Over the past 20 years, governments in many countries around the world have sought to implement governance mechanisms to measure and assess the performance of public service organisations. As a consequence, public service organisations, especially those considered as poorly-performing organisations, have been subjected to unprecedented pressure to improve their performance and sustain performance improvement as a continuous process. However, efforts of public managers to improve the performance of their organisations have been undertaken without “comprehensive theories and rigorous evidence on this issue” (Boyne, 2006: 366). This thesis takes up the challenge of providing robust evidence on the factors associated with the performance improvement of public organisations. We propose that the notion of organisational capabilities offers a promising way to meet this challenge. From this standpoint, this research sought to identify the organisational capabilities whose development and use explain a public service organisation’s ability to improve its performance and sustain good performance in the long run. The empirical analysis was conducted in a population of hospital trusts in England. We firstly applied longitudinal and comparative case studies method into two acute hospitals trusts: one case of a successful performance improvement and one case of less-successful performance improvement. The purpose was to examine how the development (or lack of) a set of capabilities over time accounted for the differences in the performance outcome and trajectory of the two cases. Our findings identified the following capabilities as advantageous for achieving a sustained performance: collective leadership; action-oriented culture; effective clinical-managerial relationship; supportive external context; performance / finance control capability; coordination capability of the key delivery process; sensing capability and learning capability. We then employed quantitative method over the population of acute hospital trusts in England to explore the relationship between complementarities of capabilities and performance. The results demonstrated that only when in combination does the presence of the capabilities yield positive and significant association with performance. In other words, the presence of the whole system of the capabilities increases the trusts’ performance, while partial presence of a set of capabilities is either not significantly associated with, or even detrimental to, the trusts’ performance.

No / This paper aims to describe the development of a wholly new model of transformational leadership and its applications in practice. The paper provides a description of a wholly new, inclusive model of transformational leadership and the way in which it can be applied in practice, in the context of embedding good leadership within the culture of an organisation and ensuring "best practice" in 360-degree feedback. The paper finds that the Transformational Leadership Questionnaire (TLQ)¿, which is both gender- and ethnicity-inclusive measure of "nearby" leadership, differs fundamentally from the kind of "heroic" models that have emanated from the USA and which have dominated the literature. Comparative data are presented of the mean scores on the TLQ, based on direct reports' ratings of their line manager, across a wide range of public sector organisations, including local government, the NHS, schools, and two central government agencies. Patterns emerge in areas of strength and developmental need, and the implications of these findings are discussed in terms of the impact of leadership behaviour and its effect on the psychological safety and well-being at work of staff. The following needs are identified: - to adopt a model of leadership that is relevant to the needs of organisations in the twenty-first century; to embed good leadership practices at all levels; to ensure that, when 360-degree feedback is given, it is done so in a way that conforms to the principles of 'best practice'. The following model of "nearby" leadership that is described is relevant to leaders at all levels in public and private sector organisations. It points to the consequences of poor leadership behaviour, and the need for the adoption of a model of leadership that is relevant to the needs of the twenty-first century.

No / Notions of leadership change over time. The last two decades have been dominated by US models of ¿heroic¿ leadership, based largely on predominately male-biased samples, which have been focused on studies of ¿distant¿ leaders, but these are being challenged by the findings from more recent studies which question the potential dangers of adulating the few ¿gifted¿ ¿charismatic¿ individuals, not least of which because of the disasters they may cause. In addition, there is a growing interest by organisations of identifying how they can increase ¿engagement¿ amongst their employees, since this process appears to contribute significantly to organisational success. This study seeks to replicate an earlier study of ¿nearby¿ leadership in UK public sector organisations.

E-Government applications have emerged rapidly in the developing world. This is due to its usefulness as an enabling tool to increase efficiency and enhance transparency. This research focuses on insights into the implementation process of e-Government within the context of developing countries. Institutional theory was the change theory applied since it explains why organisational structures and values endure. The neo-institutional theory was adopted by using multi-level approach and multi-stakeholder analysis, and these enable environmental forces to be used with other factors such as organisational and role of network actors. Due to its flexibility, institutional theory has been combined it with other theories and models such as: Lewin’s 3-stage model (deeply enriches understanding of how change occurs as well as the role of change agent); Driver-Barrier model (to assist in recognising the potential drivers and barriers that might influence successful e-Government implementation); Comprehensive Barrier framework (relevant for study of e-Government and information system barriers that could be used as checklist for project planning and evaluation);and Three-Quarter Moon model (developed for e-Commerce adoption and applied the model to e-Government implementation) The research questions and proposed framework were tested and validated by carrying out qualitative analysis using multi-methods approach for data collection. Case study research was adopted with focus on government-to-employee (G2E) within public sector organisations in Nigeria, West Africa. The research collection strategy included an in-depth investigation of organisations’ information systems using both primary and secondary data collection. The series of techniques adopted are questionnaire responses, interviews, document analysis and observation. The research findings suppose that most of the factors – internal and external, and characteristics – benefits, barriers and risks, identified as influential to e-Government implementation are similar to those discussed in existing literature, although some may be specific to the Nigerian public sector context. Based in the findings, the researcher was able to reconceptualise the developed model for e-Government implementation, which was specific to the case study. The model was then extended for application by other countries. A novel subset model – Rectangular Four-Actor-Activity - was also developed for identifying e-Government implementation key actors and their main activities, which is a subset of the holistic framework. The conceptualised model should help managers and academicians to understand the step-by-step guide to e-Government implementing process by ranking and mapping of relevant concepts and factors within the framework, understanding the difference between theory and practice in terms of e-Government implementation. The researcher therefore accomplishes that this study extends to the knowledge in the aspect of e-Government implementation from organisational perspectives, Government-to-Employee (G2E); thus contributing to the Information System (and e-Government implementation) literature through reviewing the range of studies using a wider multi-level and multi-method approach. This includes combining institutional theory with other models. This enables development of a holistic conceptual model for implementing e-Government, including a subset model for e-Government key actors and their main activities throughout the development life cycle.

Abstract and Keywords  The thesis concerns different conceptions of rationality and their implications for organisations, especially in the public sector. The focus is on performance management (as widely defined) within public sector organisations as a subject for exploring these issues. This has long been controversial because seemingly simplistic approaches to performance management persist, despite well recognised shortcomings, such as a tendency to perverse incentives and unintended outcomes.  Therefore, in the kappa, I analyse the notion of instrumental rationality, examine the established critique of instrumental rationality from a ‘political’ perspective and present the dilemma that this creates; i.e. how to improve processes of resource allocation and performance evaluation, while recognising organisational realities such as imbalances in power. The potential of communicative rationality as an alternative conceptualisation of rationality in organisations is then discussed.    The development of public sector management from the fiscal crises of the 1970s is explained, with the rise of the ‘New Public Management’ based on neo-liberal ideas, and the subsequent opposition to it from ‘New Public Governance’ and ‘New Public Services’ paradigms. These potentially give more scope to participative and deliberative processes of generating performance measurement packages and control systems. Moreover, in practice, particularly interesting examples of participatory approaches have been found in developing countries which align with communicative rationality. A critical position is adopted in the thesis, seeking to challenge ‘managerialist’ orthodoxies.  As a theoretical guide to understanding these issues, conceptual frameworks from the management control literature are used. Broadbent and Laughlin’s (2009) conceptual model of performance management systems has been of particular value. They draw on Weber and Habermas to distinguish between instrumental and communicative rationality models and between transactional and relational performance management systems. This enables them to identify two distinct ideal types of ‘rationality clusters’ (instrumental and communicative) to which organisations will incline. They also contend that contingent factors influence where actual organisations are located between these two ideal types.          7  The four papers I have selected for the licentiate from my various publications report on research carried out in three different public sector settings using different methods of investigation. Paper 1 considers the approaches to resource allocation and performance measurement then used by English Health Authorities at the time of writing. In Paper 2 an evaluation carried out at an English police service, utilising cost-consequences analysis, is described and discussed. Papers 3 and 4 concern a performance management regime for the English ambulance service, which became noted for promoting perverse incentives and ‘gaming’, and its subsequent replacement. The first two papers foreground issues of rationality and the last two issues of performance management; but these topics are interrelated and are relevant throughout. It is argued in all the papers that comprehensively ‘rationalistic’ approaches are flawed and that participation, deliberation and dialogue between stakeholders are desirable.

The global perspective on digital revolution is one that has received a rapturous approval from information professionals, scholars and practitioners. However, such an approval has come at a great cost to memory institutions as the preservation of digital information has proved to be a complex phenomenon to memory institutions. Guided by the multi method design and underpinned by the triangulation of questionnaires, interviews, observation and document analysis, the study examined digital preservation of e-government in Ghana. Findings revealed that the creation of databases, digital publication, emails, website information and tweets were often ocassioned by the use of ICT, e-government, and application of legislations and public policies. It observed that these types of digital records were in urgent need for preservation as most of the ministries and agencies were unable to access their digital records. While the application of a digital preservation tool (Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe) was a familiar terrain to the ministries and agencies, there was expressed lack of awareness about digital preservation support organisations and digital preservation standards. The study identified funding, level of security and privacy, skills training and technological obsolescence as factors that pose key threats to digital preservation. It noted backup strategy, migration, metadata and trusted repositories as the most widely implemented preservation strategy across the ministries and agencies. On the other hand, cloud computing, refreshing and emulation were the least implemented preservation strategies used to address the digital preservation challenges . The study recommends that the ministries and agencies can address many of the digital preservation challenges if they leverage on collaborative and participatory opportunities. Such collaborative and participatory opportunities involve the use of experts from other institutions to share resources and use a common protocol through cloud computing and Open Data. It further recommends that the process of developing a digital preservation policy can be guided by a template document from other jurisdictions / Information Science / D. Litt et Phil. (Information Science)

Abstract Background Occupational Burnout is one of the greatest challenges affecting the labour markets today. It is mainly caused by prolonged stress exposure due to the psychosocial work environment and is nowadays the fastest growing cause of long-term sick leave in Sweden. It therefor affects both the society, organisation and individual. It is thus a managerial concern to manage and structure the organisations in a sustainable way that maximises the use of human resources, rather than burning them out.    Purpose The aim of the thesis is to investigate the high level of sick-leave or burnout due to organisational and managerial factors in the Swedish educational sector, by focusing on the role leadership, organisational and psychosocial work environment plays in preventing/causing employees’ burnout. The authors attempt to contribute knowledge on why theory may not match reality in this case, as statistics of sickleave due to stressrelated illness remains high. Methods In this qualitative study principals, administrators, and teachers of four public compulsory schools in Jönköping and Öckerö are interviewed. Using semi-structured interviews, data is gathered, coded and analysed in relation to modern research literature on the topic of burnout as well as Swedish Work Environment Authority guidelines, to spot key elements of positive and negative factors which have affected the stress situations of the schools’ employees. Several factors from organizational and leadership perspective are examined to assist organizations to avoid or prevent burnout.   Results Prevalence of high burnout rates in schools in the cases studied, was associated with recent large reorganization of employees and administration; weak and inefficient leadership which did not strive to build relationships and open communication with teachers; low integration between sectors and working groups; lack of support and monitoring of stressed employees; low ability of employees to contribute to their workplace environments; the shortage of budgets issued by municipality.   Conclusions 1.The reason sick leave related to stress and burnout is high in the cases studied, is that implementation of research and policy guidelines is lacking behind in schools which suffer from employee stress related issues. As well as the current management model of the public sector may not benefit to prevent employee burnout.   2. It is possible to avoid employee burnout through adjusting the management and organizational structure, as adaptations toward dealing with employees’ stress are showing a positive sign on preventing the development of burnout.

The global perspective on digital revolution is one that has received a rapturous approval from information professionals, scholars and practitioners. However, such an approval has come at a great cost to memory institutions as the preservation of digital information has proved to be a complex phenomenon to memory institutions. Guided by the multi method design and underpinned by the triangulation of questionnaires, interviews, observation and document analysis, the study examined digital preservation of e-government in Ghana. Findings revealed that the creation of databases, digital publication, emails, website information and tweets were often ocassioned by the use of ICT, e-government, and application of legislations and public policies. It observed that these types of digital records were in urgent need for preservation as most of the ministries and agencies were unable to access their digital records. While the application of a digital preservation tool (Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe) was a familiar terrain to the ministries and agencies, there was expressed lack of awareness about digital preservation support organisations and digital preservation standards. The study identified funding, level of security and privacy, skills training and technological obsolescence as factors that pose key threats to digital preservation. It noted backup strategy, migration, metadata and trusted repositories as the most widely implemented preservation strategy across the ministries and agencies. On the other hand, cloud computing, refreshing and emulation were the least implemented preservation strategies used to address the digital preservation challenges . The study recommends that the ministries and agencies can address many of the digital preservation challenges if they leverage on collaborative and participatory opportunities. Such collaborative and participatory opportunities involve the use of experts from other institutions to share resources and use a common protocol through cloud computing and Open Data. It further recommends that the process of developing a digital preservation policy can be guided by a template document from other jurisdictions / Information Science / D. Litt et Phil. (Information Science)

No description available.

The purpose of this study was to explore and describe Kenya Power employees’ perceptions of their adoption and implementation of online internal communication tools as a means of creating and managing long lasting relationships among all employees in the organisation. The theoretical point of departure for this study was framed within online internal communication and relationship management while principles of e-government were also considered. A single case study design was adopted for the study which combined both quantitative and qualitative data collection techniques while data was triangulated using an online self-administered questionnaire, focus group moderator’s guide and an interview schedule. The results guided by the theoretical criteria indicate that the implementation of online internal communication tools was done at Kenya Power without considering the internal stakeholders’ needs and preferences. The consequence is that employees have developed negative perceptions about internal online communication resulting in low adoption for relationship management activities. The findings of this study could be useful for other public sector organisations in that it will help them to positively change employees’ perceptions as well as enhance the implementation and adoption of internal online communication tools for the purposes of relationship building which could result in better internal communication and public sector services. / Communication Science / M.A. (Communication)