Duncan McTavish

Clearing the way for gender balance in the management of the UK financial services industry

Purpose – Females now comprise just over half of the workforce in the UK financial services sector. This paper aims to report on the current position relating to factors that are facilitating and inhibiting women from moving into middle and senior levels of management within the financial services sector.Design/methodology/approach – A comparative analysis of four case studies from a cross‐section of the financial services industry is presented, each compiled using interviews with male and female senior and middle managers, and gender‐defined focus groups usually of employees who are in the promotion pipeline.Findings – Despite progress in the case study organisations, both men and women concur that females encounter more barriers to career progression in the industry than men and that these relate primarily to a long hours culture and networking. This leads some women to exclude themselves from working in certain parts of the industry, such as corporate banking. Further, this aspect of the industry cultu...

Aspects of Public Sector Management A Case Study of Further Education, Ten Years from the Passage of the Further and Higher Education Act

This article examines management in further education a decade after thepassage of legislation removing colleges from local council control. The research analysed two areas of public sector management as applied to furthereducation. First, the dominance of business managerialism in colleges. Second, the relationship between policy and strategy development at the centreand college/service management at institutional level. The article demonstrates that the notion of business managerial dominance in college practice requires qualification. It also indicates that, while there is a degree of central control exerted through the funding process, there is no comprehensive central direction of further education strategy and policy, and, in the cases studied, no sharp distinction between policy development and college service management. The research is focused largely on Scotland and based on a detailed examination of an anonymous college, with additional information from the further education sector in Glasgow.

Management, leadership and gender representation in UK higher and further education

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse gender representation in leadership and management in further and higher education organisations. It does this, through the lens of two perspectives on bureaucratic representation, a “liberal democratic” perspective and an alternative view which states that bureaucracies are not necessarily gender blind or women friendly. The paper reviews the reform and managerial environments, vertical and horizontal gender patterns in the sectors; undertakes empirical research which surveys staff in six case study institutions seeking responses on job roles and activities, career motivators and inhibitors, supportiveness of line managers, perceptions of organisational leadership and culture with regard to gender equality and career advance.Design/methodology/approach – Secondary data were used from a variety of sources. Primary data were based on all staff surveys using online software symbolic network analysis program in case study institutions with n=4,522, representi...

Enabling the career development of female managers in finance and retail

Purpose – In the UK financial services and retailing sectors there is a clear anomaly between the numbers of females employed and their representation at management levels. The aim of this study is to investigate the nature and significance of factors that actively enable the career development of female managers in these contexts, in organisations with an above industry average representation of female managers.Design/methodology/approach – A cross case analysis of seven organisations, four from the financial services sector and three from the retail sector, forms the basis of the empirical evidence. In total 62 management interviews and 87 focus group participants contributed to the development of the case studies.Findings – Recognition of the business benefits of a managerial gender mix at a senior organisational level emerges as a significant enabler, as does the congeniality of the organisational context in terms of transformational management styles and supportive organisational cultures that limit ...

Monitoring the public appointments process in the UK

Abstract The system for monitoring, regulating and reporting on the way in which UK government ministers make appointments to the boards of public bodies is a relatively neglected area of public management. A decade after the establishment of the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments (OCPA), little attention has been paid by academics to the functioning of this agent of accountability (a particularly British device), despite the importance of transparency and accountability for the new public management and modernization. This article seeks to examine the key issues surrounding the Commissioners for Public Appointments as agents of accountability, by examining the tensions in the relationship between OCPA and the executive, variations in the governance arrangements for the Commissioners across the devolved polity and the key findings and recommendations of a number of official reports, while locating these issues in the context of current debates about modernization and ‘representativeness’ in public bodies.

Further Education Management Strategy and Policy Institutional and Public Management Dimensions

The article contributes to the literature on the internal management of colleges and provides a research based analysis of the college sector in the wider public management interface of strategy, policy and service delivery. Internal college management showed considerable evidence of a strategic approach to management practice within colleges. At the public management level, the work was contextualized within debates regarding the reduced role of central state delivery of public services, the concomitant and sometimes divergent positions of strong central executive action and local partnership delivery of services. The research indicated an absence of strong central control with instances of individual institutional influence on policy. Local partnership activity, as a key part of the public management and governance environment, was analysed. It was found that not all types of partnership were equally effective. The paper highlighted a key area to be addressed, the strategic capacity gap within the sector. It also signposted the need for further research on college participation in partnerships

Making and managing public policy

Understanding how public policy is made and managed is a key component in studying the disciplines of public management and administration. Such are the complexities associated with this topic, a deeper understanding is vital to ensure that practising public managers excel in their roles. This textbook synthesizes the key theories, providing a contemporary understanding of public policy and how it relates to private and other sectors. It integrates this with the management and implementation of public policy, including outlines of organizations, practices and instruments used. Pedagogical features include chapter synopses, learning objectives, boxed international cases and vignettes and further reading suggestions. This useful, concise textbook will be required reading for public management students and all those interested in public policy.

Managing Scottish higher and further education

Abstract This article outlines the traditional gendered nature of further and higher education and how this has been challenged by long term developments. The focus on managerialism and competition provides a context for a re-invigorated ‘agentic’ (associated with masculinity) gendering. Non-executive management in further and higher education is deeply unbalanced in gender terms. Senior management in universities is male dominated but significantly more balanced in colleges. Furthermore, in universities, the career dynamic which privileges research and the gendering of this in favour of males, more than outweighs some new career spaces open to women. In colleges, the 1990s evacuation of many male managers created openings for women but in a particularly tough economic and business environment in which some have suggested that women have been used to bolster an ‘agentic’ male styled approach to management; others that a more adaptive less stereotypical approach is emerging.

Representative bureaucracy: a typology of normative institutional strategies for the representation of women

In public service institutions occupational gender segregation persists. These institutions are often gendered with predominantly masculine organisational cultures. The lack of passive and active representation of women has implications for public policy outcomes. This paper suggests a normative typology of the passive and active representation of women in bureaucracies, vis-a-vis institutional strategies to address the under-representation of women. The typology is based on: a theoretical discussion of representative bureaucracy; and a critical discussion of strategies to improve the representation of women. A key feature of the paper is the development of a typology with a suggested concinnity of institutional strategies.

‘Muddling through’ in a devolved polity: implementation of equal opportunities policy in Scotland

This article explores the issue of devolution in the UK and argues that policy processes between the reserved and devolved polities has resulted in a landscape where there is scope for uniformity and differentiation in policy formulation and implementation between these polities. The article will explore the complexity of devolution in the UK by examining the formulation of a particular policy area: equal opportunities policy. The article provides evidence that when matters are neither reserved nor devolved in the UK there is a ‘muddle-through’ of policy with the potential for policy, in this case equal opportunities policy, being limited in implementation.