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Since 1979, successive British governments have initiated reforms and New Public Management (NPM) as a way of modernising and reducing the cost of public services. This has required public service managers to find ways of 'doing more with less' and to comply with centrally determined priorities. This modernisation agenda is underpinned by m outcomes for all concerned. However, this research, drawing on a labour process perspective, challenges these assumptions.

The thesis is concerned with the conceptual development and application to practical management issues of the general descriptive theory called the 'Operational Dimensions Framework'. It is argued that attempts to join up public services need to take into account the dimensional complexity of the operating environment for their delivery. The Operational Dimensions Framework is underpinned by realist assumptions, and the methods used to evaluate it apply critical realist social theories in innovative ways. The Operational Dimensions Framework was originally developed when the author was working as a regeneration programmes manager at Barnsley MBC in the late 1990's, continually involved in the interplay between different dimension in the formulation and implementation of regeneration programmes. The basic model have been further developed and refined in the course of the research. The research uses theories of truth as criteria against which to assess the Operational Dimensions Framework as a tool to assist public service <ul> <li>assessing the coherence of the Operational Dimensions Framework as a general descriptive theory (coherence theory of truth)</li> <li>reviewing practice in joined up government in Great Britain against the Operational Dimensions Framework (correspondence theory of truth)</li> <li>assessing where there are gaps in existing theories which could be addressed through the Operational Dimensions Framework (consensus theory of truth)</li> <li>using the Operational Dimensions Framework to help with the practical management issues (pragmatism theory of truth)</li></ul> The conclusion drawn is that both the Operational Dimensions Framework itself and the methods used in the research make significant contributions to management theory. Furthermore, the Operational Dimensions Framework can be used to develop management tools to improve practice in a variety of contexts.

The research investigated the factors that are associated with organisational performance in British local public services using the national assessment frameworks of Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) and Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA). Performance measurement was said by Behn (1995) to be one of the big questions of public management and the literature demonstrates this remains the case. More generally performance management has been the subject of a large number of studies, many in the private sector, that often consider a narrow spectrum of explanatory factors. This research is unusual in studying a relatively large number of possible explanations of performance using three different methods of inquiry: longitudinal questionnaire surveys of four types of local public service organisations, a content analysis of strategic documents and the use of organisational profiles regarding the post bureaucratic construct (Kernaghan, 2000). The research relied on the CPA and CAA results to provide an independent assessment of organisational performance; such data is not usually available for public services. CPA has been found to have driven up local government performance (Boyne, James and John et al, 2010) and therefore its use is very appropriate. The analysis used correlation to identify the significant (p<0.05) criteria which were then put through a principal component analysis (PCA). This resulted in the identification of 11 summary factors with the strongest five being Strategy, Performance management, Human resources, Culture and Engagement. Factors of lesser importance are Resources, Leadership, Reputation and Innovation. The term ‘summary factors’ has been used to denote that within each of these there are potentially a number of parts. The research can be used practically by organisations, to improve, by comparing their results on the questionnaire with the criteria associated with high organisational performance. Further, the summary factors provide confidence regarding what may be the most critical areas to be addressed.

Across the world, confirmed by academic and internal research evidence, Government and public sector organisations consistently display varying degrees of difficulty in generating, developing and implementing innovative ideas. Now, as budgets become tighter, the pressure to fundamentally transform the UK’s public sector by relying upon the exploration and adoption of sustainable innovation continues to grow as a policy necessity. Given this necessity, there is a definite, identified need to critically review the literature covering theory development and innovation practice as part of a cultural challenge within the UK public sector to identify the key deep rooted and persistent barriers to public sector innovation to assist in researching potential workable solutions. To facilitate this endeavour this Doctoral study deploys, as per Chapter 3, Ethnographic methods underpinning qualitative thematic template analysis to explore and identify existing innovation barriers from qualitative data collected from the management and staff of a major UK Civil Service Department. The primary objective of this research study is to contribute to the effective improvement in public sector Innovation delivery, via identification of the key barriers via ten literature defined and participant response analysis propositions to facilitate improved innovation generation. In Chapters 2 & 4, by critically showing the linkages between innovation literature and the practical observations and innovation process experiences of public servants, workable solutions as to how the UK’s Civil Service can overcome such persistent problems have been explored. This research aims to add value to the wider debate by identifying an environment that supports and encourages the practical generation of public sector innovative ideas and change behaviour. In Chapters 5 & 6, from analysis of the quantitative data, the study identified 18 barrier subject nodes covering a number of themes which appear to inhibit the successful embedding of such innovation practices and processes.

This thesis is a qualitative and interpretive exploration of continuity and change in the role of executive agencies in UK central government. Its three objectives are: (i) to test the longevity of the semi-autonomous agency model first introduced by Conservative governments after 1988; (ii) to explore the department-agency task division in the policymaking processes supposedly fragmented by this ‘agencification’; and (iii) to evaluate the paradigmatic testament of contemporary agency policy and practice in Whitehall. The thesis builds from an extended case study conducted during the 2010 Coalition Government in the Ministry of Justice and three of its agencies – the National Offender Management Service, HM Courts and Tribunals Service, and the Office of the Public Guardian. Social constructivist meta-theory and the application of narrative and discourse analysis together make for an account of interpretive transformation that is theorised by discursive institutionalism. Substantively, the thesis first describes an asymmetric departure from the ‘accountable management’ philosophy which the 1988 Next Steps agency programme originally epitomised. Agency meaning is multivocal, but contemporarily converges towards accountability and transparent corporate governance, rather than managerial empowerment, de-politicisation and decentralisation. Secondly, institutional preservation of the policy-delivery work dichotomy is registered, yet found to be a poor descriptor of both historic and contemporary policy processes. Agency staff act as policy initiators and collaborators, contrary to Next Steps’ quasi-contractual, principal-agent logic, and further evidencing the departmentalisation of the once arm’s-length agency model. Thirdly, and paradigmatically, while no unidirectional trend is found, the thesis adds to the growing literature positing some departure from the former ideological and practical predominance of ‘new public management’. In so doing, it also demonstrates the challenges faced by large-N population ecology and administrative systems analysis – the favoured methodology in much international agencification scholarship – in accounting for continuity and change in policy, practice and paradigm.

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