International Public Management Review
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Competitive Contracting for Public Services: A Comparison of Policies and Implementation in Denmark and Sweden
Full text linkThis article compares and analyzes the paths of development of competitive contracting for public services in two Scandinavian countries, Denmark and Sweden. The Scandinavian welfare states have for a long time been dominated politically by Social Democratic Parties in government, emphasizing the virtues of in-house delivery of public services. The impression could be that little or no contracting is taking place. To the contrary, both countries have a long history of contracting for public services and have also been debating and implementing policies of competitive contracting since the 1980s
Can Public Managers Learn from Trends in Manufacturing Management?
Full text linkA contested issue in public management is how to manage government operations. Treatments of this topic are mostly concerned with what-to-do questions. One way to engage or formulate them is to borrow conceptual frameworks from the business process management school of thought that has become important in the practice of public management. This school of thought focuses attention on the processes by which inputs of various kinds are transformed into goods or services utilized or consumed by downstream agents such as end-users
Assessing Public Management Reform in an International Context
Full text linkAttempts to understand the global public management reform movement suggest two general implications for research. First, there is a glaring need to understand the shortand long-term outcomes of the reforms where they have been implemented. Second, despite the importance of conducting this research, doing so is almost impossible in the short term and exceedingly difficult in the long term. It is hard enough simply to keep pace with management changes in each nation. It is even harder to make sound multicountry comparisons. Efforts to solve this problem sometimes have led researchers to use a particular nation’s reforms -- often New Zealand’s --as a benchmark, but the particular problems facing each nation weaken the value of such comparisons. The paucity of “results about reforms” -- and the need to assess whether management reforms have helped each nation solve its particular problems -- should motivate researchers to press ahead
Modernization of the Public Accounting Systems in Central and Eastern European Countries: The Case of Romania
Full text linkThe government of Romania is presently pursuing a wide-ranging public sector reform agenda, part of which will be the need to develop public financial systems to meet international and European best practice and comply with ESA 95 and GFS. This is part of the overall Pre-accession Agreement which will allow Romania to progress as a Candidate Country and achieve full membership of the European Union in 2007. This article carries out a study of recent developments in government accounting and, in particular the introduction of accruals accounting to replace cash accounting. It examines the application for EU membership as a motivation for change in the countries of central and eastern Europe and then details the process in Romania. The article then reviews theories of governmental accounting innovation in the light of the Romanian experience before drawing some conclusions
Public Management as a Cultural Phenomenon. Revitalizing Societal Culture in International Public Management Research.
Full text linkAnti-Corruption Agencies in Four Asian Countries: A Comparative Analysis
Full text linkTo be effective, anti-corruption agencies (ACAs) must satisfy these six preconditions: (1) they must be incorruptible; (2) they must be independent from the police and from political control; (3) there must be comprehensive anti-corruption legislation; (4) they must be adequately staffed and funded; (5) they must enforce the anti-corruption laws impartially; and (6) their governments must be committed to curbing corruption in their countries. This article assesses the effectiveness of the ACAs in Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand and South Korea in terms of these preconditions. It concludes that the ACAs in Hong Kong and Singapore are more effective than their counterparts in South Korea and Thailand because of the political will of their governments, which is reflected in the provision of adequate staff and budget to Hong Kong’s Independent Commission Against Corruption and Singapore’s Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau, and the impartial enforcement of the comprehensive anti-corruption laws in both city-states
A Preliminary Assessment of Public Management Reform in Taiwan's Local Government
Full text linkAlthough the “Administrative Reform Program” was initiated by former Premier Lian Chain in 1993, the comprehensive “Government Reinvention” programs which emphasized the notion of entrepreneurial government were proposed and implemented by former Premier Vincent Shiew in 1998, and similar reform strategies and designs have been followed by the DPP administration since 2000. Despite the continuity in reform efforts, full scale reform assessment based on concrete empirical evidences is still difficult to be found. The proposed study attempts to evaluate the results of government reform in Taiwan’s local government by focusing on one major question: Have local governments in Taiwan become “smaller and better”? This question will be addressed by looking at indicators in three areas: changes in the size of local government in terms of human and financial resources, changes in the level of corruption, and changes in citizen’s evaluation of the performance of local government. It is argued that the progress of government reform at the local level is slow, and the tentative evaluation show warning signals
Public or Private by Genetics or Design? A Case Study of Organizational Design Decisions for New Public Ventures
Full text linkWhen a new enterprise is born, how can an entrepreneur or intrapreneur decide how public or private the new enterprise should be? Should the publicness or privateness of a new enterprise be based upon genetics, i.e. replicate the publicness of the parent organization, or decided by design? As differences between public and private firms are blurred, entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs need to consider how public or private their new enterprise will be. This case study illustrates the tendency to replicate the publicness of the parent firm, which may not provide the right source of funding, ownership, control or other structures, such as board membership. This article provides propositions and a methodology to guide four major public versus private organizational decisions and establishes a future research agenda
Contracting Regimes and Third-Party Governance: A Theoretical Construct for Exploring the Importance of Public Service Motivation of Private Sector Contractors
Full text linkTo date the bulk of public service motivation (PSM) research has focused on demonstrating the differences in public service motivation between public sector and private sector employees, yet no research exist exploring the public service motivation (PSM) of private contractors performing public sector tasks. This article provides a detailed review of the privatization and PSM literature and suggests that PSM among private sector contractors can serve as a mitigating factor in protecting the public interest. This article establishes a set of propositions regarding the role of PSM as a mitigating factor in contracted public services, suggesting that PSM’s level of importance is related to the complexity of job task, number of contractors, and presence of a contracting regime. Lastly, the article recommends future directions in PSM research necessary for testing these propositions
Making Indonesia’s Budget Decentralization Work: the Challenge of Linking Planning and Budgeting at the Local Level
Full text linkWhile many countries have decentralized budget spending in the last decade, few have tried to do so as quickly and as ambitiously as Indonesia. The 2001 ‘sink-or-swim’ decentralization largely abolished the hierarchical relationship between the center, province and the district and transferred around one third of central government expenditure to the regions. This replaced the deconcentrated agencies of central government (ie. central government units operating in the regions) with a presumption that (despite Indonesia being a unitary state) local governments undertake all spending responsibilities other than those specifically assigned to the national government. Provinces and districts are responsible for an increasing share of national personnel and material expenditures, and it is reported that some sixty percent of the routine budget and just under forty percent of development budget is managed at the sub-national level. Local budgets are approved by autonomous (parliament like) local councils, replacing the previous deliberative councils, with resource allocation decisions being made by an elected local mayor, the local planning agency (BAPPEDA) and local finance office (Badan Keuangan)