A Lipskian analysis of child protection failures from Victoria Climbié to "Baby P": a street-level re-evaluation of joined-up governance

Triadic Advocacy Work

Scholars of street-level bureaucracy and institutional research focus primarily on the relationships between advocates and their larger bureaucratic and social systems, assuming that advocates have little need to satisfy their beneficiaries. We find otherwise in our two-year ethnographic study of public defenders advocating for disadvantaged clients in interactions with district attorneys. In our analysis of 82 advocacy opportunities, we demonstrate that, when existing bureaucratic and social systems put beneficiaries at a disadvantage, advocates may be concerned about managing fraught relationships with their beneficiaries in addition to navigating barriers within the bureaucratic and social systems. We further show a tension between the two; ironically, engaging in advocacy work on behalf of beneficiaries can lead to beneficiary mistrust. As a result, advocates engage in triadic advocacy work—managing impressions with their beneficiaries while also influencing powerful actors within the system on behalf of these same beneficiaries. Understanding the process by which advocates navigate this tension is critical to understanding beneficiary outcomes. By reconceptualizing advocacy work as a triadic process among advocate, bureaucratic system, and beneficiary rather than as a dyadic process between advocate and bureaucratic system, this paper develops new theory about how advocates can attempt to garner benefits that advance the rights and opportunities of the disadvantaged.

A discourse analysis of managerialism and trust amongst nursing professionals

This study explores the effects of New Public Management (NPM) on trust amongst nursing professionals, nurses and nurse ward managers within the British National Health Service (NHS). Thirty-nine nurses and nurse ward managers, recruited randomly, participated in semi-structured interviews. The original data, collected in 2000-2002, are re-analysed from a discourse analysis perspective. The findings support and extend contemporary research. They show that nurses have a strong professional identity and commitment and that increasing managerialism is eroding trust. Nurses both accommodate and resist managerialist discourses. They conceptualise trust in terms of their own ward environment, line-manager and colleagues. Trust is reciprocal and related to previous experiences and other factors. Trust is beneficial to healthcare organisations, healthcare professionals and their patients. Good communication and openness positively influence the development of trust. Nurse ward managers play a pivotal role in translating contested managerialist discourse into nursing practice to sustain trust and effect professional patient care.

When public services fail: a research agenda on public service failure

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to review the literature on public service failure and develop a research agenda for studying public service failure alongside private service failure. The general services management literature has devoted relatively little attention to public services, whereas developments in the private service management literature have not reached public management.

Design/methodology/approach

This is a conceptual paper drawing on the public management literature. Different failure types and causes are discussed, including service failures that are specific to public sector settings. This is linked to the specific public context within which public services operate. Customer reactions to public service failure are then introduced, as well as service recovery.

Findings

Service failures in a public and a private context are different. There are different failure types and different standards of failure. Public management literature mainly studies collective and political reactions to service failure, whereas the private service management literature tends to focus on individual reactions. Finally, attention for service recovery was found to be very limited in the public services literature.

Social implications

Studying public service failure is important because failure can have dramatic consequences for customers, public organisations, and society. Social inequalities that arise as a result of public service failure need to have a prominent role in future research.

Originality/value

This paper develops the concept of public service failure and sets a novel research agenda for studying processes, causes, and consequences of such failure, as well as public-private differences.

Budgetary participation and performance: The mediating effects of medical managers' job engagement and self-efficacy

Professional hybrids in healthcare have attracted a great deal of policy, managerial, and research interest. However, the current literature offers little guidance on (i) how hybrid roles can be supported by the hospital organization they work for as well as (ii) the cognitive and behavioral driving forces underpinning medical managers' managerial work that determine how they inhabit their roles and consequently meet the standards of performance that contribute to organizational effectiveness. Building on engagement theory and social cognitive theory and using data collected from clinical managers working in a large Italian public hospital, the current study focuses on the mediating role of psychological variables associated with the managerial role of medical managers, namely managerial job engagement and managerial self-efficacy, in the budgetary participation-job performance link. The results suggest that the information gained by participating in budgeting impact medical managers' thoughts and feelings about their managerial role and these, in turn, motivate different aspects of their performance. The findings are discussed in relation to theory and their managerial and policy implications.

The Impact of Emotionally Important Social Identities on the Construction of a Managerial Leader Identity: A Challenge for Nurses in the English National Health Service

The ability of individuals to accommodate the emotional transition into roles requiring the construction of a leader identity is an under-researched phenomenon. To address this research gap we consider the experience of 32 nurse managers undergoing a leadership development programme, exploring how an emotional attachment to their professional group identity may cause identity conflict during the construction of a managerial leader identity. We consider how competing desired identities can result in negative emotional experiences, calling into question existing work, which assumes that desired group identities are congruent with leader identities. Our work suggests that identity work can mitigate identity conflict at the individual level, enabling nurse managers to function in their role, but emotional distress will continue due to a perceived loss of professional identity and group influence. We contend it is only by eschewing an emotional attachment to a professional group identity that nurse managers will be able to overcome this negative emotional experience.