Understanding and Improving Public Management Reforms (Hardcover)

Thomas Elston

ISBN 10: 1447360885 / ISBN 13: 9781447360889

Published by Bristol University Press, Bristol, 2024

About this Item

Hardcover. Why do top-down reforms to public services so often over-promise and under-deliver?Using five concepts from psychology, economics and organisational sociology, Thomas Elston addresses this pressing question of good governance.Focusing on the practical challenge of how to undertake better public management reforms, he questions the assumption that failure typically occurs because of poor reform implementation. Instead, he shows how reforms are often badly designed from the outset, being fashion-led, more focused more on fixing errors than exploiting opportunities and ignoring implicit costs of change.This concise, practically-orientated work employs diverse examples to propose ways to improve the design of public sector reform programmes - and the services that citizens receive. Why do top-down reforms to public services so often over-promise and under-deliver? Using five concepts from psychology, economics and organisational sociology and diverse examples of successes and failures, Thomas Elston addresses this pressing question of good governance. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9781447360889

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Understanding and Improving Public Management Reforms (Hardcover)
• Publisher: Bristol University Press, Bristol
• Publication Date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1447360885
• ISBN 13: 9781447360889
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

Why do top-down reforms to public services so often over-promise and under-deliver?

Using five concepts from psychology, economics and organisational sociology, Thomas Elston addresses this pressing question of good governance.

Rather than focusing on the challenge of implementation, Understanding and Improving Public Management Reforms reveals how flawed policy design is often the major contributor to reform failure. Cognitive bias, restrictive social institutions and inattention to ‘quiet costs’ during the policy-making process are essential to explaining the poor track record of reforms to date – and point the way towards better decision-making in future.

Written for policy professionals, service managers, students and researchers alike, this concise, practical and multidisciplinary study draws on varied examples to help reconceive the perennial problem of public management reform – and to propose new solutions.

About the Author

Thomas Elston is Associate Professor of Public Administration in the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford.