Towards a theory of the labor market with a public sector

The object is to specify and analyze equilibrium in a labor market with frictions when there is a significant public sector. In the vast majority of equilibrium studies on labor markets, a public sector has been ruled out by assumption. This seems a strange oversight as about 17% of workers in the US are public sector workers, whereas in western Europe, approximately 22% of workers work in the public sector. The goal in this study is to provide answers to such questions as: what happens to private sector wages if the public sector is increased? If the Government increases the number of public sector jobs, does this crowd out private sector jobs? When will private sector wages be greater (less) than the public sector wage? Reasonably complete answers to these questions (and others) are provided within the context of the model developed.     

Economic conditions for innovation: Private vs. public sector

The Hicks induced innovation hypothesis states that a price increase of a production factor is a spur to invention. We propose an alternative hypothesis restating that a spur to invention requires not only an increase of one factor but also a decrease of at least one other factor to offset the companies’ cost. We illustrate the need for our alternative hypothesis in a historical example of the industrial revolution in the United Kingdom. Furthermore, we econometrically evaluate both hypotheses in a case study of research and development (R&D) in 29 OECD countries from 2003 to 2017. Specifically, we investigate the dependence of investments to R&D on the economic environment represented by average wages and oil prices using panel regression. We find that our alternative hypothesis is supported for R&D funded and/or performed by business enterprises while the original Hicks hypothesis holds for R&D funded by the government and R&D performed by universities. Our results reflect that the business sector is significantly influenced by market conditions, unlike the government and higher education sectors.     

New public management and organisational commitment in the public sector: testing a mediation model

This paper focuses on the attitudes of learning professionals towards New Public Management (NPM). In a survey of the UK further education sector (n = 433), NPM beliefs were found to be positively associated with both affective and normative organisational commitment. However, as expected, NPM beliefs were not found to be related to continuance organisational commitment. The results also show that although perceived organisational support mediates the relationship between NPM beliefs and affective organisational comment, it is only a partial mediator of the relationship between NPM beliefs and normative organisational commitment. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings, and potential directions for future research, are discussed.     

Personnel scheduling in public systems: a survey

In many public systems efficiencies may be realized by improved personnel scheduling. This paper surveys the literature on personnel scheduling in the public domain. Two general problems are considered: the daily scheduling problem where hourly employee work day patterns are determined and the weekly scheduling problem where day off and day on work week patterns are constructed. The daily problem is discussed in terms of scheduling with and without simultaneous work assignment; and the weekly problem is dichotomized into those schedules based on cyclical personnel requirements and those that are not.     

Leadership ideologies among European managers: A comparative survey in a multinational company

Adopting a subjective culture approach, the present study focuses on managers' beliefs about ideal leadership behaviour in organizations (i.e. leadership ideologies). On the basis of reported cultural dimensions which distinguish countries from one another, it is expected that the national origin of European managers will significantly influence their ideologies. The findings provide support for this assumption, since significant differences appeared between countries in eight aspects of leadership. Finally, the findings are compared with existing knowledge of cultural variation between these countries.     

The behavioral justification for public pensions: a survey

Unfunded public pension systems are primarily justified on grounds that many individuals lack sufficient capacity to appropriately save for retirement. We begin with a review of the known principle that a standard life-cycle/permanent-income consumer who discounts the future at an exponential rate can benefit from an unfunded public pension system only if the internal rate of return exceeds the private rate of return. However, a pay-as-you-go program with a below market internal rate can in fact improve lifetime utility if the consumer misestimates social security benefits, uses a hyperbolic discount function rather than the exponential function, uses a short planning horizon, behaves impulsively, or if a fraction of the population do no saving at all. A literature has consequently arisen to study how severe these behavioral defects need to be in order to justify a pay-as-you-go program. We survey this literature, and we conclude that the results are highly mixed as to whether an unfunded public pension that earns a below-market internal rate of return can be justified on grounds of shortsightedness in model economies. The challenge for this literature is that the conclusions crucially depend on the particular values of the preference parameters that are used in the simulation experiments, and these preference parameters are not observable, nor is there much consensus concerning the values that should be used in simulations. In fact, even when the analysis is confined to a small and reasonable space of the unobservable preference parameters, it is possible to reach nearly any policy conclusion. We offer some guidance for future work in this area.

Entrepreneurship in the public sector: a framework of analysis in European local governments

In this paper we explore the potential role of entrepreneurship in public sector organizations. At first, we present a review of the entrepreneurship theme in the political science and public management research streams, comparing these ideas with the mainstream business literature on entrepreneurship. Thereafter, we illustrate empirically how Stevenson's classical framework of entrepreneurship can be applied in a European local government context to explain the recent initiatives to compete for and utilize European Union structural funds. The empirical basis of the study is comprised of ten in-depth case studies of local government organizations, five in the UK and five in Italy. Finally, we propose five distinct types of entrepreneurial agents in the public sector: professional politician; spin-off creator; business entrepreneur in politics; career-driven public officer; and politically ambitious public officer.     

Real option valuation of public sector R&D investments with a down-and-out barrier option

This paper presents a real options approach for valuing public-sector research and development projects, using a down-and-out barrier option. Specifically, it considers the potential savings to the tax payer for investing in technology to be purchased by a national government. The valuation is performed with stretched trinomial lattices. Government-driven demand for this technology is equated with the underlying asset, and valuation measured in terms of potential government savings. Two variables, volatility of demand for the technology and unit cost, are treated as uncertain. A Monte Carlo simulation is performed to understand the effects of these variables on the valuation. Other variables are estimated, and a parametric analysis is performed to understand the effects of these variables. To illustrate how this approach could be used, the development of a new sensor, to be used in large networks that track greenhouse gas fluxes, is considered as an example.     

Characteristics of Portuguese public‐sector project managers: Toward closing the effectiveness gap

Using a sample of 102 Portuguese public‐sector officials with project management experience, this study examines the characteristics of effective project managers in the Portuguese public sector. Factor‐analysis procedures are used to identify the factors related to areas of knowledge relevant to effective project management. The results appear to stress the increasing importance of people, organizational, and leadership skills in the effective management of today's complex and dynamic projects.     

Branding without Unique Brands: Managing similarity and difference in a public sector context

Abstract

Corporate branding requires organizations to focus on uniqueness and differentiation. At the same time, public institutions must provide equal services in order to gain legitimacy. Hence, corporate branding in the public sector organizations has to handle two concerns simultaneously – securing legitimacy and building reputation. We examine this tension through interviews with communication managers in Norwegian hospitals. Despite large investments in techniques borrowed from corporate branding, the informants were reluctant to talk about branding. Instead, they were more oriented towards the universal character of their hospitals. Four explanations are put forward for why branding has an ambiguous position in Norwegian hospitals.     

Capitalization,population movement,and the local public sector: a probabilistic analysis

Using data collected from household interviews in a 1965 San Francisco Bay Area Transportation Study, a probabilistic model is developed to explain the relationship between population movement and the capitalization of changes in the public sector in the price of housing. This model is constructed to compare 2 competing explanations for the flight of higher income households to the suburbs: 1) the accessibility model and 2) the flight from blight model. The accessibility model explains the decay of cities as a natural outgrowth of decreasing transportation costs, whereas the flight from blight model suggests that the wealthy leave the central city for the suburbs because of urban decay. An analysis of the San Francisco data demonstrates that high income households are more sensitive than the rest of the population to changes in the median income of the neighborhood and in expenditures and general government and education, but less sensitive to changes in property tax rate and expenditures on public safety, parks, and recreation. It is unlikely that undesirable changes in the public sector will result in a mass exodus of higher income households; capitalization in the price of housing appears sufficient to prevent this. The 2 models combined help explain the flight from the central cities, while the combined variables increase the logit estimation's prediction of bids for housing.     

A change management perspective on public sector cutback management: towards a framework for analysis

The financial crisis forces public managers to implement cutbacks within their organization. We argue that adopting a change management perspective contributes to our understanding of cutback management by adding a focus on managerial behaviour regarding cutback-related organizational changes. Relying on change management literature, this paper develops a framework for the analysis of cutback management connecting the context, content, process, outcomes and leadership of cutback-related change. From this it follows that managers can be positioned at the intersection of various imperatives, both externally and internally, such as their political leaders and their own subordinates. A research agenda is proposed.     

Unions in a changing climate: MSF and Unison experiences in the new public sector

Through an examination of national policies, case study and survey material, this article looks at the question of the possibility of union renewal through an examination of the various and varying responses of two unions, MSF and Unison, to the changing work and employment practices in the NHS.     

Management by decree. Paradoxes in the reform of the Italian public sector

A call for “better” governance of the public sphere informed by reliance on management and accounting expertise has recently arisen in connection with a variety of legislative initiatives enacted in Italy. This paper looks at the nature and role of this “reform”, and in particular the call for the introduction of managerial accounting. It is argued that far from facilitating a comprehensive introduction of managerial vocabulary and knowledge into the public domain, the Italian legislative mechanism tends to hamper the expression of management and accounting as technically autonomous and coherent systems, while at the same time allowing more established audiences to deliberate on their nature and role. Although the reform was devised in terms of introducing the economic and the measurable into the domains of bureaucracy and formal compliance, its legal articulation seems to be informed by the very logic and ethos it is called upon to change.     

Incentives and penalties as means of influencing attendance: a study in the UK public sector

Despite being the largest single source of lost productivity in business and industry, absence from work has not featured as prominently as might have been expected in studies in human resource management. But if, as a new discipline, human resource management is to stimulate fresh insights into perennial problems this matter should be addressed. Drawing upon data from the UK public sector, this article examines various aspects of absence from work with a view to placing the research in this broader context. It is concluded that the indiscriminate application of methods to reduce absence are often ineffective and some measures may actually change employees' work attitudes and perceived equity. This may, in turn, hinder effective human resource management.     

Impact of e-procurement: Experiences from implementation in the UK public sector

The advent of the Internet as a business systems platform has been a catalyst for major changes in the operation and status of organizational procurement. Early e-procurement literature forecast significant improvements in procurement costs, an improving status of the purchasing function, and changes to the structure of supply markets. Our study seeks to evaluate the validity of these forecasts through the development of a structural model of the ‘e-procurement effect’. This model is intended to define the dynamics of the e-procurement process in an organization and provide a foundation for a research stream into the transformational effect of e-procurement deployment.

The article presents the evaluation of e-procurement implementation and operation from an 18-month study of e-procurement deployment across nine UK public sector organizations. The article explores five key themes in e-procurement, namely system specification, implementation management, changes to organizational characteristics, changes in total acquisition costs, and changes to governance structures.

Our analysis suggests that the proposed structural model of the e-procurement effect is broadly applicable and that many of the previous claimed benefits in the literature can be realized. We also contend that an important variable for the success of e-procurement adoption is to address the internal service quality attributes of e-procurement processes—a topic which offers significant scope for future research.     

Searching for managerial discretion: how public managers engage managerialism as a rationalization for increased latitude of action

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the managerial discretion that public managers experience. More specifically, it discusses how managerialism is an embedded ideological stance that influences understandings of public sector governance. I argue that managers’ perceptions of discretion are affected by these understandings. The analysis draws on empirical data from a longitudinal study, demonstrating how public managers engage discourses emanating from managerialism in order to rationalize increased discretion. The findings suggest that customer perspectives functions as a rationalizing factor for engaging public managers’ transition towards increased discretion. As such, this article contributes to knowledge about managerial discretion as well as managerialism.     

Causes of corruption: a survey of cross-country analyses and extended results

We survey and assess the empirical literature on the sources of corruption Thanks to the improved availability of data, we are able to produce an improved cross-country econometric model to test well-established and more recent hypotheses jointly. We do not find that the common law system, or a past as a British colony predicts corruption. Our results support cultural theories on the causes of corruption, and suggest that a medium-long exposure to uninterrupted democracy is associated with lower corruption levels, while political instability tends to raise corruption. Our results also suggest that the diffusion of newspapers helps to lower corruption levels.