important insight into how to modernise public services.

This comprehensive text introduces public management students and government and nonprofit administrators to the principles and practices of Knowledge Management. The first book to focus exclusively on knowledge management techniques in government agencies, it covers such important concepts as collecting, categorizing, processing, distributing, and archiving critical organization data and information - and then converting and disseminating these resources to all who need to share in the organizational knowledge. Written in an easy-to-read, non-technical style, the book includes a thorough review of the current literature in the field as well as a comprehensive presentation of Knowledge Management techniques. Extensive illustrations, models, checklists, and instructions lead readers through the steps involved in instituting KM programs in government and non-profit agencies.

This book is a comprehensive guide to an exciting new approach that managers at any level can use to transform their corners of government. Whether people want more government or less, everyone wants an efficient government. Traditional thinking is that this requires a government to be run more like a business. But a government is not a business, and this approach merely replaces old problems with new ones. In their six-year, five-country study of seventy-seven government organizations—ranging from small departments to entire states—Alan Robinson and Dean Schroeder found that the predominant private-sector approaches to improvement don’t work well in the public sector, while practices that are rare in the private sector prove highly effective. The highest performers they studied had attained levels of efficiency that rivaled the best private-sector companies. Rather than management making the improvements, as is the norm in the private sector, these high-performers focused on front-line-driven improvement, where most of the change activity was led by supervisors and low-level managers who unleashed the creativity and ideas of their employees to improve their operations bit by bit every day. You’ll discover how Denver’s Department of Excise and Licenses reduced wait times from an hour and forty minutes to just seven minutes; how the Washington State Patrol garage tripled its productivity and became a national benchmark; how a K–8 school in New Brunswick, Canada, boosted the percentage of students reading at the appropriate age level from 22 percent to 78 percent; and much more.

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- CONTENTS -- Acknowledgments -- About the Contributors -- List of Figures and Tables -- 1 Introduction: Beyond Reform-Leadership, Change, and the Role of Innovation -- PART I Ecology of Public Sector Innovation and Performance Literature -- 2 Reinventing and Redesigning Local Government -- 3 Innovation and Organizational Survival Research -- PART II Governance and New Frontiers in Public Policy -- 4 Cooperative/Collaborative Governance in a Networked Age -- 5 Chaos Theory, Disaster Policy, and Response: Achieving the New Normal -- PART III Leadership and Change in Governing Systems -- 6 Public Sector Compensation-School District Superintendents: Are We Getting Our Monies' Worth? -- 7 Implementing an Innovative Dream of Change: Lessons From Houston Community Colleges -- 8 Citizen Advisory Bodies: New Wine in Old Bottles? -- 9 Local Government Reform, Convergence, and the Hybrid Model -- PART IV Social Justice and Equality -- 10 Support for Gender Equality Duty Strategies Among Local Government Officials in Texas -- 11 Can Innovative Leadership Improve Community and Police Relationships? Lessons Learned From Youngstown, Ohio -- 12 Choice Points as a Framework for Decision-Making -- 13 Conclusion: Scenarios and Common Themes in Leadership and Change -- Index