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...

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...

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...

If we try to look at the future of public sector management in the UK, it might be more useful to think about what is happening in the rest of Europe, rather than looking at the USA (“reinventing government”, etc.) and especially New Zealand. There are some common pressures on the public...

The Dutch Ministry of VROM (Housing, Physical planning and Environment) employs more than 4,000. Discusses its progressive track record over recent years on organization and personnel management. Shows how the Ministry, by a process of “learning by doing”, is adopting and adapting new ways...

Internal marketing (IM) focuses on acquiring and retaining customer‐oriented employees. Critics of internal marketing claim that the term is simply a synonym for good human resources management. The concepts of internal marketing and human resource effectiveness (HRE), at both a strategic and...

Personnel administrators in the public sector have become more and more restrained by rules and regulations in recent years. The article looks at some of these constraints, and the effect these have an personnel practitioners to operate effectively and efficiently. The author argues that this...

There has been a global phenomenon in public sector management which advocates a paradigm shift from administrative to managerial values. Governments have been able to put an ideological gloss on managerial strategies to suit local political agendas. The spread of this policy, where public...

Purpose – Accounting and regulators are an integral part of new public management (NPM) across public sectors. This article aims to look at one of their potential drawbacks by investigating how a policy was deemed as a failure by regulators because of its limited financial controls....

Purpose – This article aims to describe and analyze the results of efforts to improve patient‐centered care (PCC) in psychiatric healthcare. Design/methodology/approach – Using the methodology of a qualitative case study, the authors studied three Swedish child and adolescent psychiatric...