Public Management

Written especially for the public sector, but applicable far beyond it, The Three Pillars of Public Management offers government managers insights that, for the first time, speak directly to their situation. Unlike other management books that promote fads and private-sector models or focus on politics, policy, and government-wide reforms, this book offers tangible suggestions to improve public service agencies or individual work sites. Proving that public service excellence is not an oxymoron but an achievable reality, The Three Pillars of Public Management provides a framework, based on the experiences of senior managers and a survey of top-performing public service organizations around the world, for building and sustaining effective public service organizations. The authors find that success in serving the public rests on three pillars: the aim, or mission, of the organization; the character of the people and the institution; and the tools available to achieve the aim. The Three Pillars of Public Management is an important resource for practitioners at all levels of the public service, from central agencies and top national departments to regional, state, or provincial governments and municipalities. With an easy-to-read style, inspiring examples, and a checklist of questions at the end of each chapter the book is a valuable tool for improving the public sector workplace and helping public servants make a difference. The Three Pillars of Public Management makes a significant contribution to the field of public sector management, providing a framework for recognizing and improving effectiveness in public organizations. It clearly fills a gap in the available literature.? Jim McDavid, School of Public Administration, University of Victoria Ole Ingstrup is Commissioner of Corrections, Correctional Service of Canada. He is the co-author of Our Story and the author of numerous articles and reviews. Paul Crookall was senior advisor, Correctional Service of Canada, and is now a consultant in private practice.

Sustainable Public Management explores key issues in public sector sustainable management that span from Nation/State to local government. It highlights state-of-the art articulations of public-private partnerships, public engagement, inter-organizational networks, sustainability policy, strategy, standard setting, and reporting. Sustainable management is an important topic across organizational forms in the private, not-for-profit, and public sectors because of the its practice is tied to some of the most pressing environmental and social problems that exist in the world. The public sector is especially important due to its scale and scope across the globe, the tangible impacts that public service delivery can make in resource efficiency and effectiveness, and in directly tackling critical sustainable development goals. This book will be of great value to scholars, students, and policymakers interested in Public Administration and Management, Sustainable Management and Development. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Public Management Review.

This is the thoroughly revised fourth edition of the widely-used and established standard text on public management reform. The new edition retains the historical perspective back to 1980, but now directly addresses the pervasive effects of the Global Economic Crisis of 2008 on public sectors in the three continents covered.

While public management has become widely spoken of, its identity and character is not well-defined. Such disparity is an underlying problem in developing public management within academia, and in the eyes of practitioners. In this book, Michael Barzelay tackles the challenge of making public management into a true professional discipline. Barzelay argues that public management needs to integrate contrasting conceptions of professional practice. By pressing forward an expansive idea of design in public management, Barzelay formulates a fresh vision of public management in practice and outlines its implications for research, curriculum development and disciplinary identity.

An overview of experimental research and methods in public management, and their impact on theory, research practices and substantive knowledge.

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.

Are public servants self-interested, or motivated by a sense of duty and commitment far above what we would expect given their often modest compensation and frequent public criticism? This book looks at research on this and related questions in assessing the current state of our scientific knowledge.

Elgar Advanced Introductions are stimulating and thoughtful introductions to major fields in the social sciences and law, expertly written by the world’s leading scholars. Designed to be accessible yet rigorous, they offer concise and lucid surveys of the substantive and policy issues associated with discrete subject areas. In this Advanced Introduction, Christopher Pollitt starts a penetrating account of the theories, methods and possible trajectories of the study of public management, also examining the academic community itself, and its relationship to the world of practice. There is no more authoritative – or lively – text of such scope and focus. This is a stimulating analysis by a leading international scholar. It includes: · a global overview · a critical and authoritative analysis of the current state of the field · the location of academic research firmly in the real world context of austerity, climate and demographic change, and technological transformation · an examination of the relationship between academic study and the practice of public management · a look inside the ‘ivory tower’, at the forces changing the way the subject is studied and practised This truly unique work will be of particular interest to graduate students, advanced scholars, lecturers and trainers in public administration, public management, government, public policy, political science and development administration. Middle level and senior practitioners in public administration and public management will also find this an invaluable and sophisticated introduction.