Dive inside this textbook for an accessible guide to the discipline of public services.
Perfect for students, it offers a comprehensive account of core public service topics and explains the fundamental elements of working in the public services. Outlining their role in the welfare state, it explores the policies, providers and legalities shaping the context in which public services operate.
Students will study concepts of organisational change, strategy, management, leadership and funding, and engage with timely discussions around contemporary public issues such as equality, sustainability and climate change. Key features to support student learning include:
-
objectives at the beginning of each chapter;
-
case studies and examples;
-
end of chapter summaries;
-
reflective questions;
-
further reading recommendations and resources.
, and points to the importance of acknowledging the nature and root of inequalities (as issues of redistribution or recognition) for identifying how specific inequalities can best be addressed. Equality can refer to equality between groups, which are constructed based on one shared feature, or take an intersectional perspective, aiming to address the multifaceted and complex nature of inequality. Turning to public services and their linkage to equality, this chapter highlights the importance of considering also (implicit) access requirements, the service and the
Chapter objectives Policies are targeted plans or courses of action which are devised, installed and carried out to resolve a specific issue. Public policies are those policies devised and adopted by public actors. This chapter explores the policy process with a particular focus on policy implementation. It shows that public policies shape public services, their goals, delivery and organisation. This chapter furthermore shows how public services shape policy outcomes. Public services, and those working within them, are essential agents for the implementation
Chris O’Leary looks afresh at the reasons for prosocial work choices in the first substantive critique of Public Service Motivation (PSM).
With critical analysis of theoretical and empirical research to date, this book explores the pros and cons of PSM and interrogates the reasons why people choose to work in the public and third sectors. It proposes an alternative theory for the pursuit of service, rooted in rational choice theory, that shows public servants are expressly motivated to confirm their values and identity through their work.
For those involved in public policy, administration and management, this is a constructive and stimulating review of an important but often neglected aspect of the sector.
This book challenges existing stereotypes about the ‘consumer as chooser’. It shows how we must develop a more sophisticated understanding of consumers, examining their place and role as users of public services. The analysis shows that there are many different ‘faces’ of the consumer and that it is not easy to categorise users in particular environments.
Drawing on empirical research, “The consumer in public services" critiques established assumptions surrounding citizenship and consumption. Choice may grab the policy headlines but other essential values are revealed as important throughout the book. One issue concerns the ‘subjects’ of consumerism, or who it is that presents themselves when they come to use public services. Another concerns consumer ‘mechanisms’, or the ways that public services try to relate to these people. Bringing these issues together for the first time, with cutting-edge contributions from a range of leading researchers, the message is that today’s public services must learn to cope with a differentiated public.
This book will be of interest to scholars and students in the fields of social policy and public administration. It will also appeal to policy-makers leading ‘user-focused’ public service reforms, as well as those responsible for implementing such reforms at the frontline of modern public services.
Democratic professionalism is an approach that enables public service professionals to work more democratically with clients, patients, students and other public service users. This book explores what it means to act in a democratic way and provides practical guidance which will help public service professionals ensure users are at the centre of public services delivery, drawing from examples of different public services around the world. It considers the conflicts and tensions of being an activist and a professional and provides a vision for a future democratic professionalism.
Be it in France, Greece, Canada, Germany or the UK, emergency ambulances ensure that treatment is quickly available in case of medical emergencies. Publicly provided institutions offer education and the opportunity to learn to everybody. Firefighters respond to crises. Refuse is collected. Youth workers support young people. Public transport opens opportunities to get from one place to another. While these services and their activities and functions differ strongly, all these services can be considered public services. All of these services fulfil essential
Chapter objectives From the extinction of species and the loss of biodiversity to climate change, a growing scientific consensus exists that, as a direct result of human activity, the ecological systems which support life on earth are threatened with potentially irreparable and catastrophic damage. This chapter explores this environmental crisis and shows that it affects public services in two ways. First, it impacts the human individuals and communities that public services serve and modifies the conditions under which public services are delivered, and
