Improvement boards offer a new approach to supporting stronger performance by public service organizations, and especially those facing significant issues of change. They involve formalized peer challenge and support by senior politicians and managers from other agencies. The authors document...

This article provides early results from a long-term evaluation of the turnaround strategies by poorly-performing local authorities in England. The history and theory behind central government interventions into local government is reviewed, focusing on the Comprehensive Performance Assessment...

<title>Abstract</title> Improved performance by public sector organizations is a political imperative in numerous countries. There are particular challenges in turnaround of poorly performing organizations. Theoretical explanations of the performance trajectories of public organizations, and especially the...

<title/> Improvement boards offer a new approach to supporting stronger performance by public service organizations, and especially those facing significant issues of change. They involve formalized peer challenge and support by senior politicians and managers from other agencies. The authors document...

<title/> This article provides early results from a long-term evaluation of the turnaround strategies by poorly-performing local authorities in England. The history and theory behind central government interventions into local government is reviewed, focusing on the Comprehensive Performance Assessment...

Some problems of governance regularly resurface, and the use and role of ‘quangos’— public bodies operating at arm's-length to ministers—is a case in point. The administrative history of the British state is littered with official reviews and political debates about quangos....