<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...

Recently, there has been little research published on overview and scrutiny. This article revisits the early literature. By restating and developing six conditions for the effectiveness of overview and scrutiny set out in UK government guidance in 2002, it demonstrates why success has been...

This article shows how interim managers use the ambiguity of being perceived as both an insider and outsider to an organization to manage difficult situations in the process of turnaround from poor performance. Their temporary involvement with an organization allows them to support staff, as...

<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...

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....

Institutional designs for third-party governance have proliferated in the US and Europe, but there has been little systematic analysis of their democratic performance. A comparative analysis of business improvement districts (BIDs) in the US and UK documents an approach to the democratic...

This paper discusses the findings of a study undertaken by a team from the University of Birmingham's Institute for Local Government Studies (INLOGOV), funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. The research explores the implications for democratic practice of collaborative working...