The setting and use of targets in the public sector has generated a growing amount of interest in the UK. This has occurred at a time when more analysts and policymakers are grasping the nettle of measuring performance in and of the public sector. We outline a typology of performance indicators...

This paper considers methods to measure output and productivity in the delivery of health services, with an application to the NHS hospital sector. It first develops a theoretical framework for measuring quality adjusted outputs and then considers how this might be implemented given available...

In the past decade early years education has expanded throughout England with progressive extensions in entitlement to some hours of free provision. Furthermore, there is consistent evidence that shows that early years education leads to improvement in cognitive and social development for...

There is a body of evidence that shows that early education improves cognitive and social development for children while they are still attending, but the longer-term impacts depend on the quality of early education. Much of this evidence in England relates to a period when attendance rates at...

This paper considers methods to measure output and productivity in the delivery of health services, with an application to NHS hospital sector. It first develops a theoretical framework for measuring quality adjusted outputs and then considers how this might be implemented given available data....

The decline in trade union influence over the past two decades raises the question of whether pay levels in lower-skilled jobs now lie outside the unions’ sphere of influence, as tacitly acknowledged by their acceptance and later endorsement of the principle of the statutory minimum wage....

This article addresses the question: what impact do trade unions have on employee trust in management? Using nationally representative data on employees in the British Social Attitudes Survey (BSAS) 1998, we assess associations between measures of unionisation and employee perceptions that...

The author examines the relationship between employee involvement (EI) and small firms' financial performance using statistical analyses of establishment-level data from the 1990 Workplace Industrial Relations Survey. The author finds EI practices and EI combinations which 'work' for small-firm...