It has been recognised that organisational learning (OL) possesses considerable potential for developing workers and, through them, organisations. Although its relevance to the public sector has been acknowledged, a relatively small amount of empirical work has been undertaken. Where it has been, emphasis on learning embedded in daily practices has been lacking. This study fills a significant gap by providing a holistic and empirically-based exploration of OL within the public sector based on three diverse case studies in the Welsh Government. This study illustrates how OL practices in the Welsh Government emerged from mediations between individuals and six structures – namely physical, accountability, development, management intervention, workplace social and work task-based. OL is shown to be a locally formulated and pluralist phenomenon, based on the capacities of individuals involved and the highly nuanced dynamics created by and among the six structures. A new framework for the comprehensive investigation and analysis of OL emerges from the analysis. Some key findings from the study are that learning involving identifying and assessing new ways of doing things was neither practised nor required in all areas, that engagement in change during the undertaking of day-to-day work activities was a stimulant for learning, that different work tasks presented different possibilities for making and remedying mistakes, that the absence of a target-driven environment was an important enabler for staff to pursue off-the-job learning, that different work tasks presented varying opportunities for engaging with people, that engagement with people tended to happen only when staff felt that it would result in them being able to perform their roles more effectively, that inter-OL was not generally part of working life and that efforts to capture knowledge were generally not made unless there was a clear purpose or value seen for doing so.

published_or_final_version / Chinese Historical Studies / Master / Master of Arts

England came to have a nation-wide administrative system for public health in the 1870s. It consisted of the local councils which were designated as sanitary authorities and the Local Government Board (LGB) as the central department. This thesis explores how public health reform was pursued under this administrative system, by tracing the career of Arthur Newsholme (1857-1943), who served as Medical Officer of Health (MOH) for Brighton, 1888-1908, and as Medical Officer to the LGB, 1908-19. The main aim of the thesis is to examine the activities in which Newsholme was involved and his views, in order to consider the development of public health activities, or state medicine, in relation to the traditional notions of government and society in England, that underlay the administrative system such as 'minimal government', , local self-government' or 'voluntarism'. The first half of the thesis deals with public health reform in Brighton during Newsholme's years of office as local MOH. Particular attention is paid to how the scope of public health administration was decided through interactions between the MOH and the local council as a representative body of the community, and to how voluntary efforts were involved in its extension. The second half deals with Newsholme's administrative ideas and activities in the process of, and after, becoming the country's leading health official. By the time of his assumption of office at the LGB, Newsholme envisaged a comprehensive state medical service as the ultimate medical ideal. The thesis examines how he tried to pursue this ideal by means of reconciling it with traditional ideas of government. Special attention is paid to Newsholme's difference from his fellow reformers such as the Webbs and George Newman, particularly in respect of their recognition of the framework of centralllocal relations that underlay the administrative system, and concerning how reforms should or could be proceeded with by means of central bureaucratic initiatives.

Municipal Bonds represent an important but understudied source of funds for governments. This paper seeks to shed light on the previously hidden political choices that influence the choices of governments to pursue bonds, as well as to act as a springboard for future bond research. / text

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This research measured the impact of decentralisation on the promotion of good local governance in the Lilongwe District Assembly. The study explored the condition of local governance by examining the status of the facets that underpin local governance namely participation, transparency and accountability, gender equity and efficiency. It highlighted dilemmas associated with implementing decentralisation in areas where there are no functioning local institutions and where tendencies of centralisation still loom large.

The thesis is an exploration of the elections and governance in a contemporary Chinese village. It is a qualitative case study of one village in Shandong Province, China, using in-depth interviews with villagers, village candidates, township officials as well as national, provincial, township and village documents. It reveals how the clientelist system functions in and shapes the process of the village elections and governance. Drawing upon the qualitative data and empirical evidence collected in the field site, the thesis challenges the liberal-democratic view that the implementation of direct village elections and self-governance, which is generally considered to be “village democracy”, has empowered villagers to resist the state and may mark the beginning of a bottom-up democratization in China. In contrast, it argues that even procedurally “free and fair” village elections largely fail to deliver meaningful results, and that village governance, although in the name of self-governance, actually continues to be dominated by the Chinese local state. This is because clientelist structures, embodied in vertical patron-client alliances between political elites and villagers, have strongly influenced the actors and functioned to facilitate and supplement the authoritarian control of the state. The thesis also contests interpretations of village elections and self-governance that stress the state’s formal administrative capacity over controlling and manipulating village politics. While it shows some of the formal mechanisms by which township government control village affairs, it demonstrates also that after the implementation of the “village democracy” the state is still able to maintain its authoritarian capacity by taking advantage of the informal clientelist interaction between local state officials and the village elites.