The impact of planning on organizational performance in the public sector has been widely debated but has never previously been tested empirically. We develop a statistical model of planning effects that contains five explanatory variables: the extent of organizational analysis, the extent of...

Inspection is an important and growing element of the regulation of public services. We develop a theoretical framework for the evaluation of inspection and illustrate the practical relevance of this framework with reference to the new Best Value inspectorate for UK local government. The...

We present the first empirical assessment of the U.K. Labour governments program of public management reform. This reform program is based on rational planning, devolution and delegation, flexibility and incentives, and enhanced choice. Measures of these variables are tested against external and...

A framework for the explication of the theoretical basis of public management reforms is developed. The framework is applied to the Best Value regime in UK local government. The implicit assumptions of policy makers are that the Best Value regime will generate service improvements through...

<title>Abstract</title> This article tests the independent effects of strategy formulation and strategy content on organizational performance. The formulation variables include rational planning, logical instrumentalism and strategy process absence, and the strategy content variables are prospecting, defending...

<?tlsb=-.01w><?tws=.2w><?tlss=.2w>Innovation has become a cornerstone of many government programmes of public management<?tlss><?tws><?tlsb> reform. In this study we provide the first empirical analysis of innovation adoption in a programme of public management reform that involves an external authority decision. Studies of this nature have not...</?tlsb></?tws></?tlss></?tlss=.2w></?tws=.2w></?tlsb=-.01w>

This article argues that Best Value is a form of Total Quality Management (TQM). At the core of Best Value are the TQM principles of customer focus, continuous improvement and team--working. To discover if Best Value will deliver the performance improvements expected of local government, the...

Contributing to an emerging literature on solidarity or group-norm effects on union participation, the authors examine the extent to which union citizenship behavior (UCB) can be characterized as a collective phenomenon. Findings from studies of UK local government workers and teachers suggest...

A unique longitudinal study of Britain's managers conducted in 1980, 1990 and 2000 permits comparisons of managerial attitudes and behaviour in industrial relations over twenty years. We find clear evidence of the relationship between macro-level political and economic movements of the period...