This article shows that regulation of the employment relationship in European public services has tended to give more importance to collective bargaining than to unilateral employer regulation. Although collective bargaining is a general trend, it is not the same in every country. This article...

Citizen associations, trade unions and “tripartism” are the major mediators and interest‐representing bodies in the Czech Republic outside political parties. A system of corporatism at the national policy making level has existed since 1990. Since 1998 trade unions have demonstrated...

The delivery of public services in developing countries is over‐centralised. One of the reasons for this is the presence of centralised decision‐making apparatus, which distances power from communities. The centralised decision making reduces accountability among public sector employees and...

During the 1990s the contract has become a key feature in the restructuring of the UK public sector. Currently available literature demonstrates an awareness that the implementation of contracting must entail new forms of management control and organizational structure which involve new patterns...

Contemporary debates over the future direction of retirement pensions policy have been dominated by a polemic over the scope of, and the future balance between, the respective roles of public and private sectors in the management and delivery of benefit “entitlements”. This debate has...

There is an international trend to contestability and marketisation in the delivery of public services. The underlying foundation of these trends is that competition results in improved outcomes such as greater efficiency, higher quality of service, a clearer focus on customers and better value...

This introduction seeks to locate the origins of the competency management in American and British management concerns with declining international competitiveness and the need for more efficient and effective managers. It examines the distinctive American and British approaches and identifies...

In this article, managerial competencies are derived from observations of public managers in action. Based on institutional theory, it is assumed that public managers are competent when they know how to play the game of public management and how to apply the rules of the game. This assumption is...

The literature on managerial competences has not sufficiently addressed the value contents of competences and the generic features of public managers. This article presents a model of five competence areas: task competence, professional competence in substantive policy field, professional...

Competency management has become a new trend in the public sector. There is some doubt, however, if competency management is really something new or whether it is just old wine in new bottles. Academics seem to be more sceptical about its novelty than practitioners. This article attempts to...