Jennifer Marie Waterhouse

Change management practices

During the last two decades the public sector has come under increasing pressure to improve performance and demonstrate greater transparency and accountability. This pressure has resulted in public sector organisations facing shifts in ways of operating. Various corporate change strategies have been adopted by different public sector agencies, many of these cloning managerial practices from the private sector. These changes in public sector organisations have enormous significance for regional economic and social development. While there is a growing body of knowledge dealing with the management of corporate change there are still significant gaps in understanding the process. While there is much written on public versus private corporate change, there is little distinguishing between change in different types of public sector organisations. This paper analyses change management processes and seeks to determine whether a hybrid model of “new public management” delivers more favourable outcomes than a model focused on cost reduction and private sector prejudice for the bottom line.

Top‐down organizational change in an Australian Government agency

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to assist public sector organizations to carry out better change management strategies and thus achieve better change processes and also to provide a critique of top‐down change strategies, especially when employed by public sector agencies. Furthermore, the paper uses the case of one such public sector organization to highlight the need to complement top‐down change strategies with other approaches.Design/methodology/approach – The paper used a three‐year longitudinal case study approach to ascertain the efficacy of top‐down change in a large public sector organization. Data were collected by means of a series of employee focus groups and interviews with key management personnel. This was supplemented by organizational communication outputs.Findings – The paper finds that a top‐down change strategy needs to be coupled with other change strategies for change to become successfully embedded in the organization. Organizational factors and processes can limit the effect...

Communicating culture change

Using a case study of a large public sector department the relationship between communication and change in a public sector department and the human resource implications of that relationship are considered. Senior administrators of the department signified their intention to change the culture from one that was considered to be bureaucratic, technically oriented and inward-looking to one more outward-looking, continually learning, more relationship-oriented internally and inclusive of broader ‘whole of government’ objectives such as commercialization, the environment, social justice and community relations. Findings from the research indicate that, despite an objective of shifting to a state of continual change with the mode of communication becoming two-way and dialogic, the communication mechanism has faltered due to a failure to address the need of lower-level staff for a set vision and stated future direction. Implications of these findings are drawn for public sector organizations in general.

Hybrids and contradictions : human resource management in the contemporary public sector

Public employment is a dynamic field of study, buffeted by the ever-changing and reforming public sector environment and by external events such as changing demographics and the global financial crisis. This first article to the special edition on contemporary public sector human resources provides a broad overview of recent developments, starting with the nature of public sector reforms and proceeding with analysis of the far-reaching effects on public employment. For many western countries, this has led to a hybrid model of old and new practices, with many internal contradictions and a confusing array of accountabilities. The new arrangements led to a de-privileging of public servants through reductions in merit and tenure. They also reduced the institutional capacity of central personnel institutions to co-ordinate and monitor public employment and public management. The article proceeds with a review of the implications of these changes in the face of new challenges such as skills shortages and economic pressures. This overview provides a backdrop for the variety of articles presented in the special edition. Peter Blunt, Mark Turner, and Henrik Lindroths “Patronage, Service Delivery, and Social Justice in Indonesia” appears in the International Journal of Public Administration, Volume 35, Issue 3, 2013, pp. 214—220. doi:10.1080/01900692.2011.641050. It is related to this special issues content.

Proximity and knowledge sharing in clustered firms

The past decade has seen considerable interest in organisational clustering, however, the influence of proximity on knowledge sharing within clusters has remained unexplored. This paper responds to this research gap by theoretically investigating the contribution of different proximity dimensions to knowledge sharing. The aim of this paper is to theoretically investigate the utility of relational and geographic proximity dimensions in understanding the nature of knowledge sharing in clusters. This investigation adds to the existing literature by exploring the mechanisms through which proximity conveys knowledge-related advantage. The output of this process is a framework that categorises the contribution of different proximity dimensions in terms of the knowledge-based value they bestow on clustered organisations.

The Impact of Socialisation on Graduates’ Public Service Motivation – a Mixed Method Study

The need to attract and retain a high calibre cadre of public servants today has resulted in a renaissance of interest in public service motivation (PSM) within public management literature. This article outlines a study of PSM with graduate employees within an Australian public sector. The study extends our understanding of PSM by adopting a longitudinal, mixed method design, including surveys and individual interviews, to consider the effects of socialisation on levels of PSM. Results show an organisations mission and values do not affect individual PSM while work type and communication style is vital and organisational socialisation can provide a negative influence.

Strategizing Public Sector Human Resource Management: The Implications of Working in Networks

Networks have come to the fore as a means by which government can achieve its strategic objectives, particularly when addressing complex or “wicked” issues. Such joined-up arrangements differ in their operations from other forms of organizing as they require collaborative effort to deliver the collaborative advantage. Strategic Human Resource Management is concerned with the matching of human resource practices to the strategic direction of organizations. It is argued that the strategic direction of government has been towards network involvement and that, as a result, a reconfiguration of Human Resource Management practices is needed to support this new direction. Drawing on eight network case studies findings are presented in relation to the roles government is expected to play in networks and conclusions are drawn about what types of human resource management practices would best support those roles. Implications for Strategic Human Resource Management are posited.

Asset management stewardship: The effectiveness of public-private mix governance structures

Major infrastructure assets are often governed by a mix of public and private organizations, each fulfilling a specific and separate role i.e. policy, ownership, operation or maintenance. However, it is increasingly problematic to maintain separate and distinct governance arrangements for each of these functions due to their criticality to achieving social outcomes such as supply of water, power and transport and their interdependency in terms of risk management. The success of long term asset management is therefore becoming reliant on coalitions of organizations and groups working in a co-coordinated and collaborative way to deliver services. Yet, it is unclear how to conceptualize these networks of relationships and to determine the types of entities and arrangements that will best contribute to successful collaborative governance. Stewardship theory is revisited to provide a lens through which asset management governance can be examined. It is argued that the concerns of the community in regard to the long-term sustainability of infrastructure assets from environmental, accountability, strategic and business perspectives may be well served by a renewed conceptualization of stewardship theory.

10 – Wrong way, go back! Negotiating access in industry-based research

Literature addressing methodological issues in organisational research is extensive and multidisciplinary, encompassing debates about methodological choices, data-collection techniques, epistemological approaches and statistical procedures. However, little scholarship has tackled an important aspect of organisational research that precedes decisions about data collection and analysis – access to the organisations themselves, including the people, processes and documents within them. This chapter looks at organisational access through the experiences of three research fellows in the course of their work with their respective industry partners. In doing so, it reveals many of the challenges and changing opportunities associated with access to organisations, which are rarely explicitly addressed, but often assumed, in traditional methods texts and journal publications. Although the level of access granted varied somewhat across the projects at different points in time and according to different organisational contexts, we shared a number of core and consistent experiences in attempting to collect data and implement strategies.

Healthy, wealthy and wise?: The effects of globalisation on professional service firms in regional communities

This paper explores the effect of globalisation on local economies from a geographic perspective and considers how small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) respond to the broader structural shifts and greater competitive influences emanating from globalisation. It takes as its focus the inward strategies of SMEs as a response to globalisation. The geographical and regional area of interest is that of small rural and remote economies within a national economy. Literature has to date largely focussed on SMEs in the global environment in the areas of technology and manufacturing. This paper, however, takes as its specific focus of attention, professional service firms, as these have historically been broadly represented throughout regional areas and considered to have performed essential economic and social functions within their local communities. As a result, these professional service firms have constituted a widely distributed network of regional services and as such are major actors in the economic prosperity of small communities.