Connecting Knowledge and Performance in Public Services: From Knowing to Doing

by Edited by Kieran Walshe , Gill Harvey , Pauline Jas

• ISBN13: 9780521195461
• ISBN10: 0521195462
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-11-15
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

The performance of public services is now more closely scrutinized than ever before. Every teacher, doctor, social worker or probation officer knows that behind them stands a restless army of overseers, equipped with a panoply of league tables, star ratings, user opinion surveys, performance indicators and the like with which to judge them. This increased scrutiny and performance measurement has undoubtedly produced improved public services. Yet we still have a limited understanding about how this information can be best used to bring about improvements in performance. What goes on inside the 'black box' of public organizations to move from information to action, or from 'knowing' to 'doing'? This book tackles this important question by reviewing a wide range of performance mechanisms. It explores how information about performance can be translated into improvements in services and, conversely, why this does not always happen in practice.

Table of Contents

List of figures	p. vii
List of tables	p. viii
List of boxes	p. ix
Notes on contributors	p. x
Foreword	p. xv
Introduction: knowledge and performance - theory and practice	p. 1
Knowledge from inspection: external oversight and information to improve performance	p. 16
How is information used to improve performance in the public sector? Exploring the dynamics of performance information	p. 33
Citizens, users or consumers: the voice of the public and its influence on improving performance	p. 55
Competition and choice: the place of markets in connecting information and performance improvement	p. 74
The role of corporate governance and boards in organisational performance	p. 99
Change at the top: connecting political and managerial transitions with performance	p. 128
The role of leadership in knowledge creation and transfer for organisational learning and improvement	p. 145
Process Improvement and Lean Thinking: using knowledge and information to improve performance	p. 173
Using evidence: how social research could be better used to improve public service performance	p. 199
Absorptive capacity: how organisations assimilate and apply knowledge to improve performance	p. 226
Knowing through doing: unleashing latent dynamic capabilities in the public sector	p. 251
Conclusions: a puzzle, three pieces, many theories and a problem	p. 276
Index	p. 290
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