Understanding and Improving Public Management Reforms.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Elston, Thomas.

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (173 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Bristol : Policy Press, 2024.

Summary:

Why do top-down reforms to public services so often over-promise and under-deliver? Using five concepts from psychology, economics and organisational sociology and diverse examples of successes and failures, Thomas Elston addresses this pressing question of good governance.

Contents:

Front Cover

Understanding and Improving Public Management Reforms

Copyright information

Dedication

Table of Contents

About the author

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Building public management capability

A more applied research agenda

Who is this book for?

ONE Public management and its reform

What is public management reform?

What management is (and isn't)

The 'public' in public management

The difference between reform and change

Why reform public management?

Reform as an instrument of improvement

Reform as substitute

Reform as politicking

Evaluating reforms

Conclusion

TWO Intuition, bias, and reform

The micro-foundations of public management reform

Bounded rationality, heuristics, and biases

Heuristics and biases

Confirmation bias

Confirmation bias and public management reform

Negativity bias

Negativity bias 'institutionalised'

Negativity bias and public management reform

Conclusion: De-biasing public management reform

THREE Efficiency, legitimacy, and reform

Organisational legitimacy - what, how, and why?

Acquiring and maintaining legitimacy

Legitimacy's influence over organisations

The efficiency-legitimacy trade-off

(1) Efficient and legitimate

(2) Efficient but illegitimate

(3) Legitimate but inefficient

(4) Illegitimate and inefficient

Towards an applied sociology of public management reform

(1) On 'flashy' ideas

(2) On 'decoupling' and the reasons for it

(3) On vital ingredients

(4) On novel means of organisational control

(5) On being an 'institutional entrepreneur'

FOUR Quiet costs of reform

Opportunity costs

Resources and scarcity

Opportunity costs in organisations

Opportunity cost neglect

Transaction costs

Production and transaction costs.

Predicting transaction costs

Public management reform and quiet costs

Improving reform valuations

Regulating the diversion of resources from producing to transacting

FIVE Onward, inter-disciplinary reform

Econs, satisficers, and social minglers

Three big themes

New public management et al - time for a fond farewell?

References

Index.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

1-4473-6090-7