In June 1988 the five-year, £350 million Alvey programme for advanced information technology is scheduled to terminate. This study is a critical appraisal of the decision-making associated with all aspects of the formulation, approval, implementation and operation of the Alvey policy programme. The study analyses why a government that preaches public sector disengagement from the market has channelled funds into one of the fastest growing sectors of British industry, why a government committed to competition endorsed a programme based on collaboration between firms, and why a government opposed to picking 'winners' implemented a programme aimed at a few selected technologies. It describes the intricate advisory mechanisms which support decision-making by powerful but technologically ill-informed government departments and the British core executive. The study questions the wisdom of the government Insisting that industry should frame industry policy - for when a sector dominated by defence contractors did so, the result was an increased dependence on government. When the government engaged in a meso-corporatist policy-making arrangement with Industry, it did so from a position of weakness. Industry had the technical expertise, operational control of major projects, and a dominant role within the Alvey directorate. The result was a pattern of self-interested and short-sighted policy-making biased towards the interests of large firms In the defence and telecommunications fields. By divorcing itself from the mainstream of information technology developments and concentrating on selected narrow niches, the British information technology industry has set itself a difficult task for survival in the years ahead.

Title: Branding the public sector Author: Rasmus Bergmark and David Backman Tutor: Magnus Fredriksson Purpose: The purpose of this thesis was to examine branding in the public sector. The frame extends to government agencies and authorities in the Swedish public sphere, and aims to identify ulterior motives for their work with branding. Method/Material: The material used in this thesis consists 102 graphic manuals for government agencies in the Swedish public sector. The examination was based on an inductive survey where we extracted prominent motives among the graphic manuals. Main results: The main results of this survey shows which ulterior motives are more prominent than others, why they are more prominent and correlations between different motives. Number of pages: 53 Course: Media and Communications studies C University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Information sience, Uppsala university Period: Fall 2013 Keywords: Corporate branding, public sector, motives, market communication / Denna studies syfte är att undersöka vilka motiv som myndigheter anger vara skäl till att arbeta med profilering och vilka av dessa motiv som är de mest framträdande. Uppsatsen bygger på en övergripande frågeställning och tre stycken mer specificerade frågor som berör den övergripande frågan på en närmare nivå. Den övergripande frågan är: Varför vill man profilera sig som myndighet? Vidare är de tre andra frågorna som uppsatsen ämnar besvara dessa: Hur motiverar svenska myndigheter sitt arbete med profilering? Vilka motiv är vanligast förekommande? Hur beskrivs det att myndigheter arbetar med profilering?   Undersökningen baseras på en kvantitativ studie och genomfördes med hjälp av en innehållsanalys. Studien är utförd på samtliga tillgängliga profilmanualer för statliga förvaltningsmyndigheter i Sverige. Utifrån dessa har vi utformat ett eget ramverk med kategorier baserat på vad vi kunnat utläsa ur manualerna. Genom detta ramverk har vi kunnat ta fasta på vad och hur svenska myndigheter motiverar sitt arbete med profilering.   Undersökningens resultat visade vad som motiverar svenska myndigheter att bedriva arbete med profilering. Resultatet i underökningen visade i vilken utsträckning myndigheterna angav dessa motiv. Majoriteten angav tydlighet som motiv till att bedriva arbetet med profilering och detta motiv tycks även vara grundläggande för resterande faktorer i deras arbete. Vidare kan vi konstatera att det är viktigt att arbetet bedrivs konsekvent då majoriteten av svenska myndigheter angav detta som ett motiv.

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The poor in urban areas of developing countries suffer from inadequate tertiary (neighbourhood level) urban infrastructure; water and sanitation, solid waste, drainage, access pavements, street lighting and community buildings. Procurement of tertiary level infrastructure is the responsibility of the public sector. Rapid urbanisation is outstripping the already lacking resources of public sector. The involvement of private commercial sector in the procurement is through the micro-contracts. The term, 'micro-contracts', is proposed for the small and medium size contracts. In some cases a third sector like NGOs, CBOs and community groups have also played roles in the procurement of infrastructure. The processes, roles, relationships and performance of micro-contracts procured under routine and community participated strategies were explored with a view to promote the role of the community in the procurement process. The constraints to contract, relationship between public sector and community groups and ways to overcome those constraints were explored. The contract contexts were taken from India, Pakistan and Sri-Lanka. Both qualitative and quantitative techniques were used. A multiple case study approach was adopted for the research. During the research three hundred and ninety contracts, more than a hundred interviews and filed notes and more than two hundred documents related to the micro-contracts were reviewed and analysed. The concept of benchmarking was adopted in performance analysis. 'Community partnering' is proposed as a procurement strategy to facilitate the community to play different roles parallel to the roles of Client, Engineer and Contractor. The cost and benefits of community partnering were discussed. It was concluded that, for the similar conditions studied, the community partnering between the urban public sector and suitable urban communities is an appropriate procurement strategy. The recommendations include a number of actions which could be taken to promote the community role in urban infrastructure procurement. Areas of future research are proposed.

In techno-organisational innovation, knowledge is reconstituted. Understanding this process in its complexity and its outcomes asks for an inquiry and interpretation that heed to the conditions at the end of modernity, and must therefore take recourse to practical philosophy. This understanding has been formulated with reference to a field study that inquired into the conduct of reform and effectuation of new information technology by the central department of a regional government over a period of approximately eight years. In considering this ambience, the study has been informed by (i) a synopsis of hermeneutic thinking on knowledge; (ii) an outline of governmentality and (information) technology; (iii) a reflection on the conditions of the social sciences and their relation to information technology; (iv) an exploration of the possibilities of social inquiry at the end of modernity. Deliberating the stipulations of social inquiry, the destructive narrative is proposed that allows for a rational and argumentative appropriation of the past, beyond scientific method and mere perceptivity. Events, ideas, and experiences indicate the reciprocal relation of political and organisational rationalities, on the one hand, and managerial and informational technologies on the other. Within these dimensions, the knowledge of governmentality is being re-defined, shifting expertise into the harness of business discipline. The rationalities of information, process, integration, prediction and performance, and ultimately efficiency, make bureaucracy itself an object of increased scrutiny. These rationalities also remind that the challenge of Ge-stell and the rule of politics-as-fabrication do neither come to pass primarily in implementations of managerial technologies, nor in instantiations of information systems, but within the articulations of the technological worldview. Due to the fragmented and contentious nature of knowledge, innovation as routine nevertheless appears disjointed and asynchronous, yet upholding the representational and disciplinary constellations.

In the face of knowledge deficits in and poor outcome assessments of Organisation Transformation (OT), there is a need for a better understanding of the relationship between change leader interventions and qualitative organisational schema change, the collective knowledge structures that must be replaced or significantly elaborated if OT is to be realised. Previous research on this relationship has (a) focused on imposed structural interventions and given little attention to large-scale human process interventions, (b) given little attention to the radical structural interventions frequently involved in the transformation of public organisations, (c) given little scrutiny to how organisational schema have been conceptualised, (d) given little scrutiny to recent propositions on schema change dynamics that may be contentious, and (e) given little consideration to the change management contexts in which leader influence may be neutralised. In the light of these gaps in the literature, this thesis investigates, from the perspective of change recipients, the relationship between complex large-scale change leader interventions and qualitative organisational schema change in change management contexts thought to be inimical to leader influence. In particular, how efficacious are change leader interventions in realising qualitative organisational schema change in such contexts? An interpretive longitudinal case study design was used to address this question. The case organisation is a spatially differentiated technically-oriented public Professional Bureaucracy located in Queensland. In this context, this thesis investigates, over a three-year period, the creation and evolution of three schema change contexts, or change trajectories, created by two temporally disconnected yet functionally inter-related change leader interventions. Data collection techniques included focus group interviews, semi-structured interviews, and secondary sources. Data were collected from several sites, including Head Office functions and Regional and District offices, across Queensland. Data were collected on four occasions across the three-year period from early 2000 to late 2002. The results reveal that (a) while there are no panaceas, public managers need more sophisticated intervention theories based on a knowledge of the relative efficacy of different interventions rather than relying on, predominantly, structural interventions, (b) viewing organisational schema in one-dimensional rather than multidimensional terms masks both the complexity of organisational schema change and the possibility of partial rather than configurational schema change, (c) while inter-schema conflict or dialectical processes were apparent, successful schema change was better explained by teleological processes than by dialectical processes, and (d) change leaders can have a powerful influence on OT in change management contexts thought to be inimical to change leader influence yet their influence is linked to high investments of time and effort.

Diss. Stockholm : Stockholms universitet, 2008.

Information systems, by nature, are open to interpretation from a number of viewpoints. This thesis emphasizes that information systems are not 'technical' systems that have behavioural and social consequences, they are 'social systems' that rely to an increasing extent on information technology for their functions. Hence any systems development methodologies used cannot deal simply with the problem of how one designs technically reliable and cost effective information systems. Instead it regards systems development as an example of multidimensional social change, the application of technology may not be a desirable solution to the situation. The choice of a development methodology should therefore take into account its sensitivity to the cultural, social, and political aspects of systems design. The aims of the thesis are three-fold. The first aim is to transform an idea or perception of needs into actionable drivers for change in a public sector organisation in Brunei Darussalam. The second aim is to identify and diagnose the problems associated with the management of information. Finally, the study aims to identify a suitable methodology that can be used to investigate a number of organisational issues. This work incorporates a practical case study of a problem situation at the Ministry of Religious Affairs, the sole government agency responsible for perpetuating and disseminating Islamic teaching in Brunei Darussalam. The methodology used to investigate the problem situation is Checkland's Soft System Methodology (SSM). This is well chosen as the case study deals with human activity systems that are not well defined. Systems intervention via a semi-structured and informal discussion interviews were used to identify the unstructured problem situation (stage 1) of the SSM. The SSM progressed through to the recommendation of actions that constitute culturally feasible and desirable change. In fact, although manual systems are less efficient and effective than their computer-based counterparts, they are preferred in the first instance. Only when the manual system has reached maturity should a computer-based replacement be considered.

This thesis discusses an action-research (AR) project which investigated the problem of information management for housing maintenance. The research commenced with the intention of developing an expert system for housing maintenance management. The first step in this process is to understand the environment and user requirements, and it was this quest for understanding which subsequently became the focus for the research. A systemic approach was adopted to re-examine the problem situation holistically, as opposed to the more traditional reductionist view. Checkland's softsystems methodology (SSM) provided the framework for systematic enquiry. SSM offers an approach which can be used for accurate problem recognition and definition in messy, ill-structured and often complex human activity systems. The necessity for accurate and appropriate problem identification techniques when attempting to manage information was crucial in the shaping of this project. Upon reflection, the project consisted of five clearly defined phases which emerged in response to events and opportunities faced by the researcher. These phases can be categorised as either 'diagnostic' or 'therapeutic' and each consisted of a cyclical process of enquiry. This thesis comprises four parts which mirror this cyclical learning process in each phase of the AR. Part 1, Problem Recognition, deals with the subject matter and introduces the conceptual framework used for Information System (IS) analysis. Part 2, Action Planning, details the research approach and methodology; and the development of the research strategy, design and choice of data collection techniques. Part 3, Action Taking, presents the fieldwork and describes the AR data collection and analysis process. Part 4, Evaluation, provides a critical review of the research approach, details the research contribution and a methodological reevaluation. The research contribution is considered in three areas, (a) specific substantive contribution to an understanding of housing management information systems, (b) theoretical contribution to an understanding of a soft-systems approach to participative IS analysis and evaluation, and, remembering the origins of the study (c) the utility and immediate benefits to housing maintenance practice. These combine in the creation of a participative methodology and integrated framework to identify information requirements for housing maintenance management. The re-evaluation and research review identifies how AR and SSM could be developed by utilizing aspects of action learning.