Dr Ian C Elliott

Author: iancelliott

  • Guest post – Ministers vs Civil Servants

    Due to annual leave, sick leave and teaching prep over the last few weeks my blog has taken something of a backseat. I’ve drafted a number of posts but haven’t yet got them finished. So while I try to get my head above water again I am pleased to have another guest post from Professor Eddie Frizzell, Visiting Professor in Public Service Management at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh.

    —————————————————————————————————-

    Ministers vs Civil Servants: Time for more FOI?

    The West Coast Rail franchise fiasco raises again the question of accountability when things go badly wrong in public service delivery.  In central government the debate is about whether Ministers or civil servants should carry the can, and in the case of the cancelled contract with First Group Ministers were quick to blame their officials for alleged errors in the calculations.  Meanwhile, Opposition politicians are keen to ensure that Ministers do not pass the buck, while the Chair of the Westminster Public Accounts Committee (PAC), the Margaret Hodge MP, appeared to conclude before hearing any evidence that the civil service was definitely at fault. Writing in the Times on 9 October 2012, she also called for civil servants to be accountable to Parliament, and for Committees to be able to summon civil servants to explain their actions. 

    Mrs Hodge has been on something of a campaign to hold individual civil servants to account ever since her appointment as Chair of the PAC in July 2010, and has previously complained about obfuscation by officials and lack of frankness in evidence given to her Committee.  However, to extend to a range of officials the longstanding Westminster convention that Permanent Secretaries, may – as Accounting Officers – be called before the PAC to account for, mainly, financial management, and to make all civil servants answerable to Parliament, would be a major constitutional change unlikely to find favour among Ministers or officials.  In the UK the position is that civil servants answer to Ministers and that Ministers are accountable to Parliament, subject to the convention noted above.

    On the face of it, there could be advantages in terms of accountability, and transparency, if the net of Accounting Officers (or “Accountable Officers” as in Scotland) were widened.  It may be fair to argue that Ministers should not be expected to delve into, far less understand, the minutiae of major procurements like the rail franchise, which rely on multiple complex assumptions, calculations, and financial assessments reliant on the work of Departmental economists, legal advisers, Treasury  wonks, and well paid private sector consultants.  But, it might also be contended that Permanent Secretaries, with large, complex organisations to manage, should likewise not be expected to know every fine detail of Departmental business – though the PAC has never been sympathetic to that proposition.

    There are, nevertheless, downsides. One is that individual civil servants are constitutionally indivisible from their Ministers (and vice versa, though it seems Minsters no longer see things that way) and cannot publicly disagree with their political masters.  Even Permanent Secretaries are restricted in what they can say, within the confines of their Accounting Officer responsibilities. Another downside would be the temptation for some Committee members to grandstand and pursue cheap headlines, and there is a question mark over whether enough of them have the skills and competences for forensic examination. Committee questioning of James Murdoch of News International over phone hacking by the News of the World justifies such doubt.

    However, despite civil service reforms over the past 25 years, the issue of accountability remains unresolved.  The gold standard insight into how knotty the problem is remains the famous BBC interview in the 1990s by Jeremy Paxman of the then Home Secretary, Michael Howard MP, over the respective roles of the latter and of the Chief Executive of HM Prison Service in the dismissal of the Governor of Parkhurst prison.

    Whatever the doubts, the Scottish Parliament has since 1999 been able to call a range of civil servants before its Committees.  As in Westminster, Accountable Officers – the Permanent Secretary, Agency and Quango chiefs and other top brass – may be required to appear before the Scottish Parliament’s own PAC (Public Audit Committee), but they and other officials may also be called to explain legislation and policies to a variety of other Committees. For the most part these are polite encounters, with sensitivity shown to what civil servants are allowed to divulge, though on occasion former Ministers serving on Committees seem to have succumbed to the temptation to settle scores with officials dating back to when they were previously in office.

    Whatever the position in Scotland, blaming officials for setbacks risks becoming the norm in Westminster. Civil servants have even been blamed for what went wrong in the 2012 Budget, so the odds on being scapegoated if you are unfortunate enough to work for the Coalition seem to be shortening.  Perhaps the time has come to reconsider the sacred “no go” area in Freedom of Information (FOI) and start bringing advice to Ministers into the public domain. This is of course anathema to most senior civil servants and to the Whitehall mandarinate, whose objections are that extending FOI to advice to Ministers would undermine the trust between Ministers and officials, and constrain the latter’s willingness to “speak truth to power”.

    These are important considerations, but they reflect a view of the relationship between Ministers and civil servants more in tune with the middle of the 20th Century than the second decade of the 21st. Mutual trust between Ministers and civil servants has been ebbing away in Whitehall for years, with the result that Ministers nowadays mostly prefer the enthusiastic advice of ambitious special advisers, some fresh from university political activism, to that of experienced officials.

    By the same token “speaking truth to power” is regarded as obstructionism and has been withering away since the Thatcher years when not “being one of us” was distinctly career limiting. In fact, opening up advice to public view may revive the practice – and raise the game of officials and Ministers alike. If the public were to know who advised what to whom, and who decided what, there would be no hiding place for anyone – which is precisely why Ministers would not like it any more than the mandarins. But accountability would be sharpened, and that would presumably be welcomed by everyone else, including Mrs Hodge.

    Eddie Frizzell

    October 2012

  • Guest Post – Public Sector Bonuses

    I am taking some annual leave in August and so am delighted to have my first guest post!

    This post comes from Professor Eddie Frizzell, Visiting Professor in Public Service Management at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh.

    —————————————————————————————————-

    Public Sector Bonuses – gone forever?

    Bonuses for public servants are a hot issue – so hot that they appear to have fallen out of favour not only with the Scottish Government, but also at UK level where the Coalition Government has ordered a review, and clamped down on the senior civil service bonus “pot”.  Are public sector bonuses destined for the bin and is there any prospect of informed debate about the pros and cons?

    As Will Hutton notes in his Review of Fair Pay in the Public Sector published last year, part of the reason for this is that “public sector managers have been caught up in the backlash to the remarkable growth of the earnings of the top 1 per cent over the last thirty or forty years and in particular in the last ten. Bank bail-outs with scarcely checked bonuses have dramatised these concerns…[but]…only one pound of every hundred pounds earned by the top one per cent of earners is earned by public sector employees.”[1]

    The Scottish Government’s public sector pay policy for senior appointments in 2012-13, which applies to Chief Executives of Non-Departmental Public Bodies (quangos in media-speak) and Public Corporations as well as NHS Scotland top managers, specifically suspends “access to non-consolidated pay” in 2012-13, ie bonuses for exceptional performance in 2011-12. The pay policy for other staff in public bodies and for the Scottish Government’s own civil servants similarly suspends all access to non-consolidated pay, either as bonuses or as pay for staff on their range maximum.[2]

    This may be a reasonable enough response to austerity and is consistent with the general freeze on public sector pay, but “the policy expectation…that any bonus arrangement in a Chief Executive’s contract will be removed when an appropriate opportunity arises (on new appointment or following a review)”[3] goes further and suggests a more fundamental rejection of the bonus concept.

    Would the end of bonuses for public servants in Scotland cause problems in terms of employee motivation and performance?  The answer to this is by no means clear. Bonuses for public servants arrived with performance-related pay in the civil service reform agenda in the 1980s and 1990s, before spreading out to some, but by no means all, other parts of the public sector. They became part of the “New Public Management”, inspired by the proposition that public services could be made more efficient by adopting commercial practices and disciplines, and by importing private sector managers to run them.

    Performance related pay, unconstrained by the limitations of public sector pay scales, and the availability of bonuses, were seen by Ministers of the day as necessary to recruit such managers. They were also key tools in the kit of “reforms” needed to make all public servants work harder and focus on results; but there are a number of still unresolved problems with this in the public sector. First, “performance” needs to be assessed in relation to a relatively small number of well-defined measures and targets which may not reflect the complexity of the work, and are often difficult to determine without the financial and shareholder value-related metrics available to the private sector.  Second, individual achievement may partly depend on the performance of others, in other organisations, pursuing other priorities. Third, performance assessment needs rigorous individual performance appraisal by managers who in the public service frequently have neither the appetite nor aptitude for the difficult conversations with staff that implies.  Fourth, in the absence of such rigour, performance-related pay drives up the wage bill as well as future pension costs.

    The classic response by Governments to the last problem is to restrict the amount of “consolidated” (ie pensionable) performance pay, and to put more emphasis on non-consolidated one-off bonuses. In the civil service this approach has been accompanied by central control over the proportion of the overall paybill which can be devoted to the bonus element.  The consequence tends to be consolidated pay increases in which the difference between the reward for exceptional as opposed to acceptable performance is marginal, and bonuses whose modest size is more likely to promote cynicism than enhance motivation. As Hutton notes in his review, in the UK public sector non-consolidated bonuses are parsimonious compared with other OECD countries.

    There are therefore probably few public servants who would shed tears over the disappearance of non-consolidated bonuses, if they were to be replaced by reward arrangements that offered the opportunity to improve pensionable pay. This is however not likely to happen, as one-off bonuses help Governments to bear down on future pension costs – always part of the rationale, and even more important now than previously.  Indeed the pressure to keep the public sector pension “burden” of the future under control implies more, not less, emphasis on bonuses as a reward, with a larger proportion of individuals’ remuneration in the form of one-off non-pensionable payments.

    It would be premature therefore to conclude that performance pay and bonuses in the public sector are destined for the dustbin of history. Hutton considers that there are compelling reasons why performance pay for senior staff should not be abandoned, on the grounds that there should be differentiation in financial rewards for the good and poor performer. However, he also considers that there is a much stronger case for linking pay to performance at the senior levels of public organisations, as opposed to the rest of the workforce, a view with which many public sector managers and staff would probably agree.

    They may be less inclined to agree with his suggestion that performance pay systems might be reconfigured to include an element of base pay which was “at risk”, to be “earned back” through good performance, though his advocacy of team based incentives, and a sharing of rewards from productivity gains, would receive some support. Not that the latter suggestion is new: thirteen years ago the then Labour Government committed to “looking for new ways of rewarding organisation performance and success-sharing, for example …. by linking pay, bonuses or other rewards to the achievement of performance or efficiency improvements”.[4]

    No doubt the long search will be resumed at some point. But two important underlying questions remain unanswered:  first, are public servants really motivated by money? And second, if so, is there any prospect of any system of performance pay for public servants being well enough funded to make it a real motivator  and – in that event – of its being acceptable to the public? The answer to the first is that it is highly doubtful, and to the second, a resounding “no” on both counts.  So perhaps the controversy over bonuses is less a hot issue than just so much hot air.

    [1] Hutton Review of Fair Pay in the public sector: Final Report, March 2011

    [2] Public Sector Pay Policy for staff pay remits 2012-13, The Scottish Government, September 2011

    [3] Public Sector Pay Policy for senior appointments 2012-13, The Scottish Government, September 2011

    [4] Modernising Government, CM4310, March 1999

  • What are Public ‘Services’

    In a previous post I highlighted some of the challenges that are inherent in managing public services due to the nature of being ‘public’. However, there are also challenges that come with managing a ‘service’. These challenges apply across private and public services, and whether delivered by public, private or Third sectors.

    These issues are quite important to recognise for all managers given the continuing rise of the service sector across the world. In fact services account for 62.9% of global GDP. 

    The key characteristics of services are intangible, heterogeneous, inseparable, and perishable as defined by Zeithaml, Parasuraman and Berry 1990 (although some, notably Lovelock and Gummesson, 2004, have questioned this classification).

    Intangibility

    Services are largely intangible. They are about having an experience. Of course there are some physical characteristics associated with most services, such as the quality of chairs in a fine dining restaurant, but what makes services unique from goods is the extent to which perceptions of service quality are impacted by environmental factors and customer-provider interactions. These intangible factors are very difficult to control or manage.

    Take, for example, a business offering guided bus tours of the Scottish highlands. There are a number of physical features of this service such as the comfort of the seats on the bus. But ultimately much of the service experience will be influenced by factors entirely outside of the control of the business – weather, the interaction with staff, the behaviour of other customers on the bus (to name but a few). These intangible factors make service interactions very unpredictable and difficult to control.

    Creative Commons license: by Pedro Szekely

    Perishability

    The fact that services are intangible also means that they are not easily stored for future use. So if there is excess capacity this cannot be stored to be sold at another time. In other words, services are perishable.

    Take, for example, a street performer. If they do not attract a significant audience for their performance that equates to lost income. They cannot get that time back. Hence the pressure within many services to get ‘bums on seats’. Consequently, pricing is key – particularly with services that have high fixed costs and a fixed capacity such as with cinemas, restaurants and bus tour companies.

    Creative Commons license: by Trey Ratcliff

    Inseparability of production and consumption

    Most services are produced at the same time as they are consumed. So the street performance will be consumed at the same time as it is ‘produced’. This means that quality control is much more difficult than with goods. It also places significant pressure of service staff to always ‘perform’ at a consistent level. This requirement of service workers to perform is best described by the Hochschild (1983) concept of emotional labour. Numerous studies have shown that the strain of constantly having to perform can lead to stress-related illnesses. This blogpost by Flip Chart Fairy Tales highlights a number of other reasons why people in service occupations tend to have more sickness absence that in other occupations.

    As an example of the inseparability of production and consumption take transplant surgery. The medical staff must perform consistently under the most extreme pressure with every single patient. Mistakes can cost lives and, unlike with manufacturing, are often not easily rectified. Yet quality inspection and control can only happen at the same time that the ‘customer’ is receiving the service. Furthermore the speed of service delivery is critical. Under these circumstances it is truly impressive what our health workers do on a daily basis. Hence those who use a service, such as the NHS are likely to be more satisfied with the service than those who do not as outlined in this Ipsos Mori report.

    Creative Commons license: by Army Medicine

    Heterogeneity

    The intangibility and the fact that production and consumption take place at the same time means that the service provided may be slightly different every time. This has significant advantages in terms of customisation and innovation. But it is also costly and can lead to dissatisfaction if a minimum service level is not met.

    So a service experience, like a rock concert, may be different every time. Take for example Bruce Springstein’s recent Hyde Park gig where he sung the song, Take Em As They Come, especially for one of his fans in the crowd. The flexibility of many services allows for this sort of innovation and customisation. However, this may be experienced by different people in different ways – even at the same time. The need for some control is also highlighted by the fact that the same Hyde Park gig ran over time to such an extent the organisers were forced to turn off the speakers in order to comply with the terms of their licence.

    Nonetheless, the more a service is standardised (which improves efficiency) the less personalisation can be achieved (potentially affecting effectiveness). Imagine if a barber gave every customer the same hair cut. It might be very cheap and efficient but would almost certainly affect customer satisfaction. Given the increasing focus on efficiency over effectiveness it is perhaps not surprising that public attitudes towards the NHS are falling.

    Creative Commons license: by Christian Holmér

    Conclusion

    These factors, when taken together, mean that services are very difficult to manage. When you include the publicness of public services, as well as the complex problems many such services have to deal with, it is perhaps not surprising that they are not always perfectly efficient. Indeed it has been pointed out on this excellent set of posts by Flip Chart Fairy Tales (Part 1; Part 2) just how difficult efficiency gains are in service industries. 

    This is not to say that we shouldn’t even try to create efficiencies – but it might help to start with realistic expectations.

    References:

    Hochschild, A. (1983) The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. California: University of California Press.

    Lovelock, C. and Gummesson, E. (2004) “Whither services marketing?”, Journal of Services Research, Vol. 7 No.1, pp.20-41.

    Zeithaml, V.A., Parasuraman, A. and  Berry, L.L. (1990) Delivering Quality Service. New York: Free Press.

  • Graduation 2012

    Last week I had the privilege of going to the QMU graduation ceremony. This is always a highlight of the year for me but this year was quite unique due to the presence of Susan Boyle who received an honorary degree.

    Susan Boyle receives honorary degree from Queen Margaret University Edinburgh

    This was publicised across the world (see The Jamaica Observer and The Washington Post) and generated a lot of interest in the graduation. What was particularly interesting was seeing paparazzi upon rubbish bins struggling to get a photograph of Susan. Most unusual!

    Paparazzi taking photos of Susan Boyle at graduation

    After receiving her honorary degree Susan graciously left to attend other prior engagements. This enabled the focus for the rest of the day to be firmly on the graduating undergraduate and postgraduate students of 2012.

    I find it particularly special to see students whom I have taught or supervised successfully complete their studies. Among those graduating were the following MBA students.

    L-R, Gwenmarie Ewing; Ian Elliott; Giovana Polla
    L-R, Ian Elliott; Ros Standish

    Among the topics researched from a public services perspective were the following:

    Ros Standish, MBA (Healthcare Management), with distinction:

    “Change management in acute care: perspectives from therapists’ in non-management roles.”

    Abstract:

    Previous research into the continuing professional development (CPD) of allied health staff professionals (AHP’s) in Scotland identified change management as a topic which AHP disciplines sought to learn more about. The knowledge and understanding of change management by therapists in non-management roles has not been widely researched, with many former studies focussed on allied health staff in management roles. This research dissertation aimed to investigate the thoughts and knowledge of physiotherapists and occupational therapists on the topic of change management, to understand how they perceive change management relates to their current roles and to identify any future training needs. Using a phenomenological approach, 13 individual semi-structured interviews were conducted and a selection of job descriptions of posts in acute care were reviewed. Two understandings of change management were reported by participants and similarities in change management training needs were noted between clinicians who had similar roles, across different bandings.    

     Amanda Forte, Executive Masters in Public Services Management:

    “Organisational change management in a Middle Eastern Culture”

    Abstract:

    The purpose of this dissertation is to examine how the perceptions of ‘change agents’ in a Middle Eastern organisation impact on the implementation of organizational changes.  The research undertaken consisted of interviews with ‘change agents’ in one particular organisation which had been the subject of various changes since its establishment.  Interviews were conducted at a time when a new change initiative was being initiated with a defined purpose and goal. 

    Interviews examined how the main ‘change agents’ perceived the need for change and how they managed this within their own areas.  The research also examined whether there were specific issues which were experienced, within the context of the Middle East, by ‘change agents’ applying western concepts of the management of change.

    The research concluded that, the perceptions of the ‘change agents’ did have a significant impact on the management and implementation of change strategies.  The research shows that ‘change agents’ agreement to the need for change is important, but the articulation of the scope and depth of the change to be led by individuals is of equal importance.  Similarly the authority of those leading change must be clearly defined and understood as any ambiguity in the perception of subordinates will impact on their willingness to initiate or implement any changes across the organisation.

    New public services programme

    An increasing number of students from the public services area are showing an interest in issues of leading and managing change. This is hardly surprising as ‘change’ is increasingly being perceived by politicians as a panacea. Yet the implementation of change is incredibly difficult due to the  human side of ‘transformation’; the nature of organisational culture; and the nature of public services.

    It is with this in mind that we have amended our programmes so that our new undergraduate suite has a module on leading change and our postgraduate public services governance course has a module on leading change in the public services.

    This September we will be enrolling students onto our new public services governance course and our new MBA suite. These new programmes have taken a considerable amount of effort from all staff and have included feedback from former students and employers. To find out more about the new programmes click here.

  • The ‘publicness’ of banks

    Wake up to the latest Rhianna single playing on your iPod through a Bose docking station. Go to the bathroom and brush your teeth with a Phillips Sonic Rechargeable toothbrush. Have a shower using Molton Brown Shower wash. Moisturise. Then go to your kitchen and have some Rice Krispies Multi-Grain Shapes with B Vitamins and Iron. Open The Guardian app on your iPad and think, “isn’t it terrible that banks have sold products to people that they don’t actually need”.

    Why do we expect banks to operate in a moral way for the public good? Since when was making a profit for shareholders not enough? Anyone who has ever worked in sales or marketing will know the emphasis that is placed on ‘upselling’ – selling extra products or services to people that they don’t actually need. As Milton Friedman said,

    …there is one and only one social responsibility of business – to use resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competitions, without deception or fraud.

    (Friedman and Friedman, 1962, p. 133)

    Of course, management thought has moved on somewhat since the 1960’s and I am not advocating a Friedman style of capitalism. It also cannot be ignored that action must be taken when businesses commit fraud or other illegal acts. But the question for me is what has led to such moral outrage?

    And why is it, at a time when public services are being expected to operate more like businesses, politicians seem to be expecting businesses to act more like public services?

    In 1986, the brilliant economist, Susan Strange highlighted the many flaws in the global financial system and in many ways predicted the financial crash of 2008. Strange also noted that it is governments and policy-makers, often misled by neo-liberal theory, who set the framework which enables such behaviours to take place. Anyone who has read either Casino Capitalism or the follow-up Mad Money would not be surprised at the behaviour of bankers at Barclays, RBS or any other bank. What is surprising is the extent to which politicians, who have allowed such behaviour to continue unchecked for so long, appear so shocked and outraged by the whole affair.

    What seems to be going on here, at least in part, is that banks are becoming, in effect, a public service. In 1953 Paul Samuelson set out what he described as a collective consumption good. These are now refered to within economics as ‘public goods’ and consist of two characteristics: 1) Non-excludable; 2) Non-rivalry in use.

    1) Non-excludable

    According to the Collins English Dictionary a bank is,

    an institution offering certain financial services, such as the safekeeping of money, conversion of domestic into and from foreign currencies, lending of money at interest, and acceptance of bills of exchange

    It would be right to point out that access to banking services is a choice that consumers make. You are not compelled to have a bank account and banks are there to serve the interests of customers and shareholders. They do not serve a public purpose in the same way as national defence or national vaccination programmes.

    But today to be included in society increasingly you need a bank account. State pensions and benefits are paid into bank accounts, mortgages are paid from bank accounts, wages and salaries are paid into bank accounts. To stop someone having a bank account is increasingly to exclude them from society. Of course, it is possible to exclude people from having a bank account. And people may choose themselves not to have a bank account (what is known as the power of exit). As such banking services are not a pure public good.

    However, the importance of access to financial services was highlighted by the former UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, in launching the 2005 International Year of Microcredit when he said,

    The stark reality is that most poor people in the world still lack access to sustainable financial services, whether it is savings, credit or insurance. The great challenge before us is to address the constraints that exclude people from full participation in the financial sector. The International Year of Microcredit offers a pivotal opportunity for the international community to engage in a shared commitment to meet this challenge.  Together, we can and must build inclusive financial sectors that help people improve their lives.

    What is more, is that the effects of a banking collapse, such as witnessed in 2008, are non-excludable. A banking failure does not just impact on shareholder and customers – it impacts on the entire economy. Banks are now such an important part of the economy, in a way they were never designed to be, that they are too big to fail.

    2) Non-rivalry in use

    The second key feature of a public good is non-rivalry in use. In other words one persons use of the good does not detract from another persons use. Compare, for example, a private good like a Mars bar, with a public good like street lighting. There is no rivalry in the use of street lighting, similarly my use of a bank account or mortgage does not detract from the benefit you may received from having a  bank account of mortgage. And such is the interdependency within the whole bank system, if my bank fails the impact of that is not just going to affect me but it is likely to cut across all banks.
    Of course it is important to note that not all public services are public goods. Many are ‘merit goods’; where it is seen that there are significant benefits from public ownership of the product or service, or significant risk from private ownership, for example the UK National Health Service.
    So we come back to the purpose of banks. If they are there to provide a return on investment to shareholders we should not be surprised or condemnatory when they use underhand tactics (which are legal) to meet that purpose. If the government are so concerned about ethics then why not speak out about the general rise of unethical business practices? And if we are coming to expect higher ethical standards from the private sector perhaps we should start with the arms industry? Or oil industry, food industry, alcohol industry, cosmetics industry…….
    If, however, we recognise that banks are in fact delivering a valuable public service this raises much more fundamental questions about the organisation, ownership and delivery of banking services. An interesting perspective here might be taken from Bozeman’s (1987) book “All Organizations Are Public“. In relation to the banking sector perhaps the German system is worthy of some serious consideration as alluded to by Vince Cable. Moving beyond the current chatter about legislation and inquiries these structural issues are, I think, much more interesting.
    References:

    Bozeman, B. (1987) All Organizations Are Public: Comparing Public and Private Organizations. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.

    Friedman, M. and R. Friedman (1962) Capitalism and Freedom. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

    Samuelson, P.A. (1953) ‘The Pure Theory of Public Expenditure’, The Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 36, No. 4, pp. 387-389.

  • What are ‘Public’ Services

    What are ‘Public’ Services

    Public service organisations are highly complex for many reasons. As such it is important that any education or training for public service workers is tailored to the public service context. One particular aspect of this complexity is the nature of the ‘public’ who they serve.

    I was (along with others) really sorry when the excellent We Love Local Government blog was brought to a close. This blog was I think exemplary in its content and analysis of all things public service. It will remain a valuable resource to my students on the MPA programme and indeed also my PhD students.

    One of my particular favourite posts on the blog was about the three publics. This highlights just one aspect of what it is that makes public services so complex and difficult to manage. What this blog post highlights is that private sector organisations deal with two publics – those who use their product / service and those who don’t but might in the future. However, public sector organisations have to serve the needs of three publics – users, potential future users, and non-users.

    ‘Private’ services

    Take for example a builders. They will be responsible for ensuring that any building work is compliant with building regulations and as a business they must meet other statutory requirements. However, ultimately they are accountable to one public – their customers.

    The builders might also offer free estimates for those who might use their service in the future. They might do some other targeted marketing such as putting flyers through doors. So they may engage with another public – those who may use their products / services in the future. But ultimately the builders only have to deal with one public – their customers.

    ‘Public’ services

    In contrast, the public sector have to serve, and are accountable to, three publics. There are those who use the services, those who may use the service in the future, and those who will never use the service. Hence, the three publics. All three publics are important stakeholders and are not limited by voting patterns or payment of taxes. The public sector is there to serve everyone.

    What does this mean for managers?

    Well, one distinct feature of the public sector is that they cannot choose their customer in the same way that the private sector can.

    For example, in the case of the builder, they have autonomy to choose their customer. They may, for example, provide an overly-inflated quote if they do not want or need the business. They may choose to work within a particular geographical area or indeed may choose not to do certain types of work or choose not to work for certain types of people.

    This choice has significant benefits. It enables the private sector organisation to specialise in offering a particular type of good or service to a particular type of person. So, M&S will design their stores and select their products based on a very different rationale to say, Lidl. Both are very successful businesses but both are significantly enabled by this ability to discriminate. In particular the ability to discriminate helps to reduce costs by enabling the development of standardised systems which can help reduce errors and system failures.

    On the other hand public services are there to serve the entire public. No matter who ‘walks through the door’ they must be served and their needs addressed as best as is possible. This means public service providers need to be highly flexible and adaptable to different user needs. Any attempt to develop standardised systems in public service environments restricts street-level innovation, often does not work and leads to failure demand. See this excellent blog post by Flip Chart Fairy Tales.

    Implications for training and development

    The need to be flexible and inclusive is difficult and expensive. Imagine, for example, a restaurant that tried to offer both fine dining and budget fast food at the same time – chances are that it wouldn’t work and all three publics would be left unsatisfied. Attempting to meet the needs of all of the people all of the time demands a particular skill set from public service workers. And with increasing change in society comes increasing change in public expectations and so public service requirements. This is why I believe the recent Christie Commission on the Future Delivery of Public Services was right to point to the need for better and more training and development. What is perhaps more questionable is the desire for a “single cross public service development programme” (Christie, 2011: 39) when there is so much variance in development needs.

    On a traditional MBA course you would undoubtedly learn about the efficiency savings that can be gained from standardisation and removing variation from your business systems. This mantra fails to take account of the three publics and the complexity of public services. Hence training and development for public service professionals must be context-driven in order to be relevant to their needs. Public service professionals should be involved in the design of such training and development. Most of all, public service providers should not shy away from investment in training and development at a time when service improvements are so sought after.

  • Twitter and Student Engagement

    Yesterday I had one of those experiences that remind me why I love my job. I met a group of academics from King Saud University, one of the world’s top universities. I had been asked to speak about the use of Twitter as a way to promote student engagement. The response was really terrific. Lots of debate was stimulated and my session ended up going well beyond the 20 minute time allocation – and could have easily continued for considerably longer.

    It was encouraging to see so much enthusiasm for learning and teaching and so much interest in the use of Twitter as a possible way to enhance student engagement.

    The key point from my presentation was that Twitter is a tool that offers a lot of potential in promoting student engagement. This is particularly so beyond formal class time. It is not, in my view, an alternative to formal class time. Student attendance and participation during formal class time is still critical to the learning experience. I also think that academics have a duty of care to students which can only be assured through regular contact. However, Twitter, and other social media, offers a valuable way to engage with students beyond formal class time.   

    Anyway, here is a copy of my slides on the topic. Particular thanks to Anna Evely (@AnnaEvely); Stuart Hepburn (@stuart_hepburn); the LSE Impact Blog (@LSEImpactBlog); Anthony McNeill (@anthonymcneill); and Mark Reed (@lecmsr) for some useful sources which are listed at the end of the presentation.

  • Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

    One of the benefits of blogging, as I see it, is the instantaneousness of publishing. As an avid reader of many blogs that means instant access to lots of interesting analysis and comment on policy developments – often better than what can be found in more traditional media such as newspapers.

    A topic that has generated a lot of debate recently is that of the Beecroft report into Employment Law. This report includes recommendations to:

    • introduce compensated no-fault dismissals;
    • reduce the consultation period for collective redundancies in some instances; and 
    • revoke the third-party harassment provisions that were set out in the Equality Act 2010.

    This report has motivated a lot of great blog posts such as these by Burdz Eye View, A Range of Reasonable Responses, Xpert HR  and Flip Chart Fairy Tales.

    As well as the content of the report, the way in which it was developed, and the purpose of the report has come under some scrutiny. In particular I have found it interesting to reflect on the Politics of I Met a Man or the related phenomenon of Policy-Based Evidence.

    In terms of content many readers of the report have focused on the recommendation to deregulate the labour market including the specific proposal for ‘no-fault dismissals’. Whilst Beecroft has argued that such moves would stimulate job creation and boost economic growth others have pointed to the lack of evidence to support this assertion. Interestingly the EEF manufacturers’ association has recently come out against the recommendations in the report.

    However, to what extent is the whole report a bit of a red-herring? I do wonder whether the focus on this has been a bit of a distraction from more substantive moves by intergovernmental organisations, such as the UN, World Trade Organisation and the OECD, and international financial institutions, such as the World Bank and IMF, to promote job creation as a solution to the financial crisis.

    What has not been so widely discussed, given the faith in job creation as a panacea, is what types of jobs should be created? Presumably not the sort where unpaid workers have to sleep below London Bridge.

    This is something I am very interested in, in terms of ongoing policy developments and the relationship with debates in economics about the nature of work. The importance of good work is something highlighted in this Work Foundation blog post and I will be writing more about this in weeks to come.

  • What is Blended Learning?

    This vlog post is all about how I use blended learning in the delivery of my postgraduate teaching. I had intended the video to last 5 minutes but turns out to be closer to 10 minutes. Anyway, here it is…

  • The perils of social media

    Previously I have blogged about why PhD students should use Twitter.

    This post has been motivated by a great post on spelling and grammar by Peter Matthews.

    One of the common criticisms of social media is that it encourages, or at least tolerates, poor spelling and grammar. As such universities should steer students away from participation in social networking.

    Another criticism is that by promoting the use of social media academics are potentially opening themselves, and their universities, to negative publicity.

    The first thing to recognise is that social media is inherently social. In social settings we may all adopt a more casual form of language. So I don’t think we should be too strict about spelling and grammar on Twitter or Facebook.

    The issue for me is where the rather lax rules of social language are applied in inappropriate settings such as a formal letter, email or student essay.

    In terms of organisational risk I can’t help but think that this is to miss the point. Social media is out there. And surely there is more to lose by sticking your head in the sand.

    So we should be actively encouraging students to use social media more-and we should support them to use it better.