International Journal of Public Sector Management

Sylvia Horton

2003 International Journal of Public Sector Management

doi: 10.1108/09513550310492058

Introduces the special issue, which looks at the changes experienced by public sector organisations during the last 20 years of the twentieth century, when they were being transformed from a bureaucratic system to a market‐oriented results‐driven system. States that during the 1990s the need for participation, involvement and empowerment of staff began to pervade the thinking of public managers and there was a move away from the old hierarchical command structures in the public sector in order to create more fluid responsive organisations. The issue looks at some of the negative and unanticipated effects of these changes.

Koen Nomden; David Farnham; Marie‐Laure Onnee‐Abbruciati

2003 International Journal of Public Sector Management

doi: 10.1108/09513550310492067

This article shows that regulation of the employment relationship in European public services has tended to give more importance to collective bargaining than to unilateral employer regulation. Although collective bargaining is a general trend, it is not the same in every country. This article concentrates on collective bargaining levels and the outcomes of collective bargaining in selected European states. A major explanatory factor of the extent of collective bargaining is the nature of the civil service system. Reformed “non‐career” systems tend to adopt collective bargaining institutions, resulting in binding collective agreements between employers and unions, while classical “career” systems do not.

Zuzana Dvorakova

2003 International Journal of Public Sector Management

doi: 10.1108/09513550310492076

Citizen associations, trade unions and “tripartism” are the major mediators and interest‐representing bodies in the Czech Republic outside political parties. A system of corporatism at the national policy making level has existed since 1990. Since 1998 trade unions have demonstrated efforts to rely less on “tripartite” arrangements and to utilise the legal provision on collective bargaining. Within the public sector there are only a very limited range of issues that can be bargained collectively. The major issue being the most sensitive area of remuneration. Public sector trade unions, unified in the Czech‐Moravian Confederation of Trade Unions, have established a system of regular negotiations with the government aimed at achieving agreements in pay increases and the extension of the pay scale. Post‐communist Czech society is becoming more pluralistic and trade unions are playing an important role in introducing more elements of democracy.

David Farnham; Sylvia Horton; Geoff White

2003 International Journal of Public Sector Management

doi: 10.1108/09513550310492085

Britain's public sector has undergone a series of radical structural and managerial changes over the past 20 years. These changes are associated with public‐sector reform and innovations in public management. They have impacted significantly on the ways in which public employees are recruited, selected, rewarded, assessed, trained and managed. This article outlines the impact of these changes on staff participation and involvement practices in the civil service, National Health Service (NHS) and local government, and highlights some of the major trends.

Myriam Parys

2003 International Journal of Public Sector Management

doi: 10.1108/09513550310492094

The Belgian federal administration has been undergoing a major reform programme since 1999, known as the Copernicus reform. In 2000 a survey was launched by the Minister of Civil Service and Modernisation of the Public Services to assess and measure civil servants’ attitudes towards the reform and to stuimulate employee commitment. This article analyses the survey responses using the participation model of de Leede and Looise. Concludes that the amount of influence civil servants exerted through their participation and involvement in the survey appears to be small. Furthermore, there are criticisms levelled at the ways that the results of the survey have been used.

Gilles Jeannot

2003 International Journal of Public Sector Management

doi: 10.1108/09513550310492102

Reform of the French civil service, embarked on in 1989, was designed to involve state employees and officials in the process by appealing to their sense of duty and commitment, rather than adopting a top‐down approach and imposing control over them. “Service projects” provided for active participation of state officials in the definition of aims and objectives and organisation of their services. Several thousand individual services were involved. The evidence suggests that, in practice, participation concerned mainly the conditions of work organisation and often failed to involve all levels of the hierarchy. The reforms did not involve the trade unions, although they were consulted. As in the case of quality circles, which the reforms resembled, participation by all agents was not maintained after the first project. The use of “strategic projects” are still under way but the dimension of staff participation has progressively disappeared. The conclusion is that “service projects” are a failed experiment in staff participation and involvement.

Yves Emery; David Giauque

2003 International Journal of Public Sector Management

doi: 10.1108/09513550310492111

This article examines staff participation and involvement in Swiss public organisations that are undergoing major administrative change. Officially, the new public management reforms have the following objectives: more organisational autonomy; increased organisational flexibility and adaptability; more responsiveness; and greater productive capacity. All these objectives are intended to be attained, in part, by increasing staff participation and involvement. After evaluating some of the new public management projects the paper identifies a number of obstacles which are preventing the achievement of government objectives. The paper concludes that the reforms are producing contradictory expectations that may be undermining the achievement of the government reforms.