Management and Accounting Developments in Executive Agencies

The executive agency programme has moved ahead rapidly since its introduction in 1988 and by 1996 over 70% of all civil servants were working under executive agency conditions. This has resulted in a major change in the structure of the civil service and in the management of the activities of central government. The question that then emerges concerns the benefits, if any, that these changes have brought about. This paper reports the results of a survey of a sample of senior managers in executive agencies. The survey attempted to ascertain the extent to which agencification was felt to have led to increases in autonomy and freedom to manage and also to obtain the views of managers on a range of issues including changes in operational effectiveness and quality of service delivery. These, after all, are some of the key measures of the success or otherwise of the agencification programme. The survey also examined changes in specific management accounting practices and a broad overview of the findings is provided in the paper. In general, it seems that the senior managers of executive agencies do feel that agencification has achieved many of the benefits hoped for and that is has brought about changes and improvements in management and management accounting practices.     

Agencies and non-departmental public bodies

Abstract

The emergence of Britain's ‘Next Steps’ agencies has spawned a new movement in theorizing about administrative organizations, and the practical example and the seeming theoretical excitement have influenced reformers in many other countries. But there is an older tradition of scholarship about administrative organizations that understands that many other sorts of deviant or ‘irregular’ public bodies have been in use for centuries in Britain and elsewhere. Moreover the executive agency model gets diluted as it travels away from Britain, and it then becomes more like some of those other forms. Some contributions to agencification theory are more accommodating than others about this. It is the contention of this article that many such resemblances do exist, and that all students of administrative organization would benefit if more effort could be devoted to searching for common ground between the executive agencies and non-departmental public bodies generally.     

Great Expectations of Public Service Delegation: A systematic review

Politicians use a variety of expectations to justify the delegation of public services to public, semi-public or private organizations. This article reveals expectations of delegation, as well as its correlates. Empirical evidence is drawn from a systematic review of 250 peer-reviewed articles published in leading public administration journals between 2000 and 2012. This study identifies a discourse with three main categories of justifications: scientists and practitioners expect economic, political, and organizational benefits. The effects associated with delegation are not in line with these expectations. Delegation has inconsistent correlations to outcomes when governments maintain a role in service delivery. Complete privatization is associated with negative outcomes. These results have important implications for the study and practice of delegation.     

Agencification and Public Sector Performance: A systematic comparison in 20 countries

The increased establishment of semi-autonomous agencies in most countries from the 1980s on has been justified by claims of expected improvement in public sector performance. Empirical research to test these claims has been scarce, based on single cases and showing mixed results. This study tests these claims at the macro level in twenty countries using a range of indicators and variables. Overall, we find a negative effect of agencification on both public sector output and efficiency. This refutes the economic claims about agencification.