Public Management And Governance

A comprehensive, in depth and accessible resource for students of public sector management and administration: with an international authorship, this is more comprehensive, cohesive and international than any other textbook in the area.

This textbook examines what it means to have efficient management and good quality services in the public sector and how public sector performance can be improved.

Public Management and Governance examines the factors which make government critically important and the barriers which often stop it being effective. It questions what it means to have effective policies, efficient management and good quality public services, and it explores how the process of governing could be improved. Key themes include: the challenges and pressures facing governments around the world; the changing role of the public sector in a ‘mixed economy’ of provision; governance issues such as ethics, equalities, transparency and citizen engagement. This revised and updated third edition includes eight new chapters which provide in-depth coverage of key new aspects of public management and governance. It also features a wide selection of international case studies and illuminating examples of how public policy, management and governance can be improved – and what happens when they fail. Each chapter is supplemented with discussion questions, group and individual exercises, case studies and recommendations on further reading. Public Management and Governance is one of the leading student textbooks in its field, featuring contributions from top international authors and covering a wide range of key topics in depth. It is an essential resource for all students on undergraduate and postgraduate courses in public management, public administration, government and public policy.

This authoritative, up-to-date resource will become the standard reference on the theory and practice of public management around the world. Public management addresses strategy, policy processes, and governance as well as the bureaucratic concerns of public administration. Reflecting this diversity, the Dictionary incorporates concepts from various other fields including economics, political science, management, sociology, and psychology. The reference draws from an extensive literature base including books, journals, websites, research reports, government proceedings, legal documents, and international and organizational reports. As the primary source of ready information for students, researchers, scholars, and practitioners, it defines all the fundamental concepts of public management, their applications, and all relevant theories, complete with sources and references.

How effective are public managers as they seek to influence how public organizations deliver policy results? How, and how much, is management related to the performance of public programs? What aspects of management can be distinguished? Can their separable contributions to performance be estimated? The fate of public policies in today's world lies in the hands of public organizations, which in turn are often intertwined with others in latticed patterns of governance. Collectively, these organizations are expected to generate performance in terms of policy outputs and outcomes. In this book, two award-winning researchers investigate the effectiveness of management in the public sector. Firstly, they develop a systematic theory on how effective public managers are in shaping policy results. The rest of the book then tests this theory against a wide range of evidence, including a data set of 1,000 public organizations.

Since the third edition of this authoritative volume, most of Western Europe and North America have entered an era of austerity which has pervasive effects on programmes of public management reform. Even in Australasia extensive measures of fiscal restraint have been implemented. In this fourth edition the basic structure of the book has been retained but there has been a line-by-line rewriting, including the addition of extensive analyses and information about the impacts of austerity. Many new sources are cited and there is a new exploration of the interactions between austerity and the major paradigms of reform - NPM, the Neo-Weberian State and New Public Governance. The existing strengths of the previous editions have been retained while vital new material on developments since the Global Economic Crisis has been added. This remains the most authoritative, comprehensive, widely-cited academic text on public management reform in Europe, North America and Australasia.

The past two and a half decades have seen major transformations in public sector management and governance across the globe. This book examines the ways public sector management and governance in Malaysia has changed and is changing under contemporary reform models. Chapters are written by well-established scholars and academics with intimate knowledge in their respective fields, and provide a thorough and insightful analysis of the reform trends and developments on a range of topics. These include performance management, compensation reforms, public budgeting, accounting and reporting, privatisation and public-private partnership, e-government, managing ethics and accountability, local government and inter-governmental relations. While the book surveys the topics that are central to public sector management and governance, it also focuses on the nature of reforms and changes that were introduced, as well as the forces that have shaped their design and implementation process, and the initial impacts and results. Overall, the book provides students and scholars of Politics and Southeast Asian Studies with a greater appreciation and deeper understanding of the recent developments and current trends of public sector management.

This book examines the impact of several decades of public sector reform in four Westminster systems – Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Political and managerial change has re-defined roles and relationships and how their public sectors function. Often this occurs in comparable ways because of a common administrative tradition, but choices made in different country contexts also produce divergent outcomes. In analysing the results and implications of reform, fundamental issues of and tensions in public administration and management are addressed.