Tony Bovaird

Service quality in NHS hospitals

Discusses the utilization of an instrument--SERVQUAL--as a means of assessing patient satisfaction with service quality. Patients treated (174) for a variety of health problems in a number of departments completed the SERVQUAL questionnaire. There is a dearth of knowledge in this important field and the authors note that the results indicate the need for improvement in service quality as identified by the study population.

Process reengineering in the public sector: learning some private sector lessons

The possible applicability of business process reengineering (BPR) to organisations in the public sector is explored through analysis of the central issues in BPR and the emerging experience of organisations which have recently implemented it. In particular, the paper suggests that success of reengineering may depend critically on the strategic capability of the organisation prior to undertaking the effort. For that reason well-performing organisations are more likely to improve performance by means of BPR than are weak ones. Yet, in the public sector, it tends to be badly performing agencies which are most encouraged to undertake BPR. Knowing and understanding the reasons for success or failure of BPR in private organisations can prepare public sector managers for undertaking the effort, but each reengineering initiative must be tailored to the specific needs and circumstances of the individual agency. Public sector managers should use the widest possible definition of `value? when analysing value-added in process reengineering and should be especially sensitive to the way in which `value? in the public sector is differently interpreted by major stakeholders. During this learning process, public sector agencies would be well advised to be conservative in estimating gains from BPR.

The financial management initiative in the u.k. public sector: the symbolic role of performance reporting

The emerging principles of performance reporting are explored in the context of urban policy and inner city regeneration programmes in the UK, upon which a great deal of evaluative research has been carried out in the last decade. The paper questions the extent that performance management principles as embodied by the FMI are necessary for public accountability. It illustrates that implementation of performance reporting in the urban regeneration programme has had a symbolic role in generating myths and images about practice which imply that the “rational model” of decision making is in operation. The imposition of performance reporting cannot per se guarantee improvements, in the sense of learning, in the organising approaches adopted by public sector organisations.

Performance measurement and Best Value: an international perspective

The Best Value (BV) regime in UK local government became mandatory on 1 April 2000. This paper explores the international sources of the ideas behind BV. It maps out the evolution of BV from an approach primarily directed at achieving high quality local services into an approach which is beginning the ambitious attempt to assess local governmentÂi¦s performance in addressing community and local governance issues. Performance measurement under the BV regime is reaching a new level of maturity but there is still a danger of unrealistic expectations about its potential, particularly on the part of central government. Further developments of BV in the UK should learn from important lessons in the international sphere.

Learning to manage within limited resources

This article sets out the main conclusions of a research project into how UK local authorities are managing within limited resources (MLR). Frameworks are developed to aid authorities to plan their approaches to MLR and to situate what they have already done and what they plan to do within a wider portfolio of tactics and strategies. An evaluation is made of how well local government is learning its way through to getting “more from less” and of what local authority support agencies need to do to help authorities to accelerate their learning. Finally, the authors argue that existing learning systems like benchmarking and quality management, while developing rapidly in local government, need further, significant refinement if the costs and benefits of resource management strategies are to be systematically evaluated.

Performance measurement in urban economic development

Urban development is one area where it is notoriously difficult to disentangle the impacts of different policy instruments and other factors. The Aston team examine the relevance of the ‘value for money’ parameters for performance measurement and suggest ways of broadening them to get closer to the complexity of the real world.

Partnerships and Networks as Self-Organizing Systems: an Antidote to Principal-Agent Theory

This paper examines the concept of self-organization, by means of which groups of agents accommodate each other, acquire collective properties which they could not individually possess, and achieve outcomes which they value, without anyone being in charge or consciously planning it. This concept, developed in the natural sciences, appears to fly in the face of ‘the incessant forces of dissolution described by the second law of thermodynamics’ (Waldrop, 1994: 102). It also offers the prospect of an alternative viewpoint on how action can be mobilized to that offered by principal-agent theory.

Process Re-Engineering in Public Sector: Some Private Sector Lessons

Thus, BPR is about breaking off from and doing away with the past administrative traditions when marginal adjustments to past practices do not seem to help the organisation in dealing with its current situation.1 The purpose of this article is to explore applicability of ~PR to public sector organisations through analy~is of the central issues involved in re-engineering business process and a review of emerging experience in organisations which have implemented BPR-these have been primarily in the private sector. In particular, it is suggested here that the success of a re-engineering effort may depend critically on the strategic capability of the organisation prior to undertaking the effort.