Managing to Improve Public Services

This document offers an introduction to work that the AIM Fellows have recently undertaken on management topics relatedto one or more of five priority issues. The priority issues, selected for their potential to help public sector policy-makers andpractitioners in their efforts to achieve service improvements, are:Innovation and new ways of working, including the role of leadership in stimulating and supporting new practices; creating andutilising metrics to measure performance for improved service delivery; identifying the incentives that matter for people workingin public services; managing the potentially conflicting demands for accountability, equity, responsiveness to client demand andvalue for money; building capacity to manage change, especially for implementing innovations to improve the public services.The AIM Fellows’ work is timely not only because the public sector is going through a period of exceptional change. As someof the following contributions indicate, there is a shortage of good quality, research-based evidence on a number of the issuescovered by the five themes. This applies to both specific topics, for example the current trends towards new governancestructures in local organisations, and to broader ones such as innovation and improvement. The work of the Fellows hasidentified significant gaps in available research and projects are being initiated to address some of them.[...]