The economics of operational behaviour in public organisations

Since the rise of New Public Management in the 1990s, government agencies are using increasingly complex and fragmented models to deliver public services. The outsourcing of activities traditionally considered the sole domain of the public sector, is often predicated on two core beliefs: that the public sector is inherently less efficient and effective than the private sector; and that public service delivery would be better if public organisations adopted private practices and behaviours. The purpose of this work is to investigate and evaluate these assumptions. I has done this by presenting a portfolio of six articles resulting from research into organisations delivering public services in the United Kingdom, such as Higher Education, Care Homes, Local Authorities and Defence Acquisition agencies. Key findings from the work indicate that employees delivering public services are particularly influenced by factors; like professional communities of practice, peer esteem and intrinsic workplace motivation. Consequently, workplace behaviours are more closely linked to professional discipline and the relevant industrial subsector than they are to ownership models, and that employees are more influenced by their peers than by ownership models or leadership approaches. Additionally, factors that are traditionally assumed to promote higher performance, such as completion, performance management, or incentive based coordinating mechanisms seem to work differently in different sectors. This exposition argues that that blanket approaches to practice adoption are likely to be ineffective, and that policy makers and managers who consider a more holistic set of operational variables are likely to me more successful in attaining their organisation’s strategic objectives.