There is increasing recognition of the importance of dealing with material hardship rather than just income poverty. This paper deals with electricity disconnection and shows how Electricité de France (EDF), the French monopoly provider of electricity, has been testing a number of new policy...

Purpose – Australian public sector organisations are faced with their greatest challenge in decades, as public sector reforms essentially re‐examine the role of the State in the economy. These changes have led to a shift away from a traditional administrative approach of public sector...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to use the New Zealand electricity industry as a case study to describe and understand the importance of collaborative relationships in coping with the changes faced by sectors of the industry over the last two decades. Design/methodology/approach – A...

Presents a “detailed” account of an innovative way of serving the internal and external customer in an Australian Quality Award winning public sector service industry – South East Queensland Electricity Board (SEQEB). Presenting the principles of customer service in SEQEB, lists the six...

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...

Britain's public sector has undergone a series of radical structural and managerial changes over the past 20 years. These changes are associated with public‐sector reform and innovations in public management. They have impacted significantly on the ways in which public employees are recruited,...

This article explores raters' understanding on the decision‐making process in the public service performance appraisal system (PAS) by looking at the cognitive processing models (CPM) steps involved. Presents the results of semi‐structured cognitive mapping interviews undertaken with novice...

As part of the preparations for the accession of Slovenia to the European Union, the National Health Insurance Institute has introduced a European model for quality management. In this regard, a benchmarking has been carried out, comparing the Health Insurance Institute of Slovenia with the...

This article examines the reasons individuals would choose electronic self‐service delivery methods over more traditional methods of service delivery for government services. The study investigated the factors related to decision making when people consider and evaluate the usage of an online...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to trace the origin and development of the increased use of the voluntary sector in the delivery of public services in the UK and to identify both the threats and opportunities that this policy poses. Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses...