Peter Leisink - Böcker

How can management make a meaningful contribution to the performance of public services? Around the world, public organizations face increasingly complex social issues related to globalization, migration, health crises, national security, and climate change. To meet these challenges, we need a better understanding of what managing for public service performance means, and what it requires from public managers and public servants.This book takes a multidisciplinary, critical, and context-sensitive approach to address such questions. Through a comparative review of public administration research, it examines a variety of management aspects such as leadership behavior, human resource management, performance, diversity, and change management. It also critically reflects on how the context of the public sector affects the management-performance relationship in democratic societies, as well as the influence of numerous stakeholders and their beliefs about the nature and purpose of public service. By clarifying conceptual issues and taking a theoretical and evidence-based approach to the relationships between management and performance, this book offers new directions for research and a framework to help improve public services in practice.

This book examines how governments, non-profit and private organizations, and local networks understand the connections between public values and social issues.Western societies face complex social issues and a growing diversity of views on how these should be addressed. The traditional view focuses on government and public policy but neglects the initiatives that non-profit and private organizations and local networks take. This book presents a broader variety of viewpoints and theories. Looking at various cases, the authors analyze conflicting values and interests, actors' understandings of the public values related to social issues, and their action to create what they regard as public value. Drawing together these perspectives the authors point the way to how government and the private and voluntary sectors can work in tandem to resolve social issues.The study will prove insightful for researchers and students in fields such as governance studies, public administration, public sector management, organization studies, non-profit and voluntary organizations, civil society, public policy, social policy and social issues in management. The policy focus of the book will also draw the interest of policy makers in governmental and non-governmental organizations.Contributors: P. Boselie, G.A. Brewer, I. Claringbould, A. de Ruijter, E. Farndale, M. Gastelaars, K. Grint, C. Holt, D.M. Hosking, E. Knies, A. Knoppers, M. Koster, P. Leisink, J. Paauwe, R. Spaaij, W. Vandenabeele, R. van Berkel, M. van Bottenburg, E. van Dijk, F. van Eekeren, H.J. van Rinsum, J. Vermeulen

Globalization, the information technology revolution, individualization and other processes in contemporary society all impact on organizations. Organizational actors are recognizing the need to make sense of these permutations, reconstruct their identities and positions and find ways of coping with the complexity of relationships within and between organizations. This book analyses the framework of these organizational relationships and the dynamics of identity formation and bonding on several levels.Organizational practices, managerial and professional coping strategies are all explored within the context of shifting inter-organizational relationships. The findings, which are presented by an international team of contributors, are complex and demonstrate continuities as well as discontinuities. The authors analyse the way in which organizational actors, such as managers, information technology specialists, creative professionals and academic researchers make sense of the social transformations in the networking age and their impact on organizations. The organizational settings which are studied include armies, universities, non-governmental organizations, information technology development houses, telecom operators and organizations in the food production chain.This multi-disciplinary book will appeal to a wide-ranging audience of scholars, practitioners and consultants across various fields including organization and management studies, industrial relations, social psychology, work and organization psychology and sociology, HRM and employment relationships.

The state of European integration is a contested issue raising many important questions: what is the impact of enlargement on the social standards in old and new EU Member States? Will public sector employment relations suffer from governments' attempts to make their national economies more competitive? What are the prospects for a European Social Model? What influence can governments, employers and trade unions have on industrial relations that are changing with the European integration process? These are the issues that this book addresses on the basis of solid empirical evidence. The authors are expert researchers from Western and Eastern Europe, and their work comes at a timely moment for scientific and political audiences.This book presents an evidence-based assessment of the impact of EU enlargement on industrial relations and social standards in old and new EU Member States. It combines chapters which give an overview of the process of enlargement/integration and comparative socio-economic data at EU and national level, with chapters that present an in-depth analysis of the impact of European integration on national industrial relations. These in-depth analyses cover both a number of old EU Member States in Western Europe and new Member States in Central and Eastern Europe. The book combines supranational European, Western and Eastern perspectives on the impact of European integration.A combination of solid empirical data and critical theoretically informed analyses, Industrial Relations in the New Europe will be of great interest to researchers and students in various fields, including industrial relations, public sector employment relations, European Studies, socio-economic studies and political science.

A truly international examination of public sector leadership, this book explores the ways leaders of developed nations are addressing current challenges. The overriding question explored by the authors is how public leadership across the globe addresses new challenges (such as security, financial, demographic), new expectations of leaders, and what public sector leadership means in the new era. The book allows the reader to view a large number of situations across the globe to better understand the relation between context and leadership. It integrates the two fields of leadership and public administration, providing a wide-ranging and complementary empirical context to the topic. Transcending state-centered perspectives, the authors include new developments in governance and public-private sector collaboration while retaining a focus on the public values involved. The chapters address public sector leadership issues in a wide array of nations, integrating international perspectives with a globally diverse authorship. Several chapters address issues of collaboration across sectors, changing roles in the New Public Management paradigm, and corresponding new visions of leadership. Several of the chapters are explicitly comparative, including a study of mental health leadership training topics in eight nations, central banking in Europe, and efficiency studies in Britain, Denmark, and Norway. The chapters can be used as thought-provoking case studies as part of a supplemental text, and are accompanied by substantial bibliographies. Scholars, students, and practitioners in leadership, public policy and administration, and organization studies will find this volume a useful reference.

What will citizenship mean to the peoples of a new, wider Europe? Welfare state retrenchment and technological change in the work place are undermining social citizenship rights and provoking a critical assessment of the West European concept itself. In the light of these changes, what models can the democratic, industrialized states of the West offer the transitional economies of the East?This innovative book presents new work by an international group of leading social scientists offers historical analysis and empirical description, as well as theoretical and political assessments, of work and citizenship in Europe. It examines the erosion of the welfare state, the emergence of poverty and the underclass, and the rights and duties connected with social citizenship. After a review of labour rights and obligations in the former socialist countries, it also assesses the state of industrial citizenship. It asks why the technological transformation of work tends to create segmentation and exclusion and argues for a debate about economic citizenship rights.Work and Citizenship in the New Europe concludes with theoretical and political arguments in favour of specific social policies on work and citizenship, examining such issues as labour participation, basic income guarantees and durable economic growth.

Should trade unions passively respond to turbulent changes in industrial relations or can they innovate and set their own agenda? In the face of technological, economic, political and cultural change, trade unions across Europe face a genuine threat to their past achievements and their future capacity to act and shape industrial relations.In The Challenges to Trade Unions in Europe , a group of prominent authors examines the unions' strategic policies in seven European member states and at the European Union level, as well as their responses to the globalization of economic competition. Using theoretical and historical analysis as well as up-to-date empirical research, they examine the successes of trade unions and their capacity to innovate in order to remain strategic actors in the industrial relations arena. In particular, the authors examine trade union policies responding to topical issues such as training, sustainable growth, flexibility, decentralization, deregulation and neo-liberal state policies.The Challenges to Trade Unions in Europe explores responses to the main economic, managerial, political and socio-cultural features of the transformation process facing trade unions in Europe. It will be welcomed by researchers and students interested in industrial relations, personnel management, and the social and economic implications of European integration.